In the Keys to the White House, two of the keys have to do with charisma, which is defined as a candidate being able to connect with voters. To me this has always seemed like a fuzzy key, and hard to define. But I just figured out how we can measure it.
A charismatic presidential candidate will be actively reaching out to voters in every state in the country. The fifty state strategy! A charismatic presidential candidate will be able to command control over their party, leading to a national strategy to elect that party’s candidates in every district, every county, and every state in the country. The candidate will then be able to easily campaign with local candidates people already know anywhere they go, which increases the number of people who will turn out to rallies, and hear the candidate’s message. By having robust campaign strategies for local and state level races as well as the presidential election, with an aligned policy, this increases the number of times voters are exposed to the candidate’s message, creating an echo chamber effect, convincing more of the party’s members to turn out and vote for the candidate.
Trump was able to successfully do this in both 2016 and 2024. He likely would have succeeded at it in 2020 if not for the pandemic. He was able to quickly move the Republican party in line with his vision, so every Republican candidate has been echoing his main talking points for the last decade.
Barack Obama was able to do this successfully in 2008. Howard Dean was the most successful DNC chair in my lifetime, and that was the presidential election where he was in charge. Obama and Dean successfully reached out to every household in the country, in every state. They pushed not just to win the presidential election, but local races as well at the state level. As a result, Obama won the highest percentage of the popular vote for a Democrat since Johnson’s historic victory in 1964.
Obama was able to connect with voters not just because he is the greatest speaker of his generation, or only because he had a good message, but also because he used his political strategy along with Howard Dean in 2008 to sweep elections at every level of government. That is what charisma looks like in practice.
2012 becomes even more interesting at this point. Tim Kaine became DNC chair in 2009, and he abandoned the 50 state strategy, leading to a significant drop in turnout for Democrats in 2010 compared to 2006. The DNC was no longer working on reaching out to every voter in the country as they did in 2006 and 2008, and we saw a massive reduction in votes for Democrats compared to other midterms as a consequence. When Obama was running in 2012, he didn’t have the same level of support from the DNC as he did in 2012, leading to him winning only 51% of the vote. Now while this does make Obama the only Democratic president to win a majority of the popular vote twice since FDR, and he clearly had some coattails as we saw Democrats pick up seats in the House and the Senate, the lack of support from the DNC meant we made far smaller gains than we should have, because of poor strategy from the DNC.
Now I believe Hillary Clinton won the 2016 primary fair and square. There are a lot of conspiracy theories swirling around about that primary in particular, but I have never seen obvious evidence of clear election hacking. While politicians have the right to state who they support in the primary, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz definitely supported Hillary Clinton, this is not evidence of hacking the election.
Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, but lost overall. She lost because she reduced turnout in states, trying to pick and choose as was the strategy proposed by Kaine and Wasserman Schultz. As a direct consequence of this strategy she came up short in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, three states where Republicans had picked up the governorships in 2014. We can generally make pretty decent predictions on how states are going to vote based on the partisan control of the governorship, state legislature, members of congress, and Senate seats. These states were no longer in Democratic hands as a direct consequence of the strategy used by Kaine and Wasserman Schultz, which directly led to Trump’s victory in 2016. There are however some weird irregularities I wrote about in key counties in those states in 2016 which unfortunately were never properly investigated. The failure of the Democratic Party to go to court when there are election irregularities is a critical factor to determine charisma.
The 2020 election was a victory because of COVID. Even though Biden was running against the literal plague he only won 51% of the vote. As a result of Biden’s utter lack of charisma we saw only a razor thin victory in the House and Senate, which significantly harmed Biden’s ability to pass any important legislation in his presidency.
Then we come to 2024 where we had yet another candidate with a complete lack of charisma. Harris’ lack of charisma can clearly be seen in any interview she made during her brief campaign. It can be seen through her underperforming Democrats in almost every state across the country. She didn’t just have no coattails, she had reverse coattails. She lost multiple states where Democratic governors and senators won reelection on the same night, which really takes some doing. Her inability to propose a clear vision, and inability to connect with voters cost her the election. The lack of time was possibly a factor.
The lack of a primary also hurt Harris. She did run in 2020 where she performed horribly in the primary despite being the Senator from California. She lost her own state! The lack of a primary meant she didn’t have time to craft her narrative for the realities of 2024, neither was she given time to hear enough voices across the party and see the votes in a way which would allow her to craft a message that would appeal to most Democrats. It’s not just timing, Biden was running for president and she picked up his campaign in full when he dropped out. It was the fact that her messaging on foreign policy was not different enough from Donald Trump’s in order to convince Americans to vote for her. The damage of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on the global economy directly fed to American’s feelings of a struggling economy, flipping both economic keys false, even though people in ivory towers hadn’t realized it yet. The lack of foreign policy and economic keys cost her the White House.
Charisma is a critical component of any campaign. Having an effective campaigning strategy which gets your message out to voters while also being able to listen to what voters value and need is essential to running a successful campaign. Trump, although I hate him, was able to successfully do this and tie in for voters that he was providing solutions to their economic issues. Now, I strongly believe the proposals he was making were ridiculous and are not working right now, but in terms of winning elections, this does not matter! I believe the most successful candidates are like Obama, who propose real solutions to the issues Americans are facing, like Obama did with health care, and then successfully implement policy to fix those problems, which can then feed into future electoral successes, assuming you have a functional party to back y0u up, which Obama did not have in subsequent elections. I believe we would have won congress in 2010 and 2012 if the DNC chair had been competent.
The most charismatic candidates flow out of a functional political party which is able to listen to voters, and then clearly present solutions to every American, no matter what state we live in. Even if we go on to lose the state in the presidential election, we might be able to still pick up county and city council seats, state legislative seats and congressional seats, which is always a win. As we get good people into those offices they can then move up to higher levels of government, building real grassroots leadership, potentially running for governor or US Senator in the future. The most successful campaigns, like Obama in 2008 build up both from the grassroots from excellent local candidates, but also from the top as the party machinery works hard to support all of its candidates, as they work together to present a clear hopeful message to the country. It worked in 1964, it worked in 2008, and it will work in 2028.
We need a presidential candidate with good political experience who is able to reach out to voters, campaign in every state, combined with a political party machine which is able to turn out votes in every precinct in America. That is real charisma.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has demonstrated that she has a vision, a clear message, more charisma than anyone else today, deep patriotism, and the ability to win the presidential election.
This is how we will defeat fascism in 2028.