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The word vote, deriving from the Latin votem means a vow, a prayer, or an ardent wish or desire.
It promotes a sense of worth and power through identifying with and choosing a leader. It can ease the unconscious sense of helplessness that can remain in us after we are no longer unreservedly taken care of. This vote is determined less by political ideology and demographics and more by the underlying fantasy that the leader will take care of us emotionally and economically rather than be the best leader for the country or the world. We may vote only for an appealing fragment of a candidate's personality or opinion, denying important negative qualities.
Since candidates often represent parents, the choice often derives from having been well parented or not well parented. We may oppose the candidate who represents the parent figure who was disappointing or who engendered anger. We may idealize one because at some stage of childhood we idealized the parent who took good care of us. The vote thus becomes an ardent wish for a candidate whom we like, a substitute for a beloved parent. In a serious love relationship, loving the other leads to expectations that one will be loved in return. When this idealization eventually breaks down, we are left frustrated and angry. The repetitive cry each election cycle for a change stems from this disappointment which drives a cycle of seeking a new, loving protector. In the “family romance” the child imagines that he or she was really born to exalted and wonderful parents and one day will be reunited with them.
A candidate with a wavering ideology may flamboyantly pronounce socially unacceptable ideas and adjust them to what he believes his audience wants to hear, appealing to the vulnerable in all class strata. The voter has an opportunity to identify with the candidate, allowing his or her conscience to be absorbed in the leader's vacuous one and release the same racism, misogyny, and denigration of others.
In our recent elect