trusting ourselves and our fellow citizens to vote out of hope and conviction rather than fear and resignation.

I’m afraid I’m doubly cynical about voters (but I agree that Warren is electable — more of this optimism after a pessimistic rant).

From what I’ve observed, most people except for political junkies vote against rather than for someone. They don’t tend to research the person they’re voting for because they’ve already made up their mind about the opponent. Their opposition is usually based on stereotypes, fear of the unknown, media manipulation, and other factors that have nothing to do with a candidate’s qualifications.

The one exception I can think of is Obama in the 2008 and 2012 general elections. I don’t think most people had a strong antipathy for McCain / Palin or Romney / Ryan. They voted for Obama out of hope and conviction.

But every other presidential election that I’ve experienced (beginning with Kennedy — Nixon) involved people voting against someone they deemed unfavorable. My father, a lifelong southern Democrat because of his resentment for Hoover’s having contributed to the Great Depression, finally voted Republican for Nixon in 1972 because he feared McGovern (we didn’t talk about politics at the dinner table that year).

I believe that the strongest motive for most voters (apart from political junkies) is affiliation. People vote against someone they consider an outsider. Enough people considered Donald Trump to be “one of us” to give him the advantage (in both the primary and the general), mostly because he created such a powerful image of his opponents as “the other.”

So if Elizabeth Warren can excite hope and conviction in certain groups (she’s gaining ground among African-American women — Clinton’s most fervent supporters at 97%) and convince the uncommitted that she has a great deal in common with them — more than does Trump — then she should have a very good chance of winning the general election.

There are still lots of unknowns, of course. We should not use these uncertainties as an excuse to remain out of the fray, however. We (the political junkies who read Medium articles and magazines and books, and prefer documentaries to reality television, and fight for causes in many different fields) should instead double up on our commitment to instilling hope and conviction in others, and we should campaign like hell for whoever we believe will best serve the nation.