"Pete Buttigieg, Barack Obama, and the psychology of liberalism"

[Hortensis]

VOX: "Buttigieg is going for the “hope and change” voters."

... Liberals and conservatives have different ideologies, different philosophies, different policies, different parties. But beneath all that is the fact that they have different psychologies. ...

Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level of fearfulness informs their outlook on life. ... People high in openness are more likely to enjoy trying new foods, traveling to new places, living in diverse cities, ...

At the core of this worldview divide is hope, in its most basic, literal form. Are you hopeful about new things, new people, new places? Does change excite you? Does difference? If it does, you are more likely to be liberal. If you look at the new, the different, and feel a spike of fear, you’re more likely to be a conservative. Not every liberal is high in this kind of openness, and not every conservative is low in it. But these associations are present and strong across huge numbers of studies spanning dozens of countries. ...

Democrats miss Obama. Most of the Democrats running for president have tried, in their own ways, to out-Trump Trump. ... But a lot of liberals ... believe that mutual understanding is possible, that the country will respond to someone willing to believe and call forth the best of it. That’s not just their view of politics; it’s their view of life. It’s the view that Obama spoke to in the speech that made him a star:

Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

And again in his 2008 campaign announcement speech:

You came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that shut you out, that’s told you to settle, that’s divided us for too long, you believe that we can be one people, reaching for what’s possible, building that more perfect union.

... Obama appealed to them because he represented them, because he was one of them, and if they could, they would put him back in office a third time. ... You can see the yearning in Joe Biden’s persistent lead in the polls. Biden’s popularity frustrates lefties who think him insufficiently progressive and liberals who see him as an out-of-touch white guy. But Biden knows that a lot of his supporters aren’t really supporting him. They’re supporting Obama by supporting him. ...

Buttigieg began his announcement speech by doing exactly what Obama did in his early speeches: He framed the choice America faces as embracing a moment of change with hope — or rejecting it out of fear.

“Change is coming, ready or not,” Buttigieg said. “The question of our time is whether families and workers will be defeated by the changes beneath us or whether we will master them.”

...

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/16/18310769/pete-buttigieg-barack-obama-2020-presidential-announcement-hope-primary-democrats

The article's damaged by its absurd theme that other candidates have given up on hope -- which is contradicted in its entirety by the soaring goals of both house Democrats and nearly all our impressive liberal candidates. But that is merely the author's own mistake offered in opening and closing paragraphs, with the center a compilation of information and quotes from others that are worth pondering.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

1. This article is very worthy...

Of more in depth reading. Very interesting insights.