Donald Trump’s Charisma

In the aftermath of the election, Democrats are naturally trying to figure out what went wrong. I think in the broader picture, they were working against international headwinds coming out of Covid and its concomitant inflation. Nonetheless, as the numbers come in, it looks like Trump’s popular vote lead will be less than 2%.

There’s another side of the equation to be considered beyond Kamala Harris’s campaign. That is Donald Trump’s charisma. It is not attractive to me, but it is to his voters. It allows them to ignore his piggish musings on women and his fraud convictions. It allows them to believe that his policies will make their lives better – and that he indeed has policies.

He will not run again for President, but his charisma has so far kept him out of jail. Even judges seem to be affected by it. Congress will be moved by it (and perhaps death threats) to enact his desires. So it’s worth trying to understand.

Let’s define “charisma” as a partly undescribable characteristic that attracts people and keeps them involved in a relationship.

This charisma is unique to Trump. He has a group of die-hards in a way no other politician has. The people wearing diapers when he was mocked. The people who buy Jon McNaughton paintings. The people who follow him from one rally to another. No other politician has supporters this devoted. Think Susan Collins, John Thune, Ron DeSantis, even the MAGA crew. Among Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, Michelle Lujan Grisham. Only Bernie comes at all close, and that’s not very.

It may be a combination of a number of things.

• His celebrity developed on “The Apprentice.”
• His extremely confident self-presentation.
• His disinhibition, as documented by Ezra Klein.
• His bigotry and his encouragement of it by his followers.
• Solidarity in hating those his followers hate and the promise of revenge.
• His personalized appeal: I will protect you.
• His economic promises.

There’s overlap among these characteristics, which probably aren’t an exhaustive list of the factors making up his charisma. The disinhibition allows the bigotry, which builds the solidarity. Resentment might be another way to characterize this cluster.

And still this seems insufficient to explain his most devoted supporters.