For the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” Donald J. Trump searched for a gimmick to bolster ratings. His idea was simple if explosive — pit an all-white team against an all-black team. “Do you like it?” he asked, previewing the concept on Howard Stern’s radio show in April 2005. “Yes,” […] Read more »
White Anxiety, and a President Ready to Address It
Two forces convulsing American politics found each other at President Trump’s rally in North Carolina this week: a sense of anxiety among white voters about their standing in a country that is growing more diverse, and a politician intent on stoking those worries. … More than anything else, the rising […] Read more »
How Trump’s 2020 reelection strategy could work — but probably won’t
… The Trump strategy is pretty simple: 1. Drive up the unfavorable ratings of his Democratic rival as he did in 2016 in order to compensate for his own low ratings. 2. Bank on an electoral college/popular vote split as he did in 2016. 3. Use a campaign of racial […] Read more »
Joe Biden isn’t the only ‘electable’ candidate. Here’s what Democratic primary voters are thinking — and how to change it.
… When women and people of color run for office, they tend to win at the same rates as white men. Nevertheless, my research shows that Americans see white men as more electable than equally qualified women and people of color. … Most Americans are not sexist or racist — […] Read more »
The psychological phenomenon that blinds Trump supporters to his racism
… Cognitive dissonance, first described by the psychologist Leon Festinger in the late 1950s, occurs when conflict emerges between what people want to believe and the reality that threatens those beliefs. The human mind does not like such inconsistencies: They set off alarms that spur the mind to alter some […] Read more »
Trump Voters Are Not the Only Voters
The anti-Trump vote is the single largest coalition in American politics. That was true in 2016, despite Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the Electoral College. It was true in 2017, after Democrats won major victories in Virginia and Alabama. And it was true in 2018, when the anti-Trump coalition gave Democrats […] Read more »