Only Rumors - Business & Politics
How Trump Got Elected
How Trump Got Elected
WARNING: This page contains unsubstantiated rumors provided by a dangerous person (me), with few or no credentials, who thinks she's an expert at MANY things.
How Did Trump Get Elected?
How did Donald Trump get elected? Because the Republicans know something that the Democrats don't know and they ran with this one piece of knowledge by gerrymandering the system to work in their favor and it caught the Democrats blind sighted. AGAIN.
It has to do with brain chemistry. The difference is the balance in the brain's expression between dopamine and serotonin. For those people who prefer psychology: on the Myers-Briggs Keirsey temperament scale, the coastal folks are full of Intuitive types and "Artisans" also called "Explorers"; but the midlands are full of the Sensing and Judging type also called "Guardians" or "Builders" (per Helen Fisher. PhD).
Guardians elected Trump
"Artisans" ("Explorers") and most Intuitives enjoy living on the coasts. They move away from the midlands because they find the midlands stifling. Coastal people enjoy engaging with people from other cultures. They listen to music of many other cultures, eat many different types of cuisines, learn the customs of different peoples. They are interested in what is happening around the world. Many of them have studied psychology. They tend to value education. These people tend to vote Democratic.
Guardians live in the midlands. Coastal cities are scary and hostile to Guardians: too much dissonance, too much crime, too many ways to get into trouble, too much exposure to the unfamiliar. They move inland to protect themselves and their children. These are the people who voted for Trump.
The 4 major Keirsey temperaments are not evenly distributed among the population. According to the Keirsey website, Guardians make up 40 to 45 percent of the population:
keirsey.com/4temps/guardian_overview.asp
"Guardians make up as much as 40 to 45 percent of the population, and a good thing, because they usually end up doing all the indispensable but thankless jobs the rest of the population takes for granted."
This youtube video contains Helen Fisher's analysis of the 4 biological personality types:
youtube.com/watch?v=DsuFRr0Fl-0&t=21s
Between twenty-six and twenty-seven minutes in, she starts talking about where Explorers (Artisans) live, verses where Builders (Guardians) live. "Explorers live in the big cities, builders live in the countryside." "You can map the differences in the Red States (serotonin, Builders/Guardians), and Blue States (dopamine, Artisans/Explorers)."
What are Guardians like as people? What do they value?
Guardians are the people who talk about "family values" and what they mean is conservative, nuclear, heterosexual families where the father is the ruler. They generally respect authority figures. They are hard working. They are "traditional" in their values. They go to church. They are good organizers. When they trust someone, they believe what that person tells them. They trust their Pastors.
Guardians enjoy what is most familiar to them, such as food from their own heritage and upbringing. In the USA, they mostly listen to country and western music, gospel, music from whatever heritage they had before their families migrated here, maybe some classical.
Guardians are concerned about protecting themselves and those they love. They are very loyal and value loyalty. They strive to be good parents, managers, military generals, ministers. They work on having good ethics, but they don't understand why their values don't always work for people who are different from themselves.
Are they stupid?
Guardians are no more stupid than the rest of us are immoral. It's just that we don't understand the others' perspectives. Guardians don't value higher education. They may think of it as elitist. They don't enjoy it nor find it liberating as the other types do. When Democrats talk about education, Guardians couldn't care less.
In addition, Guardians do not have the Intuition that Intuitive types take for granted. Guardians don't extrapolate well. They need ideas and concepts spelled out and they need to hear it from the horse's mouth or the mouth of someone they already trust, like their Pastors or other conservative authority figures.
Guardians have never studied psychology and telling them that Trump is a narcissist with bad impulse control means little to them, not only because they don't know what that means, but also because they can't extrapolate to understand how that will affect his style of governance, and the implications to our country and the world.
Are they lacking in compassion?
Guardians do have compassion, but only for those in circumstances familiar to them, or for people who they know personally. Guardians choose to live in sparsely populated areas or localities with homogenous populations. There is not much opportunity for them to develop friendships with people who are different from themselves, and even if there were, they wouldn't be very interested in doing so.
Guardians hate hypocrisy as much as anyone else, but they don't extrapolate to see that being anti-abortion but pro-gun, pro-war, and pro-cut backs to social services are hypocritical. They see absolutely no connection between abortion (human embryo life) and animal rights. They don't understand those connections and won't unless they have something akin to personal experience.
Are they uninformed?
Guardians usually don't keep up with world events. They are locally focused. They are interested in what is happening in foreign places only if they personally know someone there or if they can be made to identify with US citizens there, like Benghazi.
How did the Democrats fail the Guardians?
Everything Guardians care about is an extension of their core values of protecting their family, their homes, their community, and their country. When Democrats speak to Guardians, they must frame issues around those values, like a sales pitch to a dense but authoritative manager.
Guardians tend to be pro-gun ownership and anti-abortion. Republicans have been able to use those two issues alone to capture their votes. So long as Democrats don't do better on the issues that mean more to Guardians than gun ownership and compulsory birth, the Republicans can count on the Guardians.
