For people from my generation, there was nothing quite like the show South Park. It is still going on, but like most things it has lost its edge after awhile. While the show centers more or less around four characters, the single thrust of the show seems to be the antics of Eric Cartman. The show’s creators (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) once called Cartman “the junk in everyone’s soul.” Nearly every episode has him doing something incredibly stupid, evil, or better yet, evil and stupid at the same time. He is incredibly manipulative, devious, and yet his plans usually always fail because he doesn’t know basic things that would be necessary to make such plans work.

For most of us that have watched the show, Cartman reminds us of someone we see in the news. Of course, the difference is that Cartman is a child and fictional. He has a plucky kind of charm even though there really are no redeeming qualities there. He is sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic and fairly obvious about it. I just can’t put my finger on who that sounds like.

We are usually shaped by those that we grew up watching on television. Our parents grew up watching Ronald Reagan in movies and on television and it made perfect sense that he should become president because people felt familiar and comfortable with him Fast-forward to our current generation and it makes some sense. We grew up on talk shows. Not everyone watched all of them, but between us we can probably recite memories of watching Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Jerry Springer. The general idea about these shows follows a pretty precise formula.

Those talk shows provided for a pretty interesting dichotomy that I am sure is the basis of some pretty comprehensive psychological study. On the one hand, we enjoyed them because we could feel superior to someone. As messed up as our lives might have been or might be, at least we aren’t THOSE people. The ability to feel superior to someone is powerful and that power is pretty alluring to those that don’t have any.

The second part of that dichotomy is fact that a little piece of all of us wishes we could act like those people. The idea of telling people exactly what I think of them is alluring, but we know we can’t do that and maintain our careers or our relationships. These talk shows have found a magic formula that has us simultaneously feeling superior, disgusted, envious, and wanting more all at the same time.

The talk show generation is now in their forties and fifties. We are the prime age for most voters and provide for the base of people most likely to vote for the real life Eric Cartman. Younger voters don’t really get the whole talk show thing. They can stream their entertainment. They don’t have to worry about what is on the television at that particular time. They can choose their programming and they aren’t motivated by the same primal forces we were.

I think the biggest swing between 2016 and 2020 was the group of people that really didn’t agree with Trump but were oddly entertained by him. He said things we would never think of saying, but many secretly hoped they could. They felt disenfranchised from politics and felt the system had failed them. So, why not install the real life and adult version of Eric Cartman?

A majority of Trump voters would never vote for a Democrat and so you aren’t winning those folks over. However, enough switched because they saw what an Eric Cartman presidency wrought. They simply need to be reminded. As they told us when we were kids, “it’s all in good fun until someone’s eye gets poked out.” The pandemic wasn’t fun. Being a laughingstock around the globe wasn’t fun. Watching kids in cages and racists emboldened wasn’t fun. Eventually, you find something that touches on something that directly impacts them and President Cartman wasn’t good for any of that.