I’m presuming you understand that charisma isn’t the only criteria for winning, but I’ll repeat my question-who do you think would have outperformed the candidates that were chosen, in Kerry’s case, a diverse primary against an incumbent with less than 50% approval (for the record, @bolverk, I was an Edward’s guy so my judgment is far from infallible, too).
This whole “run better candidates” and “goddamn Dem elites need to quit picking Clintons” is fine to settle on, but it seems to be omitting the obvious-they were the best at the time and we voted for them.
There’s a piece in The Atlantic I haven’t finished yet but it posits that our current anti-incumbent malaise is driven by the failure of government to deliver solutions fast enough to avoid social media criticism (I.e, information travels so fast now that everything looks like shit if you start picking at it.). I feel like there’s an undercurrent of that in the complaints about the Dem candidates.
Here’s my rebuttal-the Dem VOTERS are at fault and need to quit blaming party elites, Hispanics for failing to marry themselves to the party like African Americans have, and wishing that every candidate looked or spoke like Obama.