Progressives Have a Hate Problem Too
5 ways our brains trick us into demonizing and dehumanizing Trump voters.
I was at a party recently when a woman approached me and asked, “Are you still teaching progressives how to talk with Trump voters?”
I told her I was.
She nodded, then said, “I know what you’re doing is right. But I don’t care. I’m done with those people. I’m done talking to them. I’m done giving them space in my life.”
Her voice was firm, edged with defensiveness. She expected me to argue, to tell her she was wrong, to try to change her mind. But I didn’t.
Because I understood where she was coming from and I’d heard it before.
More and more progressives are reaching a breaking point. Not just with MAGA policies, but with the people who support them. What begins as moral outrage can harden into something deeper and darker: a rejection of Trump voters as people. We don't just disagree—we dehumanize.
In short, progressives have a hate problem too. And if we don’t understand how our emotions hijack us, we risk becoming the very thing we’re fighting against.
The woman at the party wasn’t confused. She was conflicted. Caught between two truths: what she believed was right and what she felt was intolerable. She didn’t need a debate. She needed space to wrestle with that tension. And that’s where this work begins—not with them, but with us.
Emotional Roots of Disengagement
The choice to disengage from Trump voters isn’t usually intellectual. It’s emotional. People aren’t just objecting to dialogue—they’re experiencing something more primal: a gut-level sense of disgust.
For many progressives, Trumpism isn’t politics as usual. It’s cruelty, corruption, and authoritarianism made manifest. Engaging with those who support it can feel, on a visceral level, like a betrayal of one’s values—like giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The decision to turn away is rarely grounded in realistic doubt about whether engagement works. Often, as in this case, it’s rooted in emotional fatigue. People may still believe dialogue matters, but they no longer feel capable of having it. The pain, anger, and moral exhaustion become so overwhelming that withdrawal feels necessary, even if it means walking away from something essential.
When the people around us support what feels like harm, rejecting them can seem like the only moral response. Dialogue doesn’t just feel hard. It feels dangerous. It feels like complicity.
I hear this often. People tell me they know demonizing Trump voters is counterproductive. They understand the case for engagement, but they’re too exhausted, too angry, or too morally repulsed to keep trying. “I know you’re right, but I don’t care” has become a kind of mantra—not of ignorance but of emotional depletion.
When Emotion Takes the Lead
The woman at the party understood this tension. She wasn’t in denial. She was in conflict. She believed in the importance of engagement, but her emotions took the lead.
We like to think our moral judgments come from careful reasoning. But more often, they come from emotion.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who studies moral decision-making, offers a helpful metaphor: reason is the rider, and emotion is the elephant. The rider thinks they’re in control, but the elephant, our instinctive moral feelings, is actually in charge. We feel first. Then we use reason to justify what we already believe.
Most of the time, we don’t notice when the elephant is guiding us. We feel disgust or outrage and assume we’re just seeing clearly. We rationalize our feelings and justify heading in whatever direction our elephant takes us.
But sometimes—like the woman at the party—we do notice. We feel the tension: the rider pulling hard on the reins, trying to steer the elephant on a reasonable path. But the elephant is big. It’s powerful. And after a while, the rider gets tired. The reins go slack. We stop resisting and start rationalizing. We say, “I know better, but I don’t care.” And in that moment, the elephant wins.
The woman at the party wasn’t confused about what was effective. She was overwhelmed by what felt intolerable.
That’s one reason I didn’t try to change her mind. She was already doing the hard work of confronting that dissonance. What she needed wasn’t a debate. She needed space to work with her elephant. To get the rider and the elephant on the same page so they could move forward together.
That kind of work—pausing, noticing, and trying to realign what we feel with what we know—is an important part of Smart Politics. It’s not about silencing or overpowering the elephant. It’s about learning to respond rather than react, to steer the elephant instead of being dragged by it so we can remain true to our values and be more effective politically.
Steering the Hateful Elephant
That kind of emotional discipline—the effort to bring our feelings more in line with our values—isn’t peripheral. It’s core to Smart Politics. We can’t build a more just, inclusive, and compassionate world by hating a third of our fellow citizens.
That’s why this work has to start with us, as progressives. Our instincts, left unchecked, can betray our values, especially when we’re exhausted, angry, or afraid.
Unchecked, those emotions don’t just shape how we treat individuals. They distort how we see entire groups. They feed what researchers call affective polarization—a rising emotional hatred of the other side. That hatred corrodes empathy, excuses cruelty, and makes political violence seem more acceptable.
