Centrist VS True Believer; I have a hypothesis

Savagemouse

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Tuesday February 21, 2017 · 8:10 AM PST

2017/02/21 · 08:10

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I’ve read a number of articles recently (4. The number is 4) about whether the Democrats need a centrist or a true believer to lead them out of the wilderness. I’ve been thinking about it and I have a hypothesis; most people don’t reallly vote on policy. Instead, I think they vote on perceived charisma, or some similar intangible.

Wasn’t really around for Reagan, but he was an actor, right? Probably some charisma there. Bill Clinton had charisma. Bush...I dunno, people said they’d like to have a beer with him I guess, and he only squeaked out a narrow victory against a robotic Gore and rode the incumbency to a popular vote loss/electoral college win against Kerry. Obama had tons of charisma. Hillary did not have much charisma, only intelligence and competence (yuck, I guess). Trump? He gives me the squealing willies but I gather he has strong appeal to all those who want an authoritarian daddy in charge.

I would much prefer to have a strong progressive next time around but I do hope we can come up with someone who is a great and appealing orator, because if I’m right that’s the skill she is going to need.

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