Agree with this 100%. I made it through about 10 seconds of that speech before turning it off, lol.

Yeah I agree you to a large extent. Check out this interview (which I also linked to in another post) https://hbr.org/ideacast/2016/11/why...oted-for-trump

Basically argues for a lot of the things you are saying.

Malachii, that article is part of the reason I think Zuckerberg has a better shot than other current democratic candidates. Every other democratic candidate at this point is part of that professional class.

You think Booker is picking up WWC votes?

Posted this in the wrong thread.

I think this is a fool's gold approach, and can be shown to be false. I could be wrong, but I think it was shown that Clinton could have won with larger minority turnout. Combined with some Trump fatigue, lower approval, etc leading to a slightly depressed R turnout, a D candidate does not necessarily need those voters. Although they would of course be helpful, they do not need to be the main target. Inspiring/motivating messaging that turns out the base and minorities might be a better approach.

Per Reuters: Mark Zuckerberg changing his name to Thomas Harrison

Probably only a small amount of that matters - but that is the part that really matters.

I think Booker would have a much better chance than Zuckerberg, for sure. Few reasons:

- Booker has charisma and natural leadership qualities. Zuckerberg doesn't.
- Booker played college football. Working class folks will respect that.
- Booker has physical presence - he's tall and well built. That **** matters a lot more than people think.

This might be a contrarian position of mine, but I think race doesn't matter as much as people think it does, PROVIDED the Democrats nominate a male and get the messaging right. Obama won places like Ohio twice because he got the messaging right: "There isn't a black America or a white America, there's a United States of America", etc. As long as Booker stays away from identity politics and focuses on a unifying / economic oriented message, I don't see any reason why he couldn't win.

1) Have a huge primary, let the charisma rise to the top
2) Run with that person for better or worse

You could quibble about confirmation bias - but it's hard to argue that in the TV/movie-reel era - the presidential candidate with the most charisma generally wins.

To clarify, I wasnt implying that Booker couldnt pick up WWC votes due to his race but rather that he will have difficulty with working class votes due to the image of being an establishment dem who is friendly to big business.

I'd agree with that actually, that's a good point. But they need to be mindful of preventing further erosion in their support w/ the WWC, and so it would be helpful to pick a candidate that would be amenable to these people. Zuckerberg's not the right candidate for that, and there is zero evidence that minorities would support Zuckerberg (a rich, pasty white dork who went to Harvard with poor communication skill and who appears to lack toughness and "street smarts", if you will.)

Not just confirmation bias, but the fact that Bush II 2000 and Trump both lost the popular vote (Bush II even lost the states, but I digress). If charisma is such a hugely important factor, you'd think these charismatic figures might, y'know, win the most votes?

You could argue that Bush 2000 was close to a tossup charisma-wise with Gore.

Trump is objectively the worst presidential candidate since Wallace or Goldwater - so kind of a unique situation. With Trump you could argue the fact that he didn't lose 70/30 is largely due to his huge charisma edge.

I recall "Al Gore is boring" being a recurring joke on TV at the time. Could be wrong since I was just a kid, but my impression was the public clearly saw Bush as the charismatic one.

No Pres candidate would lose 30/70. About 40 percent is the base line for both nominees, i.e. where a yellow dog gets as much.

Same. JFC that was irritating to listen to.

I dunno, I think the bolded is true in the wonky sense (i.e. people who follow politics closely know this) but not in a general public sense. Obama was an establishment Dem who was friendly to big business too! He talked a strong enough game to the working class though, I'm sure Booker can do so as well (probably already has, I don't remember his public speeches at the DNC or whatever off the top of my head but I doubt they made a point of talking about the need to be softer on Wall Street).

Substitute 30/70 for "biggest blowout possible" Mr Literal.

Also Trump still should have lost 70/30 if not for people like my parents who have absolutely zero reason to want to upset the status quo but are brainwashed from 15 years of FoxNews. But that's another issue.

Also give Gore and HRC a bump for following popular presidents in an up economy. My hypothesis is a more charismatic candidate wins easily there.

he kind of reminds me of Jared Kushner

I think you're right that race doesn't matter as much as people think, in terms of the candidate's race - if they have the charisma, good messaging, etc. Obama obviously showed that. But what Trump showed is that race in terms of racism & tribalism still very much matters, unfortunately. Even Obama showed that somewhat as well, because the slight loss of some whites possibly due to racism was more than offset by larger black/minority turnout - which is still tribalism of a different kind.

As to gender, I think more is being made of it than needs to be. Hillary had a HUGE amount of negatives and yet she won the popular vote and almost the EC. If any one of a number of things had somehow been different - her messaging, her charisma, her 30 years of baggage, Comey, Russia/WikiLeaks, etc - she would have won. So if you substitute a female who is better than Hillary in any of these areas, there is a strong chance she would win. Hillary is not and should not be a referendum on all female politicians and the public's acceptance of them or not.

Yeah but it's a bunch of unfalsifiable nonsense. Donald Trump's "charisma" comes from the fact that he says all the dumb **** that comes into his mind unfiltered, dispensing a bunch of bigotted, easily debunked, "common sense." That is one reason why some people love him, yes, but also why others can't stand him. Is his charisma winning? Would a generic Republican have lost against Clinton? You can find polls that point against that.

You have this undefined thing that you're saying is super important, but where is the evidence? I gave you some evidence that the value of undefinable "charisma" is questionable. You can find more in the primaries. Was Clinton more charismatic than Bernie? Was Clinton, who recieved more primary votes (but fewer delegates), more charismatic than Obama? Was Romney the most charismatic in the 2012 GOP primaries? You may have individual explanations for each of these cases, but that kinda proves my point. That many other individual factors can overtake charisma in importance. It matters to some degree, obviously, but arguments that charisma is the make or break factor end up being riddled with confirmation bias and selective memory.

You are taking this way too seriously. Obviously it's not something we're going to be able to objectively quantify nor did I ever say I could prove it.

I'm saying just go back and look at every presidential election since JFK, triangulate that with what you know about human nature, turning out the base, and swing voters. When I do that charisma sure seems to be the biggest deciding factor in close elections, and can turn blowouts into narrow wins and vice versa.

I'm specifically not talking about primaries because low-info swing voters and the semi-motivated wing of the base don't get into those. Most primary voters have some grasp of actual issues.

I am curious about this too.

With the info he has on us, he could easily craft a data-based optimal campaign strategy and crush anybody in an election.

One good outcome is we'd surely see the end of Cambridge Analytica's FB voter de-motivation campaigns.

I took the personality test associated with Cambridge Analytica. It thought I was a well-organised female. Less important than the mere fact of its being wrong on both counts is the justification it offered for its choices. It decided I was "well organised" because I had, at some point in time, clicked Like on a page called Sitting In The Bathtowel Because You're Too Lazy To Get Dressed After Showering or something very like that. I don't remember why it thought I was female, but I remember being unimpressed with the reasoning.

I can guess the justification for the 'organised' read - that likes are largely aspirational, rather than naively self-descriptive; the well-organised don't have time to sit around in bathrobes, so they simulate the experience by liking things on FB blah blah blah - but I don't think it carries much weight.

All of which is to say that I don't buy the hype around CA and their ilk, and I don't buy any hype surrounding The Zuck's ostensible ability to fine-tune voter preferences. And that's before we even get to the part where he succeeds in selling himself.