Just in time for this election cycle, Drew Westen, a psychology professor at Emory University and specialist in emotion in politics, came out with the “Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to Center.” The New York Times bills the work, said to have been influential in training workers in the Democrat campaign, as “the first systematic, data-driven effort to mold the language of the left to fit the sensibilities of the center.”

Example: use of euphemisms, such as the word “leadership” in place of “government” and ”middle class” instead of “the poor.” Technique: provide campaigners (“community organizers”?) with an array of pat, innocuous responses to conservative arguments.

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, the research wing of the Democratic Leadership Council, fretted that the handbook concentrated too much on the message rather than substance.

Ya think, Will?