How to understand presidential candidates’ appeal

Psychologically speaking, Hillary Clinton won the Tuesday primaries because those voters agreed with her vision of a nation of problems needing solutions

The U.S. presidential campaign looks one way before you get to know Drew Westen’s ideas, and another way after.

First, the main ideas Westen shared at the conference, about how how politicians can—and can’t—influence voting behavior.

He began by listing some of the words that conservative rhetoricians have managed to tack, in our malleable minds, onto the word “liberal;” words like, “tax-and-spend liberal,” “liberal elite,” “big-government liberal.”

These terms haven’t only tarnished the word “liberal,” Westen said, they’ve also crowded out any positive associations with the word. So liberals have taken to calling themselves “progressive.” But what is a “progressive”? We know what a “conservative” is, Westen pointed out: someone who believes in small government, low taxes, who believes life begins at conception.