Interesting take, and it’s a debate I have with my sons all the time. Essentially, you are suggesting to replace fear with hope, pessimism with optimism. The problem with that is the gap is too great. People first need to have their fears acknowledged and validated. For that to happen they have to be able to identify and articulate their fears. Instead of saying, “I don’t like these people”, admit “I am afraid of these people”. Then that gets to the “why”, which can get pretty messy, so most people don’t go there. That leads to a lot of straw man issues, so that the root cause of their political position remains obscure. I deal with this on non-political situations with clients all the time.

Bottom line is that fear trumps (pun intended) hope. It has a neurophysiological basis. Our threat center is an ancient, highly preserved part of our brain, whereas hope requires the ability to visualize. When our threat center us triggered, the part of our brain that visualizes gets shut down.