Understanding the Trump Appeal
Whether you love him or hate him, Donald Trump's remarkable run for the White House has important lessons for the psychology of the American voter.
Marketing psychologists have long understood that consumers (and voters) require an emotional connection to a brand or a product in order to become passionate promoters. Most often this has little to do with the actual merits or utility of the product, and more to do with how well it connects to a powerful and compelling emotional trigger we all have: the perception that there was a happier and better once upon a time in the past. It may be called nostalgia, or memory, or myth - but it is immensely powerful.
Trump is reaching an important cross section of voters, all of whom share a pretty common set of "good ol' days" experiences. These voters are generally post boomer, pre-millenial - the famously unregarded generations X and Y (which we no longer talk about) who became world-aware during the 1970's and 1980's. These voters developed cultural and social awareness in the wake of the disruptive sixties, and before the self-congratulatory nineties. These voters have profoundly negative views on the social upheavals of the sixties - for which they blame the rather bleak lost decade of decay: the seventies; and equally jaded views on the smug and indulgent nineties, which they believe led to the traumas of the '00's.
This leaves them with sepia toned visions of the eighties, the period Donald Trump most exemplifies and personifies. What were the eighties to this generation? It was the period of the damn-the-torpedoes-maverick - Ronald Reagan in politics and, yes, Donald Trump in business. It the period of America Resurgent, when we beat the seventies gas crisis and we started to win the cold war; when we started winning wars again (albeit over Grenada, but a win's a win)... it was when we got rid of open floorplans in schools and started letting God back into the social conversation. It was a time when we started letting men be men - bucking the system, eliminating regulation, seeing fortunes made and lost on Wall Street in an eye blink. It was the time of real powdered cocaine and Studio 54 - when the rich and famous were more likely to be business men than reality tv stars. It was Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
It really should be no surprise that Donald Trump carries a strong appeal that has nothing to do with policies or practicalities. He simply represents a happier and more hopeful time to a very influential cadre of Americans.
