How Donald Trump won the ‘vibes election’

It's easy to look back at history and think it was always going to turn out as it did. Most people with a little economic literacy can kind of come up with a sentence or two about why the 2008 economic crisis was inevitable, for example, or why the dot-com bust was clear as day. Of course, the people who actually saw those events around the corner became very rich and got their faces on magazine covers, their stories in books, and Tom Cruise playing out their story on the big screen. None of that happened to you, did it?

Fortunately, politics is a little easier, and if you can pull your head out of the polls, look at the candidates for who they actually are, and talk to normal people, you can make a pretty strong guess on where they’re going. Bear with me here and take a look at the last half-century of American politics.

Former Fox News kingpin Roger Ailes had a rule about on-screen talent: women you’d be friends with (or date) and men you’d want to have a beer with (or date).

President Jimmy Carter was a guy who pushed his “humble peanut farmer” bit to the brink, pretended to carry his own suitcases (they were empty; aides carried his actual luggage), extended dictatorial control over the White House tennis courts, and acted like a wuss on the international stage.

Carter made us feel better about Watergate and a little more moral after the Vietnam disaster, so we gave him a shot in ’76. He beat Gerald Ford, whom no one voted into office and fewer liked. In 1980, Carter had to defend the title against Ronald Reagan, a California governor with literal movie-star good looks, a voice minted on the radio, and a promise to manifest a depressed nation’s Greatest Generation nostalgia. Who was going to win?

Four years later, Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, didn’t stand a chance.

But fast-forwarding a few years, how about Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the handsome, energetic, young, and cool moderate versus President George H.W. Bush, who talked like Dean Wormer and struggled in a grocery checkout line?

Was Sen. Bob Dole cool enough to take Clinton down? There was a lot of hope! Clinton’s White House was mired in scandal, but things were going great in America, and for whatever reason, Dole hid his personality and sense of humor as best he could. Clinton crushed him.

Then Democrats threw that nerd vice president, Al Gore, up against Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who chuckled, threw his cowboy boots on the desk, and won. So Democrats went back to the lab and found a guy just as weird as Gore but made him a windsurfer. They were so desperate for a veteran willing to run post-9/11 that they found the guy who threw his medals into the Reflecting Pool on national TV and called his comrades baby-killers. The stage at the DNC that year looked like a cross between a Bass Pro Shop and the set of “M*A*S*H.” It didn’t work. Sen. John Kerry lost.

Or how about Sen. Barack Obama versus Sen. John McCain? A cultural movement that represented tomorrow and the promise of America’s racial redemption against the grumpy hero of a divisive war 40 years in the past?

Then they ran the cool guy again against Gov. Mitt Romney. Even though a majority — a majority — of Americans thought the country was going in the wrong direction, in the end, it came down to the king of layoffs with binders full of women, Mr. CEO himself vs. Obama. Even though every poll showed Obama winning, the Republican eggheads were sure they were going to get him. Ho-hum.

Former Fox News kingpin Roger Ailes had a rule about on-screen talent: women you’d be friends with (or date) and men you’d want to have a beer with (or date). It might sound outdated or sexist or backward to those who spent years and $100,000 to be taught that common sense is actually oppression, but it’s straightforward, it’s true, and you can see it in politics every election.

Consider Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s not likeable. Sorry, but President Joe Biden doesn’t even like her. Obama doesn’t like her. Former first lady Michelle Obama really doesn’t like her. Oprah Winfrey has to work hard to sell her.

Honestly, Kamala doesn’t even seem so into it herself. Over the past week's media tour, she was stilted, nervous, and low-energy whenever she was talking about politics. The only subject she lit up on was her personal life. The only policy that gets her going is abortion. If she wasn’t powerful or running for office and all that mattered was her personality, would you want to have beer with Kamala?

Compare that to former President Donald Trump, who by all accounts is on top of his game. The rage and frustration that dominated his 2020 campaign are all but gone. He’s back to his funny self, dancing and cracking jokes on the campaign trail. Even the mysterious aura of 2016 has evaporated. NFL stars and comedians are openly on his side. You can wear a MAGA hat to most beaches — and when the white lady flips out, she’s the weirdo.

There are a lot of polls out there, and most are pointing in the same direction: The floor is dropping out from under Harris and voters are breaking toward Trump (though Pennsylvania remains stubbornly close — and stubbornly necessary to victory). But setting aside that loose science for a minute, consider the candidates. Is this Kamala’s year? In hindsight, I suspect the answer will look pretty obvious.

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