The pandemic provided a mass experiment THAT POINTS TO THE political narrative most powerful at persuading and uniting Americans. IT’S TIME DEMOCRATS heeded THE RESULTS.
(Most recently updated Dec. 2021)
Before being run out of office for abuse of power, sexual abuse, and bullying, Gov. Cuomo became America’s favorite anti-COVID leader with his narrative of "Agency, Urgency and Community." In this clip, he shows off his trademark story during his daily COVID-19 update on live TV, April 14, 2020.
New York State was the deadly center of the pandemic in America when Gov. Andrew Cuomo stepped in front of the TV cameras and greeted the socially distanced press corps in the state capital. “Happy Tuesday. Day 44, but who’s counting?” he said, smiling faintly. “Every day is Groundhog Day.”
It was April 14, the 44th consecutive day of Cuomo’s live TV updates on New York’s battle to flatten COVID-19’s steeply upturned curve. In the six weeks since Cuomo had announced the state’s first confirmed case of COVID-19, the pandemic had filled the state’s hospitals and killed nearly 11,000 New Yorkers.
Everyday of that frightening first six weeks of the outbreak, Cuomo rallied New Yorkers by delivering a consistent narrative with a hopeful, empowering theme: We, the people, have the power to beat COVID-19 and win back our lives if we stick together. On April 14, he told New York and the country, “We have shown that we control the virus — the virus does not control us.”
That was the first day Cuomo could report that the virus’s relentless spread had “ticked down.” The curve had become a plateau. Cuomo, alternately playing the grim science professor and the pugnaciously proud cheerleader, credited everyday New Yorkers’ concerted actions for the small but significant victory. Some 700 to 800 people were still dying each day, but there was hope. He concluded, “This is a big deal.”
Appearances aside, this story is not about Cuomo or even the pandemic. This story is about the unique experiment in effective communication that was forced on America when the new coronavirus first spread here in February, 2020. When it arrived, we lacked any medical cure or specific treatment for COVID-19. Some two years later, the federal government still can’t stamp out COVID because we can’t convince enough Americans to get vaccinated. The only effective defense, from the outset to the present, has been a political narrative that would unite huge majorities and motivate them to save themselves and one another through collective caring and action. Cuomo, despite his overwhelming faults and lack of popularity, found that narrative.
A communications approach that can unite Americans to care about each OTHER and beat back the virus could unite us to stop other bad things, like Donald Trump...
In the midst of the pandemic and many other disasters, this country is badly in need of unity and concerted action. So it’s a very big deal that the core story Cuomo told managed to unite New York’s 19.4 million people and move them to action. It’s a big deal because it stopped the virus’s growth and saved thousands of lives. It’s also a big deal because any communications approach that can do that could also unite Americans to care about each other and to turn around or stop other bad things, like Donald Trump or injustice, for instance.
By mid-June, Cuomo could accurately boast on national TV that New Yorkers, working together, had driven the infection rate from “worst to first” in the country. And to this day, that claim remains essentially true. (There’s a note at the bottom of this article to explain what “essentially” means.)
On June 19, the last of Cuomo’s 110 daily COVID updates was broadcast live nationally. Congratulating New Yorkers for having turned their state from “worst to first” by radically lowering the infection rate, he added, “In this crisis we were united. We did act as one. It was extraordinary.” (Click image to view broadcast.)
Democratic political operatives and campaign managers should note a different statistic that Cuomo never mentions — his own approval numbers doubled at the same time. In some ways, given how much both liberals and conservatives have always complained bitterly about the governor, ultimately driving him from office, this is the biggest deal of all.
A year before the COVID-19 outbreak, Cuomo’s approval rating in the state was a dismal 38 percent. By late April this year, his favorable rating had hit an all-time peak of 77 percent, even though New York, like the rest of the country, had seen its economy cratered. His daily TV briefings, which ended in June after 110 straight days, also garnered an approving national audience.
Cuomo has a history of putting off New York voters, especially Democrats, with his centrist politics, pro-business policies, backroom legislative maneuvering, previous coziness with state Republicans and sometimes arrogant manner. But the narrative he deployed against COVID worked an undeniable, statistically significant miracle. It united diverse, cantankerous, individualistic New Yorkers to beat back the worst viral outbreak in more than a century. It enlisted support from both right and left.
This story is about a unique experiment in effective communication that was forced on America when the new coronavirus first spread here in February.
Lots of politicians, most notably Donald Trump, tried many different approaches to dealing with the pandemic. All of Trump’s versions failed utterly, making life worse for everyone. Andrew Cuomo’s version, by a large margin, outperformed everyone else’s at uniting people and making their lives better.
The evidence provided by this one-time narrative experiment helps us to know how the right story can motivate people to do hard things together and simultaneously sustain and even grow majority support for the political leaders who ask for sacrifice to make change.
The storyline that beat the virus in New York contains the core themes previously identified as the progressive movement’s best possible narrative — the storyline that wields the maximum impact to unite large majorities for the vision of a more just and inclusive America. The core progressive story has been developed in recent years, months and weeks by a number of national research projects. These same core narrative elements have been validated by advances in the hard and soft sciences of the mind — psychology, sociology, narrative theory and neuroscience.
