Charisma, Coattails, and the Coronavirus
The coronavirus has exposed Trump for the incompetent fraud that he is.
The Biden sweep of the primaries in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois has all but assured the former Vice President of the Democratic nomination. He now has a virtually insurmountable 300 delegate lead over Bernie Sanders.
The contest for the right to face Trump in the fall is all but over….
Bernie and his supporters must own up to Democratic Party unity or risk giving Trump another term.
There is no option here. Trump must be defeated, PERIOD!
In addition to defeating Trump, it is equally as important that the Democrats gain control of the Senate. It is imperative that Mitch McConnell be deposed as Senate Majority leader…
While it might be argued that Biden lacks Bernie’s charismatic appeal to the progressive wing of the party, it would seem that Biden has longer and stronger coattails.
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic has sealed Trump’s fate and consigned him to a single term.
See “Trump Presidency Over” “https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/
Just as with the financial crash that helped Obama defeat McCain, the coronavirus has exposed Trump’s incompetence beyond his capacity to hide or whitewash his glaring deficiencies.
The coming election should be a Democratic slamdunk and landslide.
But, we’ve already seen that movie…
charisma
1: a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure (such as a political leader) His success was largely due to his charisma.
2: a special magnetic charm or appeal the charisma of a popular actor
Webster’s Dictionary
“Weber indicates that it is followers who attribute the individual with powers, emphasizing that “the recognition on the part of those subject to authority” is decisive for the validity of charisma.
Weber introduced the personality charisma sense when he applied charisma to designate a form of authority. To explain charismatic authority he developed his classic definition:
Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader…
Sociologist Paul Joosse examined Weber’s famous definition, and found that:
Through simple yet profoundly consequential phrases such as “are considered” and “is treated,” charisma becomes a relational, attributable, and at last a properly sociological concept….
For Weber, the locus of power is in the led, who actively (if perhaps unconsciously) invest their leaders with social authority.”
——–Wikipedia
“The coattail effect or down-ballot effect is the tendency for a popular political party leader to attract votes for other candidates of the same party in an election. For example, in the United States, the party of a victorious presidential candidate will often win many seats in Congress as well; these Members of Congress are voted into office “on the coattails” of the president.”
——–Wikipedia
So, here’s the question:
Does Biden have sufficient ‘charisma’ to produce a Democratic ‘landslide’ victory in November?
03/18/2020 @ 8:31 am
I don’t know if Biden’s charisma will be the deciding factor. Trump’s utterly mangling of the Coronavirus crisis is what is mostly likely to lead to a landslide. Up until this point, Republicans have argued that the crisis is manufactured, because they’ll believe absolutely anything convenient, but events will unfortunately prove them wrong with exponential speed. Republicans will get sick, and some will die, from something they’ve called “fake news.” Then I think many of them will turn on Trump because of how much he could have slowed this down but didn’t. Though he may get quite a boost from giving millions and millions of Americans cash.
Which will have another consequence. The country will see how much better things get when the whole population has some money, though maybe not because this will only bring things closer to normal. We’ll see on that one.
Does Biden have enough charisma? Not to rally the Left. If the Left rallies, which will happen if they hate Trump enough to go to the polls, it won’t be because of Joe’s charisma. However, if, unlike in 2016, the Democratic margin can be provided by the center, yes, he has enough charisma. He’s both likeable and competent.
If Biden wants the Left he’ll have to do something to get it other than winning the primaries, which HIllary should have figured out in 2016. Both candidates have proven too clueless to be aware of the financial pain of millions of people and to be aware of the economic benefits of addressing that problem. They both are too tied into companies that make money on interest instead of anything tangible. So is Obama, actually. If Biden is going to activate the Left on his own merits, he’s going to have to figure out that “What’s good for investors is good for America” (to paraphrase an old saying about GM) is simply not true. Putting investors on a pedestal is killing America. Democrats will by nature slow that down more than Republicans will, but only Bernie and Warren have understood the extent of the damage of that attitude.
Unfortunately, no one addresses the benefits to business of changing this. The extent that this is true is insane and has been the main focus of my blogging for a decade. I’ve seen one recent article talking about the economic benefits of Medicare for All – they’re really serious, but you don’t see Bernie talking about that because Bernie doesn’t believe in selling anything to the business community, even if it just means selling a product he has and doesn’t have to change for them. This is the fundamental problem with Bernie. In one respect he’s the flip side of Trump, a man whose entire political career is based on the proposition that a willingness to say Fuck You to everyone Republicans don’t like qualifies him to be President – not only qualifies him, but qualifies him uniquely.
By the way, Obama never defeated Bush. He defeated McCain and Romney. I’m convinced that the impeachment proceedings would have gone very differently if McCain were still alive, and Romney, as purely a Wall Streeter as he is, at least also acknowledges that he’s an American, unlike the entire Republican balance of the Senate.
Yes, Biden has longer coattails than Bernie because Bernie doesn’t care enough about Democrats in general to worry about his own coattails.
03/18/2020 @ 1:58 pm
No one would ever describe Hillary Clinton as charismatic, and yet, she received 3 million more votes than a television personality. If charisma played a determinative role, it would be shown in the popular vote, and not the electoral vote. In addition to that, Trump’s win was determined by a handful of votes in 3 locations. Much of Bernie’s popularity lurked in those regions as well. Those were comfort votes.
Biden will have coattails because of the transgressions that have arisen since that 2016 complacency/marching misogyny. Voters old enough to know better will recognize that the Justice Department has been turned into a fiefdom for Trump. Duncan Hunter, a GOP congressman was just sentenced to 11 months in prison. This is not for lying for Trump, but his own sloppy, swampiness. Even Republicans will see that the party has gone wrong. Devin Nunes went from telling constituents to go out dining and shopping, to complying with social distancing in the span of two days. If Republicans can’t see that, then we are just as likely to find fossil evidence that dinosaurs from the great extinction actually summoned the killer meteors.
03/18/2020 @ 5:59 pm
Kosh, “By the way, Obama never defeated Bush. He defeated McCain and Romney.”
Thanks for the heads up re my error in naming Bush rather than McCain…
The post has been edited and corrected.
Thanks for reading carefully enough to spot the mistake…
03/18/2020 @ 6:05 pm
Bitey: “Republicans will see that the party has gone wrong.”
This may be so, however, many will remain loyal and vote for Trump nonetheless…
Do not underestimate the numerical strength of the Trump cult and his hold on them…