Election psychology

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by sculptor, Aug 18, 2016.

  1. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    I wonder what motivates negative adds and attitudes.
    Does it seem likely that Clinton supporters spend so much time finding bad things to say about Trump because they have nothing good to say about Clinton?
    or
    Do they have such low self esteem that the only way they can feel good about themselves is by finding something bad to say about someone else?

    This ain't really that abnormal, it just seems more prevalent during election campaigns.

    Or
    Am I seeing something that ain't there?
     
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  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I think it's the same reason people can't look away from a train wreck.
     
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  5. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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  7. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    que lastima
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    So is framing questions as if it were the Clinton campaign that was focusing on bad things to say about their opponent. That kind of attack on a Clinton has been going on since 1992.

    The US center of saying bad things about politicians is the Republican Party media operations, especially rightwing talk radio but including them all. They even have famous specialists in the matter, who focus group test new pejorative phrases and terms - Frank Luntz, etc. So if you are puzzled by the phenomenon, or wish to learn about its base and common practice, that's where you would start.
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    The major problem, to me, is that the media will always come to the aid of Clinton or and liberal to find ways of making their problems look much better than it seems. The media is always picking on the right wing because they do not give out as much MONEY to the media as does the liberals.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Not this time. Trump says something and immediately the media gives him all the airtime he could dream of, while Clinton is basically ignored.

    Clinton gives a speech on economic policy? Far from the top of the page. Boring!
    Trump says Obama founded ISIS? Front page, top of the page.

    For proof of this, we go right to the horse's mouth:

    My Shared Shame: The Media Helped Make Trump
    - NYT "An analysis by The Times found that we in the news media gave Trump $1.9 billion in free publicity in this presidential cycle. That’s 190 times as much as he paid for in advertising, and it’s far more than any other candidate received."

    Here's Proof That the Media Helped Create Donald Trump Fortune - "a new study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has come up with some fairly compelling ammunition to support this view [that the media is helping Trump.] According to the study, major news outlets—including CBS, Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, USA Today, and the New York Times—covered Donald Trump’s campaign in “a way that was unusual given his initial polling numbers.” That is to say, the Republican candidate got a high volume of coverage even before his polling numbers justified it. Not only that, but a majority of the coverage was positive in tone, according to the Shorenstein Center research."

    So this time the media came to the aid of Trump.
     
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  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You have it exactly and completely backwards. The media is richly supported by the corporate rightwing interests, and serves those interests well by giving them a pass on their continual dishonesty and blatant corruption in most circumstances (Fox News lost money for something like three straight years, but was bankrolled until it built its audience, for example:
    Do you recall what kind of coverage Fox gave the 2000 campaigns? Exactly.
     
  12. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    Remind me - Who called whom the co-founder of ISIS and the devil?
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Not really. It's more that you aren't seeing what is there, and has been there for thirty or forty years now - the behavior you deplore, only more flagrant and less fact-based and dirtier in all respects, from the folks currently attacking Clinton.

    All of them.
     
  14. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    I think the tone has been deteriorating for decades, but took a dive in 2008. The Republicans hated (?feared) Obama so much that they pulled out the very last vestiges of restraint. I was astonished - had never heard or imagined that kind of language directed at a president - not even the crook, not even the letch, not even the tool. All the rules have been scrapped.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Were you around in '92? '96?
     
  16. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    From 1960 on. They did get rowdy, often negative and confrontational, but there used to be a certain decorum. They've never been anything near this crude...
    But then, there have been bigots and cynics, egotists and sociopaths, but nothing anywhere as vulgar and ignorant as this Donald.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Lessee: These came to mind, not because they're the worst of it, but because they illustrate the tone:
    http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/03/12/feminazi-the-history-of-limbaughs-trademark-slu/186336
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1461233/posts
    http://mediamatters.org/research/2008/01/24/limbaugh-clinton-the-most-cheated-on-woman-in-t/142295
    An overview: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/among-the-hillary-haters/384976/

    Not that it didn't get louder in 2008 - for one thing, Limbaugh had more competition, from the Breitbart's and Coulters and Fox folk - but the ugly was mainstreamed by the time of Clinton's impeachment.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2016
  18. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    I forgot about that... Okay, my mistake: the GOP has had a repuglican branch for a long time. Now, that's the anointed candidate's faction.

    But there is enough internal disaffection that, maybe, just maybe, they'll reconstruct the respectable pre-Nixon party.
     
  19. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    You are misinterpreting something that is there.

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    All campaigns run negative ads largely because they work. Talking about Clinton supporters lack of self esteem is silly.

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    It's possible for any individual to have or not have self esteem. All Clinton supporters can't have any one character trait so this is just showing your bias.

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    They may or may not have good things to say about Clinton. I'm sure they have some good things to say about Clinton. She is the more qualified and educated candidate. Those are the good qualities.

    She may be crooked, unlikeable, etc. If so, those are the bad qualities.

    They are talking about the bad qualities of Trump because Trump is the person they are running against.

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    You wouldn't expect them to spend much time pointing out his good qualities would you?

    Do the Trump supporters spend a lot of time pointing out Clinton's good qualities or her bad qualities?

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  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Not that I've noticed.
     
  21. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    I'm listening....
     
  22. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I guess you have never attended a Trump rally or watched Trump campaign ad, or listened to Fox News or and listened to or read anything from any of the many right wing media sources. One could ask the same of Republicans or right wingers.

    The problem left wingers have with the Donald are the many stupid things the guy likes to say. If Hillary said anything even remotely similar I'm sure Republicans would be all over her too. Republicans wouldn't have to invent stuff about Hillary e.g. she's a serial murder, she founded ISIS, she's ill, etc.).
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    It was the anointed candidate's faction in 2000. That was 16 years ago.
    The pre-Nixon Party would be incapable of winning an electoral vote south of the Mason-Dixon Line, because it wouldn't be racially bigoted enough and wouldn't include enough Fundies or Catholics to own the white vote. (Black and brown people are now registered to vote in significant numbers). So that's a non-starter - the guys backing the Republican Party want the Speakerships, Presidency, and Court, not permanent minority status as a Congressional nuisance.

    In addition, the ordinary Republican voter would need an intervention, or possibly to hit bottom. They don't know they're crazy, yet, they don't really understand that the meth has taken over, whatever. They're calling themselves "independents", now, and voting for Trump as a means of opposing what the Party has become. I'm serious: they don't like what the Republican Party has done for them just lately (as far back as they can remember) so they're voting for - not against - Trump.

    Here's the most respected, genteel, moderate voice in the Republican public discourse, the central public voice of the suit and tie, WASP, old money, northeastern seaboard, Most Very Respectable Golf Club Republican Party, being humorous and mocking the Democratic Party leadership in November of 2005: (A full month after Katrina hit - bodies still being pulled out of the water, but the refugees evacuated). A full year after Fallujah the First and Abu Ghraib) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E5D8163EF930A35752C1A9639C8B63

    That man was not quietly let go and carefully forgotten. Instead, he has had a weekly, guaranteed, New York Times column, and a seat at the Respected Pundit table on all our TVs whenever he wants one, and place at the microphone on the Respectable Radio (what little there is of it), for eleven consecutive years since that column. And he's been delusional all that time - la la land amnesia, kaleidoscope logic, zip for sense, and slimy slanderous about it, right out in public.

    There isn't any sane, respectable, Republican Party core to work with.

    Meanwhile, the principled pre-Nixon conservative, the Eisenhower Republican not too anti-Semitic or racially bigoted, has a perfectly good Party largely reconstructed for them already. It's called the Democratic Party.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2016

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