The Narcissism of Small Differences

Mitchell Swan just proposed an interesting idea–perhaps the relatively low Democratic turnout has arisen because the differences between Clinton and Sanders are actually not that great, especially compared to the differences between both Democrats and the Republicans. Now, I know that the Bernie and Hillary partisans don’t think the premise is true You see huge differences between Hillary and Bernie. But maybe your vehemence–and your efforts to focus increasingly on relatively trivial matters that are of no interest to the vast majority of voters–is a product of that lack of broad difference. It’s a combination of the imperatives of competition and what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences.”