Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> That's not the point. It's that the public seems not to share your
> conception of legitimacy (or Al Gore's). Why that is is another
> question.
I would presume that the various homo species (habilis, erectus, sapiens) all these millenia because they developed the habit of assuming that others in the group were more or less right, and that in the last 20,000 years or so this became assuming that until definitely proved otherwise that the fundamental assumptions of the world they lived in were correct. Why shouldn't people assume that the whoever their leaders acclaim as president is legitimately the president? The assumption that the way things are is the way things ought to be is as reasonable an assumption as any.
Incidentally, the preceding paragraph is about all the psychology one needs to build political movements. EVerything else is social/historical analysis.
Carrol