How do you deal with an opponent immune to the truth, whose appeal is atavistic rather than rational? How do you pick off enough of his constituents and prevent him from making inroads into yours?
In Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies face a candidate for whom there is no precedent in presidential politics. …
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U., told me in an email that Democrats need to adopt a more subtle strategy in dealing with Trump. This, Haidt argues, is because the “mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict, like a small rider — conscious, verbal, reasoning — sitting atop a large elephant — the other 98 percent of mental processes, which are automatic and intuitive.”
The elephant “really runs the show,” Haidt said. Translating this analytic approach to the 2016 election, in Haidt’s view, means that “in matters of politics and morality, you must speak to the elephant first. Trump did this brilliantly in the Republican primary, and in his convention speech.”
To counter Trump, Democrats have to get into the electorate’s automatic, intuitive and unconscious level of responding to events before attempting a critique based on reasoned argument, according to Haidt. CONT.
Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times