The data bears this out. A growing share of Democrats now describe Republicans as “close-minded,” “unintelligent,” “dishonest,” “immoral,” and increasingly, “downright evil.” These aren’t just rhetorical flourishes. As political scientists Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason have shown, these kinds of dehumanizing perceptions correlate with a weakening of democratic norms and a greater openness to political violence.
How does the elephant grow hateful? Not through explicit intent, but through everyday habits of mind—snap judgments, emotional shortcuts, unchallenged assumptions. These patterns distort our perception, drain our empathy, and quietly steer us away from the very values we want to defend.
How Our Brains Trick Us Into Demonizing Trump Voters
These mental shortcuts—what psychologists call cognitive biases—aren’t just glitches. They’re how our brains evolved to make fast decisions under pressure. But in moral and political conflict, they often backfire. They trick us into simplifying, stereotyping, and separating.
Every time we fall for them, our elephant grows more hateful and reactive toward people who are different from us. It becomes stronger, harder to steer, and more likely to trample the very values we claim to uphold.
Here are five of the most common traps—and how they distort our thinking.
1. Fundamental Attribution Error
When a Trump voter says something harmful or supports a cruel policy, we assume it reflects who they are: selfish, ignorant, even evil. But when someone on our side makes a mistake, we explain it in context: they were scared, stressed, misinformed. This double standard shuts down empathy and blocks change. If we decide someone’s choices define them entirely, we stop seeing any point in talking to them at all.
2. Ingroup-Outgroup Bias
We see our own community as complex and well-intentioned—even when we disagree with each other. But we rarely extend that same generosity to the other side. We treat Trump voters as a monolith: angry, racist, authoritarian. This bias bonds us to our group, but it cuts us off from the nuance and humanity of others. And when we can’t see complexity, we can’t create connection.
3. Contamination by Association
To many of us, Trump represents cruelty, corruption, and chaos. The disgust we feel toward him is real and justified. But it spreads. Someone who voted for him, even once, becomes morally suspect. We assume their choice means full endorsement of everything he stands for. We stop asking why they made that choice. Disgust shuts down curiosity, and without curiosity, change becomes harder.
4. Threat-Induced Simplification
When we feel threatened, our brains want clarity. We sort quickly: who’s with us, who’s against us. Nuance feels dangerous. So we lump all conservatives together—MAGA loyalists, swing voters, disengaged neighbors. Treating them as one hostile bloc might feel protective, but it’s politically self-defeating. If we assume every Trump voter is unreachable, we guarantee they will be.
5. Moral Disgust and Dehumanization
Disgust evolved to protect us from disease and contamination. But when it targets people instead of actions, it becomes dangerous. We stop seeing Trump voters as flawed humans and start seeing them as fundamentally broken. We mock their intelligence, their culture, even their appearance. And once we dehumanize them, it becomes easier to justify exclusion—even cruelty. Not because we’re bad people, but because we’ve lost touch with what connects us to every other person on the planet.
Each of these traps reinforces the others. They don’t just cloud the elephant’s vision but lead it farther astray. And unless we notice them, we’ll keep mistaking the ride for the road.
Sitting with Discomfort
So how do we change course? Not by yanking harder on the reins, but by learning how to work with the elephant. That means understanding what calms it, what earns its trust, and what slowly, steadily trains it to go a different way. The practices that follow—pausing, noticing, restraining, and reflecting—aren’t just good habits. They’re tools for influence, starting with ourselves. They help align our emotions with our values, so we can act with integrity even when it’s hard.
The woman at the party wasn’t confused. She was conflicted. She believed democracy matters. That engagement matters. That we don’t change hearts and minds by shutting people out. She knew I was right about that.
But she also knew what she felt—revulsion, anger, exhaustion. A deep sense that Trump voters had crossed a moral line and that continuing to engage with them was too much to bear.
She wasn’t denying reality. She was holding two truths: reason and emotion. In that moment, she let her feelings lead. I didn’t push back. Not because I agreed, but because I respected the effort it took just to sit in that contradiction. She was doing the work.
This is the labor of Smart Politics. Not just knowing what’s effective, but managing our emotions so we can act on that knowledge.
Reason tells us Trump voters are people like us, shaped by their experiences, fears, and beliefs. Intellectually, we know they can change and that the most effective way to reduce harm is to reach out, not walk away. We understand that talking with Trump voters—not cutting them off—is our best shot at changing the political landscape.
But reason whispers. Emotion yells.
That’s where discipline comes in. Not to silence emotion, but to keep it from overriding better judgment.
