John Kerry was the safe electable choice and lost. Barack Obama was the pie-in-the-sky obvious loser (black? middle name is Hussein?????). Hillary Clinton was the safe choice and Donald Trump was dead in the water. Safe, electable Biden won, but clearly didn't have a loyal coalition. - ThreadSky

johnbrownstan.bsky.social • 134 days ago

John Kerry was the safe electable choice and lost. Barack Obama was the pie-in-the-sky obvious loser (black? middle name is Hussein?????). Hillary Clinton was the safe choice and Donald Trump was dead in the water. Safe, electable Biden won, but clearly didn't have a loyal coalition.

Reposted from John Brown stan account

My advice for Dem primary voters is to vote for whoever you like the most and don't try to play the Keynes' beauty contest of voting for whoever you think some marginal voter would like the most

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cjones47.bsky.social•134 days ago

Reagan, Clinton (weirdly), Obama, and Trump are all lighting in a bottle. Charisma will always win. Policy be damned.

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•134 days ago

Bush was also the more charismatic of Bush v. Gore (though not by much)

isomorphism.net•133 days ago

Oddly enough, Al remembered that he was a successful politician after he wasn't one anymore.

I blame the confluence of Clinton's charisma, Gore's advisors, and a half dozen other contributing factors.

isomorphism.net•133 days ago

An Inconvenient Truth made $50m as a documentary that was basically a power point presentation, and it worked.

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•134 days ago

Not to say you can't vote strategically, but only do so in the context of trying to get the candidate you prefer the most on the merits through the primary, not trying to get the candidate you imagine some general election voter would prefer the most.

bikeloveny.bsky.social•134 days ago

Was that what Keynes said? I thought he was an economist. It's certainly what the Clintons thought.

dawe.bsky.social•134 days ago

I challenge you to find a single person who watched Obama's speech at the 2004 convention who did not immediately know that man was going to be President it was just a question of when

johnbrownstan.bsky.social•133 days ago

And yet, four years later, I heard endless electability arguments against him and in favor of Hillary. The good news is that we didn't listen to them and instead let people fall in love

alonlevy.bsky.social•133 days ago

There were electability arguments in both directions in early 2008; after Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton was the establishment choice but not the safe choice.

tylermathiasen.bsky.social•133 days ago

Having charisma is also not a negotiable any longer. If the candidate doesn’t excite and connect with large swaths of the base, they simply cannot be the nominee. No matter how much any one faction of the coalition might worship them.

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