Unfortunately, Democrats have failed miserably at championing the Democratic issues that Guardians care about and failed at expressing their values correctly for Guardians.
Issues at home
Guardians may not be able to understand the connection between deforestation and climate change, nor understand why that is a big issue; but they certainly do understand when their tap water is poisoned and the Federal government fails to step in, declare a national emergency, spearhead the clean-up, and publicly shame (if not incarcerate) all the parties responsible. Guardians believe that top management should step in and fix things (and clean up the swamp) when their local governments have, through either neglect, corruption, or recklessness put their lives and the lives of their families in danger. They don't give a rats ass about "States Rights" when their homes and families are threatened. Fracking, Flint Michigan, even Dakota pipeline... Democrats have failed to protect USA midland citizens.
If H Clinton had talked about healthy air, healthy water, and safe soil (in playgrounds) as being inalienable rights that should be protected for all citizens of the USA; that business development is important but not at the expense of the health and safety of citizens and our children she would have won with Guardians. About this issue, her slogan could have been: corporate greed that destroys lives "It's something even guns can't protect against".
Guardians are also catching on almost as quickly as the rest of us about how corporate greed has run the FDA. How Drug companies are being permitted to test their own products with no true Federal oversight before they are placed on the market and poison us. They are aware of how good remedies that do not make money for Corporations are being deliberately suppressed and criminalized. Bad idea for Obama to NOT veto making CBD a schedule 1 drug. Guardians are NOT anywhere near as anti-cannabis as our officials are assuming.
Our Mexican border is a weak point for smuggling. Drugs come in, weapons go out. Guardians know this. If Democrats pretend this issue doesn't exist, they lose the Guardians' trust. Democrats maybe doing it for the right reasons, like protecting an entire group of people (Mexicans) most of whom are honest workers and good contributors to our country's economy. Democrats needed to acknowledge the issue and spell out why we don't want to penalize all Mexicans for the misdeeds of a few. Then they could have presented other ways this issue could be addressed.
Issues abroad
Ask Guardians about Foreign Policy and they will talk about the need for a strong USA military, and weapons. For them, everything is about protection and they don't trust negotiations with foreigners. Or they trust negotiations with foreign neighbors only when the USA can enforce agreements with a strong military upper hand.
A significant portion of our GDP comes from selling arms around the world and we are dependent on that income. Guardians want the USA to have a strong military, but they are much less enthusiastic about our sales of weapons outside our country, and the spread of those around the world. Democrats could have easily made this a priority: to take steps to make us less dependent on the sale of weapons to foreign countries and spelled out how that would work.
Guardians don't like foreign interests owning US land and assets. If the Republicans point to Democrats making that possible, Democrats must point out that Republicans have done the same or worse and they must say it louder and longer than what the Republicans do.
The future
Guardians are still saying "Give Trump a chance to show what he is going to do." Why? In spite of his cabinet appointments and his financial conflicts of interest, Guardians do not see the writing on the wall. They don't extrapolate. They don't equate not paying taxes with wanting to get away with not contributing his fair share to the country because he did so "legally" and "as a businessman". They don't equate anything Trump has done as a businessman to what he is likely to do as a President. They don't generalize that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Only after Trump has been sworn in and does something obvious with bad consequences that affect them will they take notice; like cutting Social Security.
If you press a Guardian about this viewpoint, he or she will state that the rest of us are "Jumping to conclusions". The truth is that they resent that our minds have this ability to forecast better than theirs. If we make it about them yielding to our better judgment, instead they will double-down. After all, our priorities are not perfectly in sync and they have no reason to trust us. It is better to emphasize our concerns about the issues we have in common.
H Clinton failure to connect
Guardians distrust what they don't understand and there was a lot about H Clinton they didn't understand and couldn't extrapolate correctly, so they believed the worst. They didn't understand why Hillary didn't divorce Bill. If you ask a Guardian and anyone else why Hillary stayed with Bill you get two entirely different answers. The Guardians distrusted Hillary because she was a woman with "unnatural" ambitions outside the home and family. Hillary should have told them, or better, shown them that she thinks of all US Citizens as her extended family. Guardians couldn't care less about what H Clinton did for women and children outside the USA. The rest of us do.
Guardians needed to be told by Hillary that she stayed married to Bill because she STILL loved him for who he is and all the good he has done for both their family and for our country and the world. She should have shown a little more public affection with him. Instead, Guardians believed what the Republicans wanted them to believe, that Hillary was calculating and ambitious, that she only stayed with Bill for political reasons. From there, they were more likely to believe that the Clintons' had their political enemies murdered.
H Clinton, because she is intuitive and extrapolates so well herself, underestimated how much simplifying and verbal guidance Guardians would need in order to understand her.
