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Seven Emotions Rule Politics. Winning Requires Instinctual Communication. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-08

Summary

Humans communicate non-verbally, often by expressing emotions, and once they connect, they trust and follow, as a group. Trump ignored traditional strait-laced politics and openly used 7 different emotions to connect with and build his base, many who lack a high school diploma. Even though he lies constantly, champions stupid policies, and is immoral, his followers trust their emotional connection first and foremost.

Democratic politicians, focusing on rational and moral solutions, too often avoid overt emotions, use big words, are too formal, pretend to be in the middle on every issue, avoid controversy, make rational & moral arguments while ignoring emotions, and too often give up on any issue temporarily trending away from them. So, despite being correct, they are viewed as feckless and untrustworthy.

To adapt to our new media infotainment age, Democratic politicians need to use the full range of emotions to connect with voters, including fear-tactics, sob-stories, rage, shock, disgust, and contempt. They must lean into controversy and choose sides. Although some may feel uncomfortable with this approach, the urgent crises of our time demand a heart-to-heart with American voters, especially those who were misled after trusting the wrong guy.

Basics

Darwin was one of the first to observe that humans around the world have the same basic facial expressions. Communicating our emotions on our faces is one of the primary ways people communicate. When we feel anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness or surprise, others can recognize our emotion immediately.

All of us begin with non-verbal communication, and most of us underestimate how powerful it is. Our species, Homo Sapiens, inherited this complex way to interact—including living in tribes and using fire, symbols, tools, and weapons—from our predecessors, who developed all of them without words or even the capacity for speech. Humans look at faces for clues on how to interact, instantly deciding who to trust—friend or foe—, before we listen to words.

Essentially, tribal communication is emotional, instinctual, non-verbal and often unconscious. Human babies learn through observation and mimicry, internalizing unspoken lessons that adults never meant to communicate (like racism). While we learn much consciously and intentionally in school, we learn more by what we see, wordlessly absorbing human behavior from our screens. Video & social media intentionally manipulate us emotionally, instinctually, non-verbally and often unconsciously. Like it or not, that’s primarily how the world works.

The New World

Before Trump, presidential politics was constrained by decorum, etiquette, and propriety. Politicians were expected to act with gravitas, as statesmen (boy, that’s sexist), to respect precedent and maintain standards. We expected our leaders to be rational and moral. History weighed heavily on them, as reflected in their demeanor. Those norms were somehow seen as inviolate, and, like some ancient imperial court, leaders would follow customs scrupulously, asking surrogates to speak words they could not.

But those ‘norms’ were never normal. They were an elaborate glass menagerie, frozen by inertia, treated as totems, never reflecting the way that most humans really act. Then the bull entered the china shop.

Unlike his formal, stiff, often expressionless and monotone predecessors—who took their jobs seriously—, Trump expresses a range of emotions on his face. Humans naturally respond to these emotions, take in non-verbal cues of dominance, and decide who to trust wordlessly. The only emotion he has trouble with is happiness, but that just makes him the opposite of the typical smiling politician. By contrast, his anger channeled popular frustration, his contempt for smiling talking heads made them seem dishonest, his bullying air of disgust made him look strong, his fear-mongering made folks follow him, his sadness about the country made patriotic folks love him, and his looks of surprise got attention. If you can stand it, look at some of his expressions from the 2015 debate. (Don’t worry, 1 minute, no sound).

Sure, he lied constantly, but he manipulated his followers on a primal level. He appealed to racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia, not with rational or moral arguments (aren’t any), but with facial expression, tone of voice, and bigotry. Like Hitler who practiced his speeches in front of the mirror, Trump is a showman, connecting directly to people’s unconscious, non-verbal, instinctual emotions. And yes, it’s intentional manipulation by a student of Hitler’s speeches, supported by sophisticated Russian disinformation campaigns and promulgated by corrupt social media billionaires, but his simple, savage demagoguery is why it’s brutally effective.

As we underestimate the power of instinctual communication, we also over-estimate his voters. While Democrats struggle to explain graduate-level issues to an audience using terms that a college-bound 12th grader might understand, Trump famously speaks (in public) at a 4th grade level. And he’s consistently proven that strategy works. Pundits frequently tell us that he finds new voters among the non-college educated. But college is not the relevant educational line . In Kern County California, there are more folks without a high school education than there are folks with any college. Trump speaks to those folks at their level, while we do not. And, he’s able to persuade them without facts and often without using words at all.

Stop it!

