Candidates use psychological strategies to win support and to cast their rivals in a negative light. In projection, people seek to lessen their own faults by calling out these faults in others.
If you drag everyone down to your level, everyone looks bad, or at least you don’t look as bad by comparison and the voting public loses confidence in the system in general, which tends to benefit fascists.
It’s crab-bucket public relations.
If you drag everyone down to your level, everyone looks bad, or at least you don’t look as bad by comparison and the voting public loses confidence in the system in general, which tends to benefit fascists.