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Recently published in Journal of Social and Political Psychology by Thomas F. Pettigrew seeks to understand the psychological profile of Trump supporters:
The Trump movement is not singular within the United States (the Know Nothing movement in the 1850s, the Wallace movement in the 1960s, and the more recent Tea Party Movement). Moreover, other democracies have seen similar movements (e.g., Austria's Freedom Party, Belgium's Vlaams Blok, France's National Front, Germany's Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), and Britain's U.K. Independence Party (UKIP).
In virtually all these cases, the tinder especially involved male nativists and populists who were less educated than the general population. But this core was joined by other types of voters as well. Five highly interrelated characteristics stand out that are central to a social psychological analysis – authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, outgroup prejudice, the absence of intergroup contact and relative deprivation.No one factor describes Trump's supporters. But an array of factors – many of them reflecting five major social psychological phenomena can help to account for this extraordinary political event: authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, prejudice, relative deprivation, and intergroup contact.
(Score: 1) by rylyeh on Thursday December 07 2017, @07:11AM (5 children)
All a 'Third Party' needs to become a major political force is a charismatic, maverick leader who can out-think the other parties by thinking out of the box to solve concrete problems.
Those of like mind will flock to the new 'Third Party' when this happens. 🚀
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @10:54AM
I noticed that you didn't give an example that followed your model and was successful.
Another thing that Ralph Nader notes is that thinking that you can easily grab the top spot and that the world will fall in line behind you is just silly.
It takes LOT AND LOTS of -LOCAL- organizations to get things going.
That is, precinct-level operations.
You need a bunch of folks from your party on town councils, on county commissions, in state assemblies, and in Congress before you will ever get traction for your agenda at the national level.
I mention the "bottom-up" thing a lot here.
This is very much a case where that applies.
Having a guy who connects with the masses is a big plus, but it takes organization to move the ball down the field.
One guy going it alone is gonna get creamed.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Thursday December 07 2017, @04:56PM (3 children)
Oh. Too bad Bernie Sanders didn't run as a 3rd party candidate.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday December 07 2017, @09:01PM (2 children)
As a non-American it strikes me as weird that you talk about third parties.
I live in a country of about 4 million people that until recently had eight parties in Parliament.
We have proportional voting though. We also have sane(ish) campaign finance rules and an independent electoral comision that sets the electorate boundaries.
I'm going to continue to assume that a country of 350 million or so that winds up represented by only two parties is not really a democracy at all, unless someone can convince me otherwise.
(The whole big-tent party argument is not compelling).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @11:23PM
Even as the same teachers glossing over it tell us we need to study our history classes lest we be doomed to repeat the past.
America has *NEVER* since the *BEGINNING* been by the people, for the people. It was always for the merchants and landowners. The regular colonists, farmers, and common man were regularly fucked over, including as veterans of the revolutionary war.
While there have been some some 'apparent' political shifts over the years, it was usually infighting between the different merchant/landowner/media mogul/faux aristocrat class influencing the voters in ways that were financially beneficial to them. Either by pushing legislation benefitting them, causing controversy benefitting them, or by weakening opponents through erosion of their economic base (see both the whiskey tax and slavery, which favored the genteel class over the working class, and the industrialists over the plantation owners.) In the end it shoudl err on the side of the individual, but only so long as the individual was making a good faith effort and not doing anything intended to obviously defraud the party investing in them.
One of the details often overlooked in regards to slavery is that during the early colonial period slavery *WAS* illegal. However indentured servitude was not. Which thanks to weak labor laws and enforcement, combined with an uneducated working class seeking opportunities in the new world lead to some people being contractually bound into servitude by immoral people who found ways to defraud their indentured servants from agreed upon contractual terms that would have allowed them to buy our their contracts after a few years, fulfilling the economic investment in bringing them to the new world, while providing sufficient repayment to hire a replacement worker at the end of their term. The same thing happened with company towns, factory jobs, slavery itself (losing all semblance of contractual labor), and continues even today with military service and a variety of 'foreign held corporation' jobs that work around American labor laws by being flagged in other countries (see various maritime industries for current examples.)
The real problem faced both then and today is the same: Using legal minutae to distract from the simple question: Is a certain business relationship mutually beneficial, or disadvantaging to one, usually weaker, party? If the answer is yes and results in said party being unable to move on within 2-5 years (perhaps longer, but only in the case of trade professions requiring 10 or more years of experience, and only if the investment can be terminated at 2 year intervals if either party is unsatisfied with no financial balance remaining between them.)
(Score: 1) by rylyeh on Sunday December 10 2017, @03:47AM
Yes, it is quite apparent that the US suffers form an overwhelming lack of imagination when it comes to politics as well as education, etc.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."