Stop smiling and pretending to be happy all the time, and start exercising some other facial muscles, vary your tone of voice, and target the other 86% of human emotions. Express anger, fear and sadness. Show surprise, contempt and disgust. Stop speaking to your book club. If you’re smarter than a 5th grader, then you’re missing a large voting demographic. Stop affecting an air of calm formality, as if you’re at a symposium discussing the table manners of officers at Dachau. Most voters don’t trust or listen to ‘main stream media’, because they speak too formally about world chaos, sanitizing insanity. Right-wing media effectively communicates by expressing shock, anger, disgust and other emotions, as often as they lie: constantly. Stop assuming there’s an even-keeled, moderate group of centrists in America, like overpaid pundits claim. There is no center. Hell, nobody agrees on facts anymore. Imagine your audience as ranging from Bigfoot believers, to burned out Squid Game watchers, the downtrodden and discriminated, to cut-throat capitalists, porn-addicts, drunks and delusional old Fox folk. Stop trying to avoid controversy. Every controversy is an opportunity to get attention. How many times did our nemesis control the news cycle by creating some outrage? And what did we accomplish by trying to stamp it out? Go on offense with a real outrage. Stop thinking that a factual response to a lie is enough. He never deals in truth, only emotional appeal. If the underlying emotions are not addressed, then we’ve lost. Stop thinking that a moral response to an outrage is enough. Connect emotionally first, and then you can try to soothe anger, dispel fear, instill respect, and lift the chins of the depressed. ½ of America needed therapy before the election, and now we all do. Stop giving up. Too often we compromise and cede issues for comity, delighting our opponents and dismaying our allies. Why do we back down every time we strike a nerve? They angrily attack us when we make progress, so we must welcome their hatred and push forward. Some argue we should pare down our big-tent advocacy of racial justice or drop other issues to focus on economics alone. Giving up on moral imperatives is wrong, shows weakness, breaks trust & loyalty, and divides our coalition. Strength is getting back up to fight again.

How to Win

Obviously, I’m not suggesting we nominate bigoted idiots as candidates. Having rationality and morality on our side is our strength. But the moral necessity is to learn and adopt the most effective communication strategies from the guy who won.

Morally, we should focus on the preventable issues that get people killed or ruin lives, like gun violence, hate crimes, lack of healthcare, pollution and all the problems caused by the climate crisis. Fairness, especially reversing past injustice and rebalancing our society, is a moral mandate.

Rationally, we should focus on issues where we can improve lives the most with tactics that will work well. We do not lack rational solutions to our problems. But we need to present the problems emotionally, before anyone will listen to our solutions. And we need to go back on offense.

But, until we connect with more voters instinctually through their emotions, they won’t listen to our moral and rational solutions.

Gun Violence

Take gun violence for example. Our official platform last election emphasized common-sense safety programs, including background checks and illegal sales. Very sensible, and until Kamala lost, I agreed with this approach. But it’s a new world now.

Instead of staking out a theoretical, focus-grouped, artificial ‘center’, we need to use our mass shooting tragedies and victims families and anniversaries to scare the crap out of voters. ‘Mommy, I’m afraid to go to school’. But no words, just moving images of a vulnerable child, who might not come home today—along with pictures of kids who never will—, because the other side loves guns more than our kids.

Instinctual politics requires us to lead with emotional appeals that make people feel sad, angry, etc. That’s how you get people to pay attention and demand solutions. Once people feel you, then they believe you. Only then will they listen. Let simple folk suggest stupid, expensive ideas like bulletproof doors and armed soldiers patrolling elementary school hallways. Feed their emotions first, then let them change the dialogue, and only after winning elections, implement sensible solutions.

There used to be someone here who regularly posted all the senseless shootings in the past week. I assume they burned out, as it’s sad work. But that’s the work that must be done, with fewer statistics and more tear-jerking tragedies. Too often our media filters out the raw emotional power, sanitizes stories with statistics, and simplifies the news to only report what we already knew. That solves nothing.

Activating with emotions

The maladministration will wake people up, activate them politically, and drive them to sites like this. I searched for and started reading DailyKos after realizing that I was being lied to by a source I once respected. I was surprised, sad, afraid, angry, contemptuous, disgusted, and finally happy when I found like-minded folk here. So on every important issue where the other side is lying, we need a dedicated home here for similar people to find.

Ukraine reporting is successful here in part because watching a big bavovna is emotionally satisfying. I feel anger about the invasion, contempt for Putin, disgust with Trump switching sides, fear for the people who live with daily bombings, happiness when I hear Ukrainians singing in subways, sadness when I see photos of their fallen, and surprise at Russians sending soldiers on crutches with donkeys across open fields to die needlessly.

Reproductive healthcare is a successful issue, because it’s emotional: the more real and more heart-breaking, the more effective. Every issue must be framed to trigger those emotions. It’s not being overly dramatic, negative or unstatesmanlike, it’s effectively getting voters to wake up and face the consequences. Less Oxford debate, more uncomfortable, rage filled, contemptuous, anxiety inducing, and shocking confrontations.

Everyone is affected by egg prices, but reporting that the USDA has doubled their projections for the estimated rate of increase is an unemotional fact, interesting to rational news readers who can do math. It doesn’t work with people who do not know what ‘estimated rate of increase’ means. Show me a hungry child, forlorn at a food pantry, while her mother looks at empty shelves, realizing that there are no eggs: surprise, sadness, and then fear on their faces. No words.

