1. Voting is a moral choice (which is apparently a controversial statement now.)

2. Persuading voters requires careful rhetoric.

The reason the second item is so important is because of the first.

(thread)

An effective moral argument is like Inception: it gets people to have the realization for themselves. But there are conditions you have to set to encourage a realization, and telling someone that their choices are nobody's business just encourages them to ignore consequences.

Here's the thing about most Trump voters: they believe that voting for Trump is the right thing to do, and that voting for Biden is wrong. They already believe that voting is a moral choice. So work with that, but on their terms, using their values.

This, incidentally, is why The Lincoln Project is so effective. It goes hard on Trump, yes. But it uses the moral language of traditional conservatism to do so. For conservatives who backed Trump in 2016, TLP makes them think twice – "what about my conservative values?"

Note, however, that TLP isn't targeting the kind of Trumper that has embraced the alt-right inflected populism of the MAGA crowd. They're aiming at old school Republicans, not open racists.

This is where it gets challenging. How do you persuade a racist, xenophobic MAGA Trumper who has bought deep into the cult? Or a political nihilist who just wants to see everything burn? You have use empathy and take it on a case by case basis.

One thing you cannot do, however, is ever lose sight of the stakes for yourself: whether or not the person you're trying to win over ends up voting for Trump or Biden really does fucking matter. It's not just, like, their opinion, man.

But your internalized sense of the stakes should empower you to use radical empathy, and clever, indirect means of inception, to get past their defenses.

And sometimes, after you've earned trust, you need to close with the hard truth: voting for Trump in 2020 could haunt them for the rest of their life. If they feel like you're their friend, like you share some fundamental values, they'll take that seriously.

You never, ever lead with a condemnation of someone's vote. But the idea that votes are never worthy of condemnation is not only absurd, it renders you useless as a persuader, because you will lack the conviction to do whatever it takes to help people do the right thing.

In addition, lacking the conviction that someone's vote matters makes it impossible to understand how strongly they feel about their own vote, and how to build a bridge that they can cross to your side.

At some point in your conversation with a Trump voter, they're gonna ask you what you believe, and you're gonna need an answer. Is voting just an exercise in self-expression? Is Trump just another politician?

Don't lie. Empathize.

And do the right thing.

(end)

This thread was inspired by a dozen incredibly frustrating conversations with folks who think that simply affirming the moral dimension of voting is tantamount to screaming obscenities in a Trump voter's face. It's a huge misread of the dynamics of persuasion.

We're just trying to understand each other and how we ended up in this mess, y'all.