The country is well short of three months into "President" Biden's administration, and the degree of change in the country in that short period of time has been nothing short of incredible.  Astonishing, really. Unprecedented.  If someone were to say that never in modern post–World War II history has the change from one president to the next produced such sweeping, profound changes in the country, in all areas — domestic/social, economic, foreign affairs — it would be difficult to argue.

Yet that's where we are, without question.  The unfortunate thing is that all this dramatic, sudden, factually indisputable change has been for the worse:

• Our border has collapsed, and illegal immigration is out of control.
• Oil and gasoline pricing has skyrocketed due to anti-energy "Green" policies.
• North Korea has restarted its ballistic missile testing.
• PC-ism is out of control, with Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss deemed offensive and Coke announcing that employees need to be "less white."
• Senators Duckworth and Hirono proudly boast they will vote against "straight, white" administration nominees.

Yet for a huge number of Biden voters, the simple fact that he wasn't Donald Trump was enough.  To these people, it was an emotional choice, not an intellectual one.  Millions of so-called "smart" people willingly voted for higher taxes, less secure borders, less support for law enforcement and the military, and more political correctness at the expense of longstanding, commonsense social norms and a favorable business and hiring climate.  Intentionally, consciously.  They didn't cast their Biden vote by mistake; one can reasonably assume they knew about the open immigration, anti-police, higher taxes, and males-competing-as-females issues in advance.  Yet they voted for Biden anyway.

For the sake of this conversation, we'll leave aside the mountains of indisputable voter fraud evidence and not discuss why the Judiciary — both state and federal — was so afraid to take up the cases.  Let's just continue by looking at why close to 70 million (not "80" million) people appeared to have made the intentional decision to vote for Joe Biden, in spite of the fact that they knew in advance that they were supporting a candidate whose policies would reduce the quality of many people's lives and harm the prospects for their children's future success.

What causes a person to do that?

First, we need to toss aside the proportion of that 70 million number who were simply voting to continue their uninterrupted gravy train of government largess.  That's a large percentage of the 70 million.  Those voters will always vote for their handout, but their numbers were already baked into the cake, as they say.  They didn't make the difference in the election.

But a smaller number — significant to the outcome of a national election — voted against any semblance of logic, whether one is looking at what policies benefited them or what policies would benefit the country as a whole.  Millions of voters willingly chose to vote for Biden over President Trump and intentionally hurt themselves, their families, the country, or all three.  Why?

There are four major reasons:

– Emotions are more determinative than logic when deciding on a vote.

In the perennial "Personality vs. Policy" conundrum, most people are slaves to their emotions.  Personality generally wins their vote.  Typical comments include things like "he seems nice," "something about him just rubs me the wrong way," etc.  Almost never does one hear the average voter say things like "the lowered corporate tax proposal should lead to more hiring" or "I'm in favor of the expanded oil exploration policy on federal lands" or "replacing the F-22 Raptor with the F-35 Lightning strikes me as a better use of the country's military spending."  Instead we get "I don't like his mean tweets" or "orange man bad."  For too many liberals, anger and resentment — "Derangement Syndrome" — dominate, despite their native intellectual capacity.

– Many of these "emotional" voters are personally unaffected by their candidate's positions.

Let's look at the reasonably well educated Biden voter, the ones who voted with their "feelings," not their intellect.  Almost nothing that Biden's policies do will negatively affect their daily lives.  Maybe they're feel the sting of higher gasoline and heating pricing and grumble about it deep in the privacy of their own thoughts, but whether it's increased illegal immigration, the hiring of more favored special-interest-du-jour employees somewhere else, or kowtowing to foreign leaders with whom we should be taking a hard line on matters of trade or human rights, none of that matters to these voters.  Those Biden policies are all abstract considerations that they can agree with from afar, making themselves feel virtuous and enlightened, but they don't pay any personal price for agreeing with the Democrats on re-joining the Paris Accords or re-entering the Iran nuclear deal.  These voters already have "theirs," so they're safe to agree with the do-good policies espoused by touchy-feely politicians.

– Personal family history and "team" affiliation are almost impossible to overcome.

This is particularly true for special interest demographic groups such as Blacks and Jews.  For a long and complicated set of reasons, most Jewish people are dyed-in-the-wool Democrat party voters.  "My family has always voted that way."  Getting Blacks or Jews or any other special interest group to go against their historical voting pattern is, as they say in basketball, a "low percentage shot."  Well educated Jewish voters whom I know — lawyers, educators, business executives — would never vote for a Donald Trump (note: the author is Jewish) — not because they can logically oppose his polices, but because "they've never voted that way."

– The liberal media prevent balanced vote-influencing information from ever reaching Democrat voters.

A lot of time and space has already been devoted to liberal fake news and the one-sided anti-conservative behavior of social media influencers like Facebook and Twitter.  Suffice to say, it's well documented and true.  Far too many voters voted against President Trump simply because they were fed a never-ending stream of distortions and lies, and they based their vote on that false information.  Remember this fact, because it's illuminating: we are essentially a 50-50 country, with the news being delivered through a 90-10 liberal filter.  Think about that.

What can be done about countering the ruinous effect of emotional voters?  That's another article, another blueprint.  But this is the first step: acknowledging that emotional voters exist and identifying the reasons they vote the way they do.  Conservative politicians need to take that step and formulate their countermoves accordingly — something they have so far failed to do.

Image: Marc Nozell via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.