‘F-ck the Police’ may have been a step too far for the median American voter, but the Black Lives Matter movement changed attitudes more than most politics do. Racial profiling and police accountability were acknowledged, discussed and changes were made. Yes, that depends on leadership, but it’s worth remembering why it resonated. I will never forget Tamir Rice, the 12 year old boy shot by police almost instantly for having a toy gun in a park. I remember Eric Garner saying “I can’t breathe” while being suffocated for allegedly selling loose cigarettes in 2014. When a surprisingly similar murder was committed by police against George Floyd in 2020, the movement was already global, and some laws have changed. Maybe you remember some of the many names too, because they affected you emotionally.

Sure, there was a backlash. Racists hate being called racist as much as they hate the idea of fixing structural racism. But recognize their reactionary tactic targeted our academic and political acronyms, like CRT and DEI, not people with names like Breonna Taylor, whose death made people feel afraid of the police in their own homes. All they had to do to take this issue away from us was change the debate from seeing relatable people being grossly mistreated to nebulous bureaucratic lingo that required reading skills above 4th grade. When we focused on feelings, we won, and when they focused on ‘confusing’ terminology, we lost.

Climate emotions

I saw some article suggesting that we need to be more accommodating of those opposed to doing anything about the climate crisis. Perhaps if we only suggested making changes that were worthwhile for doing for other reasons, or maybe we should offer to let them be in charge of implementation, was the highly paid expert’s recommended approach. Coward.

Some influential folks on this site do not believe that climate is a winning issue at all and should not therefore be a priority. That attitude is only going to make the coming apocalypse more likely.

The Climate Crisis is potentially our most powerful issue, because it is actually terrifying and the other side is actively making it worse. But we must stop talking about sea level rise rate projections accelerating from 0.3 meters over 100 years to 30 years due to atmospheric carbon levels rising past 419 parts per million and temperatures projected to rise by 2 to 4° Celsius. Most Americans don’t do science, let alone in metric.

We need to scare the crap out of people. We need to use tragedies like the fires in Lahaina and Los Angeles to share moving images of people who died and were made homeless to trigger people’s fear of burning alive. In August 2021, a family hiking in California dropped dead of dehydration and heat exhaustion: dad, mom, and their one-year-old daughter Miju, dead. I think their dog, Oski, survived. Sad. Did I mention that they were young and photogenic? Truth is that many hikers have died on trails around the time I’ve hiked them in the past few years, but the emotional impact of one relatable family tragedy is more powerful than any statistics. We owe the dead to use them to prevent more deaths.

Remember those 911 calls from people trapped in their attics after Katrina? That was 20 years ago, and I’m sure you’ve forgotten a lot of statistics in the meantime. If you do remember, it’s likely because you tried to imagine what you would have done when the levees failed at 4 am. Tucker Carlson scared my mom for years with lies. We must scare people with the truth, that if they don’t die of fire, the floods could get them, or horrible diseases.

But that makes me uncomfortable

Good. ½ the public is too far gone for us to stay on the high road, and politics have changed: the old ways failed. To paraphrase Jesus in Matthew 25:52, ‘demagogues who live by the mob, die by the mob’. We need our leaders to speak to the mob directly and emotionally, to make sure that the mob turns against our opponent, politically, ASAP. Now is not the time for compromising on morals, negotiating for ‘somewhat less stupid’, or cowardice instead of courage. Now is the time for a bold, blunt, fearless, face-to-face, heart-to-heart intervention with the American people.

Conclusion

Humans have always responded to instinctual communication, facial expressions, emotions, non-verbal signals, and displays of behavior. We all learned that way as babies, and we all still learn that way in today’s video-heavy media age. Even when we don’t realize it, our behavior is manipulated by what we observe so that we will mimic that behavior. In fact, the most successful instinctual communication is when we don’t realize it happened to us.

Our opponents understood this, realized that we were not communicating effectively with the 2/3 of American adults who lack a college degree, targeted them with a decades-long sophisticated campaign of lies, and now ½ the country believes that immigrants eat cats.

We must stop ignoring the majority of potential voters by excluding them with our graduate-level professional jargon and subtle sarcasm, and we need to communicate with them directly using the method that reaches them most effectively: instinctual politics. Yes, that means fear tactics, sob stories, shocking, contemptuous, fight-provoking and disgusting ads. It means billboards that will be vandalized, shock-jock radio show appearances that will pop blood vessels, coiffed talking heads expressing disbelief and dismay, “bleach blonde bad built butch body” insults, and worse. Decorum be damned. We have a country and life on earth to save.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/8/2307080/-Seven-Emotions-Rule-Politics-Winning-Requires-Instinctual-Communication?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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