It may not be fun to hear, but science has established that making “a rational decision” is an illusion. Virtually all human decision-making is based on unconscious thoughts and emotions. This means persuasion alters the unconscious; if it doesn’t, no one is persuaded of anything. Appealing to logic, which is what liberals mainly try to do, doesn’t work. Recent research on the political left has further established that the most effective way to persuade and motivate people for progressive causes and candidates is with hopeful storytelling that touches people’s deep emotions.
science has established that making “a rational decision” is an illusion. Virtually all human decision-making is based on unconscious thoughts and emotions.
The Democratic establishment largely has ignored these advances. Democrats’ campaigns are still guided overwhelmingly by polls and focus groups that ask the conscious mind to answer binary questions (For or against?). This kind of research never reveals the emotional workings of the unconscious.
Democratic consultants and operatives largely stick to communications that point accusing fingers at problems and advocate policy fixes. These campaign tactics wrongly assume the rationality of voters’ decisions and use approaches that have changed little in the past 50 years or so. It’s time for Democrats and moderates to adopt the approaches proven to actually move people to united action. The story of Andrew Cuomo and the People of New York vs. the Pandemic provides a mass public validation of the principles that need to be put to work.
In the past few years, a number of different national research projects have aligned around a consensus, now spreading across the progressive movement, that the best way to drive change is to spread joyful, future-looking stories that emphasize people’s power, working together, to win a better life for themselves and their families, friends and neighbors. I’ve been fortunate to have worked on several of these initiatives.
Most recently, I’ve been working with Olson Zaltman, the insight and research consultancy that pioneered the use of brain science to fully understand how an audience thinks and feels and how to use these insights to influence how people perceive products, issues, candidates, ideas. Dr. Gerald Zaltman, the firm’s co-founder and an emeritus marketing professor at the Harvard Business School, has led this project to apply their pioneering research approach to progressive causes and candidates. Our collaboration so far has produced “The Science of Winning with Stories,” a brief set of tips for political practitioners that identifies “the three essential themes for progressive stories that win: Agency, Urgency, Community.” (More about those core elements can be found on Medium, posted by Olson Zaltman’s Gretchen Barton: “The Science of Winning with Stories: Using Agency, Urgency and Community.”)
the best way to drive change is to spread joyful, future-looking stories that emphasize people’s power, working together, to win a better life for themselves.
All this work has pointed in essentially the same direction. While I’m pretty sure that Cuomo and his aides never saw any of it, the Cuomo COVID narrative adheres precisely to the three core elements that science identifies as doing all the heavy lifting of persuading and motivating. Here’s how Cuomo used them:
Agency: This means helping people believe that each has the ability to affect events and make change. Cuomo began creating a sense of agency early on, telling New Yorkers, “What we do today will determine the infection rate two or three days from now.”
Urgency: Once people feel the power to affect a bad situation, they need to see a role for themselves that could make a difference. Then, they almost invariably take immediate action. That’s the urgency needed to activate people. Cuomo assigned each New Yorker a critical role and dispensed precise instructions to stay home, wash hands, wear masks, socially distance, show up for essential work, and so on.
Community: Uniting people in a common cause is the core of winning political battles. On March 24, Cuomo offered this emotional vision of New Yorkers triumphing together against the virus. "We're going to make it because...New York loves all of you. Black and white and brown and Asian and short and tall and gay and straight. New York loves everyone. That's why I love New York. It always has, it always will. And at the end of the day, my friends, even if it is a long day, and this is a long day, love wins. Always. And it will win again through this virus."
In the last few months, America’s sins and errors have collided into overlapping, lethal plagues of viral infection, systemic racism, economic injustice and the spreading wildfires and hurricanes of unaddressed climate change.
Through all this, one small ray of hope has emerged: We’ve seen evidence that shows one political narrative — a story of agency, urgency and community — has worked far more effectively than any other at uniting people in working hard to change their own future for the better.
Political professionals would do well to adopt what can be learned here. It would be an additional tragedy to let this lesson go unheeded now, when there are so many lethal disasters and fundamental injustices in America that will only be made right if we can unite a large majority of the American people to believe in their own power, embrace their critical roles, and join together with joy and love to make it right.
NOTE: COVID statistics change hourly. In general, New York State, with 19.4 million people, has driven the pandemic’s numbers down from a peak of more than 10,000 new cases a day to less than 1,000. Deaths have gone down from hundreds a day to a handful — usually well under 10; some days between zero and 2. The New York State infection rate as of September 23, 2020, was 0.04 new cases per 1,000 population, according to Johns Hopkins. Among the more densely populated states, only Massachusetts was lower at 0.03. The lowest state in the nation that day was Vermont, at 0.00, with a population of 600,000. It’s worth noting that Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, has 43,000 people — less than 1/2 of 1 percent of New York City’s population. To see Hopkins’ current and historic stats, click here.
