Unlike all the pundits, apparently, I don’t have the knowledge and analytical skills to weigh every factor involved in Harris’s loss and Trump’s win. Then again, they all have differing views that are controlled by their feelings, so it’s sort of a wash. My sense, coming from a psychological perspective, is that policy preferences were not the point. I believe the essential factor was Trump’s extreme personality of angry contempt that honored the “bitter inner child” of millions of people then swayed their minds to his agenda. For example, he made them despise immigrants where on their own most of them would have had more considerate appraisals. My few Trump-voting therapy clients are different at the core of their identity from my other clients. Essentially, their deep-seated pain turned right to rage rather than left to tears. Therapists know that clients who can grieve can be helped. Grieving can dissolve the thorns that aggravate their heart. Those who cleave to rage remain unhelped, and impaled.
(Adapted comment to a New York Times published interview with Nancy Pelosi)
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Bonus Comment -- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4345j2?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share
I think Harris needed more dumb voters like me. I saw the prices of food going up a lot and said "That's life. It happens under any administration." Our apartment rent went up several hundred dollars and I said: "That's what lousy landlords do." I read the news about all the immigrants flowing in and felt: "The Dems won't let another four years go by like this. Nobody would." I saw a malicious and rabble-rousing ignoramus saying simple-minded things about complex events in the language of a street punk and I thought: "No way." Harris would have won with more unimpressionable dummies like me around.
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Comments are welcome, but I'd suggest you first read "Feeling-centered therapy" and "Ocean and boat" for a basic introduction to my kind of theory and therapy.