It’s hard to stay open when you’re angry. Hard to resist judgment, rejection, or retreat. But that’s the trap. We fall into it not because we have no choice, but because we’re human.
To break that pattern, start here:
Notice your gut responses. When you feel disgust, contempt, or certainty, pause and get curious. Ask what’s fueling it. Are you falling into a psychological trap?
Beware of hate. Of all the political emotions, hate is the most dangerous. You can feel anger, sadness, and grief without surrendering to hate, demonization, or dehumanization. Remember, it’s tough to despise people up close. When you feel hate taking root, do your best to get to know them better rather than running away.
Practice restraint. Feeling something doesn’t mean you have to act on it. Emotions can be painful, but they will eventually pass. Wait for intense negative emotions to settle before deciding how to respond.
Be strategic. Choose actions that help you achieve your political goals, rather than those that provide emotional relief or gratification. The point of political action isn’t retribution or vindication, it’s saving our democratic system.
Sitting with discomfort is a sign that you’re doing the real work of holding your values steady while your emotions churn. It’s what allows us to respond with integrity instead of reflex. And right now, that’s one of the most important political skills we can practice.
The Path Forward
In my experience, the most challenging part of this work isn’t knowing what to do. It’s doing what we know is right when our emotions scream for something else.
Our brains weren’t built for democracy. They were built for tribal survival. They judge quickly, divide instinctively, and lash out when threatened. If we don’t understand those instincts, they will control us. And when they do, we risk becoming more like the forces we’re fighting than we’d like to admit.
Progressives have a hate problem, too. We dehumanize GOP voters. We indulge contempt. And sometimes, we even justify harm. That may feel morally justified. But it’s not. It’s hate masquerading as virtue and it weakens the very democracy we’re trying to save.
The path forward isn’t to suppress our emotions. It’s to notice them, understand where they come from, and then patiently steer ourselves in a more rational and compassionate direction.
This article is part of The Smart Politics Way, a progressive newsletter about defending democracy through persuasive engagement. Dr. Karin Tamerius is a political psychiatrist and founder of Smart Politics.
If you found this piece valuable, please help me spread the word by sharing it with your progressive network.
Subscribe for free and get a bonus gift!
When you subscribe to The Smart Politics Way, you’ll receive a free copy of my ebook, Keep Calm and Carry On: Saving Democracy the Smart Politics Way—a practical guide to staying calm, focused, and effective in the fight for democracy.
There is one major flaw that I see in your approach. I’ve yet to see one conservative, let alone Trump-supporting, voice publicly call for the kind of empathy, forbearance, and civility that you are insisting that Progressives must practice, and along with that virtually no willingness to engage with honesty and sincerity with people with whom the right-wing disagree. There are, no doubt, individuals on the conservative side who try to practice this kind of civility, but this is certainly not what generally characterizes the present Trumpian moment ( which overlaps with, but is different from, old-school conservatism.) Furthermore, the acts of the Trump administration are so extreme in undermining the laws and Constitutional principles that this country is based on, so corrupt, and in many cases so inhumane, that support for those acts constitutes a direct threat to our material and physical security and our way of life.
I’m all for civility and tolerance in public discussion and among people. I regularly engage with people whose views diverge from mine, including Trump supporters, and try to do so with humor and respect along with facts and firmness. These relationships unfortunately lead me to think that openness and respectful communication is unlikely to change things. The reason is that the well-funded Trumpian echo-chamber in mass and social media is always there to reinforce a narrative that has no room for rational debate.
What Progressives lack is a coherent world view and program to provide alternative solutions that meet people’s real needs that feels credible, and that have a movement and an effective communications strategy behind them. Otherwise the right-wing will continue to define “the libs” to their base and shut everything else out. This is the area where we really do need to listen, but without standing for something clear that appeals to people it is wasted time. The elements of such a program are there. We need leadership to bring it all together and shape it into a strong and clear and unapologetic program. Until that happens, any effort to improve communication is doomed, because there is effectively nothing to communicate.
This is such an honest and necessary piece—thank you for naming what so many of us feel in our bones. If we’re serious about building something better than the mess we’ve got, we have to start by looking inward as much as we look across the aisle.
This isn’t about pretending the parties are the same—they’re not. But it is about recognizing that no political tribe has a monopoly on truth or justice. We don’t need more echo chambers or purity tests. We need a movement that’s rooted in shared humanity and open to anyone—left, right, or politically homeless—who’s ready to reject cruelty and domination in all its forms.
This is the kind of clarity that gives me hope.