For over a decade, I have hugged my laptop with presentations describing contrasting values and vocabulary respected by liberals and conservatives.
Among those differences is the conservative love of mutual reliance on liberal expert opinions.
The bold preamble to the Republican platform in 2024 called for a “return to common sense.” Candidate Donald Trump has since declared Republicans the “party of common sense.”
Trump’s first speech wasThe revolution of common sense. ” Three days later, he spoke to the Davos Conference, Trump declared“What the world witnesses in the last 72 hours are nothing more than a revolution in common sense.”
When asked how he knew that the helicopter plane crash at Washington’s Reagan National Airport was the result of the DEI program, Trump’s answer was simple.common sense. ”
The phrase was also used to justify Trump’s immigration policy, reducing government efficiency, dismantling USAID, banning paper straws, eliminating pennies, and ending efforts to combat climate change and countless other policies.
Trump’s first term was also marble, referring to the phrase.
In contrast, Democrats placed their faith in experts. Candidate Trump claimed that Conmon Sense supported the effectiveness of his economic policy, but Democrats deployed a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists to debate against his approach.
Trump claims that burning fossil fuels is common sense, but Democrats fight back with statistics on rising temperatures and scientific opinions.
Trump claims Day will cause a crash on planes, but Democrats (like me) are focusing on research showing that diverse teams make better decisions.
The most famous invocation of common sense was as a title in the realm of Tom Payne, believed to have ignited the movement for American independence and autonomy.
(Expert) University of Pennsylvania historian Sofia Rosenfeld points out before Payne’s pamphlet that in her magical history, American settlers focused on obtaining what is considered the rights of the British.
Payne, a former bankrupt corset maker, encouraged independence and democratic autonomy, and promoted the masses behind those ideas.
When unearthing phrases, Rosenfeld reveals the paradox of common sense. It is often not commonly shared and is not considered wise.
When Payne wrote, most American settlers didn’t even consider independence from the British or democracy.
This issue is evident here from Melman’s first maxim, created here a long time ago. Every saying has an equal and opposing saying.
How common is the belief that “absence causes the heart to grow” and that the belief that which groups are empirically correct is “unseen”?
As Judy Garland recited, “There’s no place like a house” or “Is the grass always green on the other side?” And which phrase captures human behavior more accurately?
All of these adages are common sense, but both the opposites are not true.
In general conversation, assigning label common sense to one’s views is an attempt to close the argument to avoid reinforcing the search for truth.
Trump and the company use this phrase to suggest that their views are widely shared and clearly correct, but they cannot be far from the truth.
As documented in several previous columns, the majority of Americans are against the very police that Trump’s label is “common,” many of them are actually meaningless.
Nevertheless, conservatives and Republicans praise what is called common sense, in contrast to Democrats and liberals who give credit to expert opinions.
2012, University of Texas/Texas Tribune Votes Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagree, saying, “In most cases, the instinct, gut response is as good as the advice of scientists.” Two-thirds of Republicans approved the superiority of common sense over expert opinions, while two-thirds of Democrats disagreed.
A study by psychologists Flavio Azevedo and John Jost found that liberals rather want to place “trust in expert and intellectual opinions” at a margin of 27 points, while at a margin of 16 points, conservatives prefer to soften their trust in “the wisdom of ordinary people.”
a Pu Research Vote Last year, Republicans found 28 points more likely than Democrats to think they are “skeptical of what experts say.”
Simply submitting more experts (at least according to experts) may not be effective because Democrats aren’t trying to do it. As John Adams said, “The facts are stubborn, but our hearts are even more stubborn.”
Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University have found that economists’ views on policy are very different from those of ordinary Americans. It was mostly different in items that economists unanimously showed the highest degree.
Furthermore, informing people about the general views of economists rarely changed their views.
While continuing to use and communicate expert opinions like Tom Payne, Democrats need to label our approach “common sense” and explain our position in common sense if we are going to bring more voters under our tent.
Mark Melman is the president of Melman Group A Consultant, who helped elect 30 US Senators, 12 governors and dozens of other House members. Melman has been a voter for Senate Democratic leadership for more than 30 years and is a member of the American Association of Political Consultants Hall of Fame. He holds degrees from Princeton and Yale.
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