Why Do Most Voters Keep Choosing “Change” Candidates But Reject Real Progressives?

[Hardkill]

Leo,

I have a question about how you understand voters’ psychology around “change” in modern U.S. politics.

In the last few election cycles, it feels like the winners have almost always been the candidate who best embodied “change” against the status quo:

• Obama 2008 & 2012 – “Hope and Change,” post-Bush, anti-Iraq, generational shift
• Trump 2016 – anti-establishment wrecking ball against both parties’ elites
• Biden 2020 – “return to normalcy,” a change away from chaos and Trump
• Trump 2024 – again framed as a change away from Biden and the current direction

So on the surface, voters do seem to want “change” over and over.

Yet at the same time, the public still doesn’t really go for genuinely progressive / systemic change when it’s offered in a more explicit way by people like:

• Bernie Sanders
• AOC
• Elizabeth Warren
• Zohran Mamdani, etc.

These people are arguably the ones proposing the deepest structural reforms (on capitalism, healthcare, labor, oligarchy, etc.), but most voters don’t rally behind them the way they do behind more “safe” change candidates like Obama or Biden — or right-wing populists like Trump.

So my question to you is:

How do you explain this psychologically and spiritually?

Why do voters repeatedly choose symbolic or surface-level “change” (Obama, Trump, Biden/2020, Trump/2024) while rejecting the more genuinely transformative progressive candidates who would actually challenge the system at a deeper level?

More specifically, I’d love to hear your take on:

1. Survival & fear: How much of this is just survival bias — people wanting “change” but only within a narrow safety zone that doesn’t threaten their ego, identity, or material security?
2. Stage development (Spiral Dynamics): Are progressives like Bernie/AOC/Warren/Mamdani simply too far ahead of the median voter’s stage of development, so that even people who are dissatisfied still prefer ego-flattering, tribal, or nostalgic forms of “change” (like Trump or soft-liberal change) rather than true systemic reform?
3. Comfort with institutions: Do most Democratic voters, for example, still trust the basic institutions enough that they’ll opt for “reformist” change (Obama/Biden) instead of “revolutionary” change (Bernie-style), whereas Republicans are more willing to embrace destructive change (Trump) because their distrust has gone much deeper?
4. Media & narrative control: To what degree are people’s “change” preferences basically manufactured by media framing — so that the only acceptable “change” on offer is the kind that doesn’t threaten corporate or elite interests too much?

Why does the collective ego keep saying it wants change, then rejecting the people who actually represent deeper change, and instead choosing candidates who either offer mild reform or outright reactionary backlash?

I’m curious how you’d unpack this using your frameworks around consciousness, survival, ideological bias, and Spiral Dynamics.

 

[Daniel Balan]

Because the voters don't vote for who they want, the voters vote for who the oligarchs that control the media want. Those who control both the legacy media and mainstream media decide elections.

Voters are just sheep that must be herded in one dirrection or another by those who control the informational ecosystem.

Voters don't vote for who they want, they are systemically brainwashed and programmed to vote according to how Musk and other top dogs want.