Republicans manipulate Guardians through the words they use
Guardians are religious and tend to believe and trust people who say "swear to God". Guardians are attracted to anyone who says "God bless", which Bill Clinton was smart enough to take on during his impeachment proceedings. Democrats tend not to say "God bless" because they don't want to alienate the atheists (who don't believe in God), the multi-theists (who would instead say "Gods"), and the folks who think that it is a good idea not to mix politics and religion. Guardians don't understand that. They have been told, by their Pastors (who they trust), that people who wince at saying "God" or hesitate to say "God" are being guided by the devil. Add that to being Pro-Choice and "unnaturally ambitious" for a woman, and they were willing to believe all of the fake news against Hillary. H Clinton could have occasionally mentioned "divine" something or "Nature", maybe even once talked intimately about her personal understanding of God and made sure that got broadcast to the heartland.
Guardians listen for the words that signal to them that a candidate shares their values, regardless of his past actions (divorce, pussy grabbing, snorting cocaine, bankruptcy, dishonesty). They listen for words like "God", "family", "moral", "caring", "trustworthy", "loyal", "respect", "loving", "values", "safety", "protection", "strength", "greatness", "courage", "bravery", "responsible", "stability", "prepared". Guardians were inclined to prefer Trump over H Clinton purely because he is a middle aged white male in management who wears a suit, but that would not have brought them out in great numbers to the poles. To increase his voter turnout, Trump made frequent use of signal words.
Guardians value loyalty. I was able to reach some Guardians by pointing out to them that Hillary Clinton probably did not open her own email (Benghazi), nor set up her own email server, but that she didn't turn around and point her finger at those who did. Instead, she took responsibility and protected those who worked for her. Guardians did respect this, but they needed it pointed out to them.
Republicans demand loyalty within their party. This is partly to maintain their appeal to Guardians. Democrats don't have to do it the same way Republicans do, but those who don't tow the party line do need to state publicly why they are varying and make it about loyalty to a value, principle, or a community closer to home.
Playing nice doesn't work for Guardians because they can't extrapolate
Guardians didn't want to vote for Bill Clinton originally because he had tried cannabis, even if he "didn't inhale". Bush did inhale cocaine but it didn't seem to matter to Guardians. Why not? Democrats didn't press the issue because they didn't want to be labeled as hypocrites. Democrats took the "higher ground". That was a mistake. Guardians misinterpret "not casting stones" as "we all have glass houses". You think that none of the folks who were talking trash about Bill Clinton never smoked pot themselves? Cocaine is a much harder and truly addictive drug than cannabis. That also speaks to character and could have been explained to voters.
Likewise, when the Clinton campaign did not attack Trump with a viciousness equal to what he was using against her, Guardians misinterpreted it to mean that Hillary had more to be ashamed about. I remember Trump calling Bill Clinton a "rapist". At the time, there was a pending lawsuit against Trump for rape, and no one had ever accused Bill Clinton of rape, although there was a video on youtube by an unbalanced woman whose story did not pass a logic test (although she was clearly upset) about Bill Clinton jacking off behind her back (which she never saw) while she was sitting in an office chair, fully dressed, and he had his hand on her shoulder. The person who posted that video put the word "rape" in the title. When neither Hillary nor Bill Clinton took Trump down for that, Guardians took it as confirmation that it was the truth. After all, who would allow someone to publicly call them a rapist on national TV during a Presidential debate and not take action, unless there was something to hide, reasoned the Guardians? They never questioned why this hadn't been news when Bill ran for President instead of when Hillary was running, since the alleged incident had happened before Bill's presidency.
Our entire country has good reason not to trust EITHER party: not just Republicans being totally self-serving and in the pockets of the Koch brothers and corporations, not just the Democrats being ineffective; but BOTH parties taking actions for reasons other than what they have stated publicly and NOT taking actions where we were counting on them and where they are needed for the good of the country.
One thing that we can all see is that we cannot be effective in the world, nor defend ourselves effectively when we are fighting among ourselves. United we stand, divided we fall. This is just what Russia and Exxon are waiting for. We need to find the middle people to build bridges. We need to find those strong enough to stand up against socially unconscious corporations, to stand up against Citizens United, to get all of our different national personalities moving towards the goals we have in common.
Want Democrats to Win in Future Elections?
- When in office, be sure to address Guardian issues in the way that makes them feel safe and protected by the Government. That is what they believe Government is for.
- When giving speeches, use the words Guardians need to hear, okay to use them in Democratic ways ("family" means all kinds of families).
- Reassure Guardians about things that are NOT threats to them and do it in ways they can understand. Bill Clinton was especially good at this.
- Take the process of voting, balloting out of Churches. If this means everyone casts their vote by mail that is okay. It works in Washington State. When Guardians go into Churches to cast their ballots, the Candidate who says "God" most wins.
- This may sound silly, but Tuesday is "ruled by Mars" symbolic of War. I don't know why Tuesday was chosen to be Election Day, but that is something we might want to rethink. Sending in ballots by mail also solves this.
- And my special soapbox: bring back the ballot for primaries. Caucuses are not inclusive and not representative of the will of enough Democrats.
youtube.com/watch?v=HMaPZstvvaE
See the map 25 minutes in (Dr. Fisher used her own coloring system).
Created: Created: December 26, 2016
Updated: January 2, 2017