There is something that has been bothering me about both media coverage of politics, and public perceptions of politics, which of course, is linked to media coverage; this is summarized in the title of this post.

More specifically, I believe that the media, and voters consequently, should take the verified psychological differences between Trump voters and everyone else, into account when talking about the state of the nation and its political parties.

I am really sick of hearing that “Democrats lack leadership,” or that “They are lost in the political wilderness” or have “the lowest approval ratings ever.” First of all, if Democrats are so unpopular, why are they leading Republicans by several points in generic polling? However, that is somewhat beside the point of this post. We must keep in mind that Donald Trump is in charge, not of a political party, but of a political cult, so its members display cult-like behavior, unlike everyone else, who tend to be rational in their decision-making processes. When Trump has high approval ratings among Republicans, it’s because they cannot psychologically bear, for the most part, to be anything other than fully approving of whatever he does, no matter how awful it is. This is part of the ”strong-man,” authoritarian mindset. It does not reflect any kind of reality.

Liberals, in contrast to conservatives, generally do not want a “strong-man” leader, and in fact, find authoritarianism to be abhorrent. We don’t need or want a single leader in which all of our hopes are invested, unlike authoritarian-minded conservatives. What we want is good government. Why does the media act as though a “strongman” is what the Democrats need? To answer my own question, one reason is the conservative bias in our news media, at least, its ownership, to actually believe this. Another reason is that, due to the same bias, the media may be using this perceived lack of leadership – as well as highly publicized polls showing that the Democratic Party is currently unpopular, while ignoring the low popularity of the Republican Party (outside of Republicans themselves) – to help the cause of Republicans. Otherwise, they might not favor Republicans, but perhaps are just too naïve to realize the inherent biases resulting from psychological differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans, being more authoritarian-minded, will tend to be more compliant with their leaders’ wishes, and more conformist, than Democrats are. Democrats are a much more diverse party than Republicans, and thus tend to have difficulty agreeing on many issues. I have personally witnessed how difficult it is to attain widespread agreement among progressives for many years. As the saying goes, “It’s like trying to herd cats.” Thus, it is only natural that Democrats seem to lack a consistent strategy, response to the Trump administration’s assaults, or set of priorities, at least in these early stages of this administration. Over time, hopefully the task we are facing and what works in overcoming the Trump administration’s assaults on what we hold near and dear, will become clear, but for now, Trump is sowing confusion among Democrats.

I tried to look up research directly related to the thesis of this post, but could not find anything exactly on topic. However, I did find an article which confirms that conservatives prefer authoritarian leaders, while liberals prefer non-authoritarian leaders. In fact, this study found that conservatives preferred authoritarian types even when they disagreed with the leader. In other words, they prefer strong and wrong to reasonable and right. They want bullies, and this is exactly what they got in Donald Trump, a strong-acting (but not in reality), blowhard ignorant bully who is wrong about virtually everything but never admits to being wrong about anything – or guilty of anything even when it is readily apparent to unbiased observers that he is in fact guilty ([Why are right-wing voters attracted to dominant leaders? Assessing competing theories of psychological mechanisms – ScienceDirect].

History shows that such domineering leadership, even when not incompetent as the Trump administration is, does not end well. I hereby implore the news media to emphasize the cultish nature of Trump’s political following and administration, and its consequent dangers such as Groupthink, widespread civil unrest or worse, economic collapse, etc. When they do so, public opinion will follow. We are on the side of the people, which is why I believe that we will eventually prevail. The mainstream news media needs to be on the side of the people, also.