"Victoria and I took it upon ourselves to make him our mission," said McGurk, who with Hopper hosted Westen at a small gathering of influential Hollywood political activists last month at her husband's offices.
"He is dead-on -- just what the community needs to hear," McGurk said. "I was so frustrated with the way our party has conducted its messaging. He connects all the dots and backs it up with empirical data."
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean blurbed the book. Billionaire George Soros opened his home for a book party last month.
To some, Westen's ascent feels like a replay of what happened in the 2004 election with another Dean favorite, UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, who burst onto the scene with theories about "framing" as a way to control political debate.
Lakoff's ideas were important in helping Democrats think about language and metaphor, said political professionals and activists, but his work is deeply theoretical, and some felt his theories didn't test out in polls.
Lakoff, who has read Westen's book, thinks there is overlap in their messages. He rejects the idea that he has somehow fallen out of favor among progressives. "I have had an incredible effect which you see every day. I made people aware of framing and that you shouldn't use the other guy's frame," he said.
So far, Republicans aren't quaking in their boots. Pollster Frank Luntz, the GOP wordsmith who coined the term "death tax," said he was looking forward to Westen's book "because it's based on science." But, Luntz said, appealing to emotions can backfire.
In April, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of Iraq "This war is lost," he was trying to trigger "not an intellectual debate, but an emotional outcry," said Luntz, and "it was misguided." And the reason Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is the Democratic front-runner, he added (unable to resist a dig), is that she "demonstrates mastery of policy ... even though Democrats know she is the least electable of her colleagues."
What quickens the pulses of Democrats is Westen's take on how voters think and his ability to articulate why, in his view, taking the high road in the face of full frontal assaults such as the Swift-boat campaign is foolish.
