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[Please welcome author Bernie Horn, and our Host, Jeffrey Feldman. As is our tradition in Book Salons, please stay on the topic of the book. Thanks, Bev]

Midway through his new book on effective communication for progressives, Framing the Future, Bernie Horn steps back from his discussion of ‘persuadable’ voters to make a basic, but indispensable observation:

A political campaign is not the place to educate voters--it’s a place to persuade them. (Framing the Future, p. 52)

How it is that Democrats grew so unaware of this truism at the onset of the 21st Century will be the stuff of graduate school dissertations for generations. For now, framing savvy activists wonder why so many Democrats have heard some version of Horn's maxim, but still have not assimilated it into their political habits.

Incredibly, almost five years has passed since Alternet.org published an essay on Arnold Schwarzenegger by Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, thereby, unleashing the concept of 'framing' on the American left ('The Frame Around Arnold,' Oct 13, 2003). Two years later, 'framing' chatter had become big enough for The New York Times to run an entire piece on it ('The Framing Wars,' Jul 17, 2005). Two years after that, a front-running candidate for President spoke about 'framing' on the stump ('Edwards: War on Terror "is a Political Frame and Political Rhetoric,"' May 2, 2007). A sign of how central framing has become in Democratic politics, right-wing pundits have even turned their attention to it. Just last week, in fact, Ann Coulter spit on 'framing' in her latest syndicated piffle ('Obama Woos Gun-Toting God Nuts,' Apr 16, 2008).

What 'framing' means is hard to define, not unlike the word 'meaning' or 'symbol.' In linguistic jargon, it is a semiotic meta concept or 'model' invoked in discussions of how people understand words. For progressive politics, 'framing' is what Democrats say to other Democrats when talking about being more persuasive with others. In that ongoing conversation, which has been equal parts therapy and strategy, one question has emerged more often than others: Once we understand what framing is, how do we put it into practice? How do we do it?

The question brings us to the central challenge faced by the progressive movement: moving forward. The problem is not that Democrats discard the importance of persuasion--although some certainly do. Progressives simply have trouble taking the next step from diagnosis to improvement, from the realization that Democrats often talk in an alienating dialect of jargon-laden lists to the outcome of a new, effective form of expression that can carry the progressive movement into its next phase.

More than any book in recent memory, Bernie Horn's Framing the Future begins at this point in the discussion of framing and rockets things down the road. The end result is a book that not only brings readers into the conversation about, but puts tools into their hands for getting down to business. Framing the Future is not a book aimed at readers who want to talk about framing, but at activists, candidates and organizers who want to used framing right away to win elections and influence debates.

Framing the Future is a pragmatic powerhouse largely because it is rooted in Horn's experience with the Arthur Flemming Leadership Institute at the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA). The list of Flemming alumni includes Jon Tester, Keith Ellison, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, just to name a few, but the success stories who have gone through the CPA program speak to much more than progressive celebrity credentials. Framing the Future includes the workshop-tested materials used by Horn.

The lesson of all that experience is that the best, progressive policies most often do not make sense to voters unless they are expressed in language that sounds somewhat foreign to Democratic policy makers. Progressives may think, for example, that critiquing 'corporate greed' is the best way phrasing to appeal to people who have been victimized by industry malfeasance. Testing shows, however, that talking about 'Wall Street' is actually a better way to speak to voters about setting rules for a fair marketplace.

The difference is much more than diction. Horn places these errant Democratic phrasings in the linguistic contexts of peoples lives and shows how common policy language often puts people in uncomfortable contradictions. Most Americans are against large companies taking advantage of people, but they also have jobs at firms they know to be 'corporations.' Choosing better words is not about embracing or abandoning progressive policies, but about recognizing that there are many different words that can express progressive values, but not all of them will appeal to the core group of voters that can be persuaded in a given campaign. In Horn's presentation, in other words, 'framing' is about listening before speaking.

Horn divides his book into three parts, focusing on the general concept of framing, the mechanics of persuasion, and a toolbox of poll-tested, usable words Indeed, what distinguishes Framing the Future from most other books in this category is the emphasis on testing a phrase before urging the reader to adopt it. In particular, the generic progressive message that Horn recommends is not just the product of his workshops, insight, and creativity, but the single message that came out on top after an extensive voter reaction study.

When Horn suggests that Democrats adopt "freedom, opportunity, and security" as the broadest description of progressive philosophy, the data is there to show that it is better than the alternatives--even better than the Republican alternatives. Horn is not shy in saying that the lesson of message polling is one that Democrats needed to learn from the Republican denizen of newspeak, Frank Luntz, whose private firm was responsible for most of the successful Republican messaging set in motion by the Gingrich revolution of the late 1990s. According to Horn, the fact that most Democrats could see the deceptive goals of Luntz' work prevented progressives from seizing upon the effectiveness of his basic method: message testing. The presentation of tested language in Framing the Future even uses a "Don't say...", "Say" table-format similar to that found the infamous talking-point memos distributed to Republican lawmakers and political leaders. For readers after lists of words that can be put to use right away in progressive campaigns, Horn delivers big in chapters 7-11, packing in paired down keywords ready to adapt to localized message building. It's a treasure trove of starting points.

In the end, Framing the Future bridges the divide between three key challenges in the ongoing effort to reinvigorate progressive communications. It explains why framing is important, walks us through the mechanics of framing, and provides tested starting points that can be put to use right away. Thus, Framing the Future will likely have the biggest impact on one of the most important aspects of the Democratic Party: candidates who want to make use of the insights of progressive framing from the past 5 years, but are unable to do so without tangible, organized starting points.

And if Horn's roster of successful alumni is any indication, Framing the Future will indeed help progressives take many steps forward.