Why Kerry Lost

Via Drudge comes this summary of a forthcoming Newsweek story that interviews the man, the myth, the Frankenstein monster hisself. A snippet:

The deeper problem may be Kerry's personality, which may be too distant or reserved to win mass affection. As Thomas left Kerry's house in November, Kerry called out and followed him down the street. Kerry wanted to show a letter from a schoolgirl that had been left on his stoop. The letter read, in part, "John Kerry, you're the greatest!" Kerry looked into the reporter's eye. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?" He seemed vulnerable for a moment, then caught himself, smiled and walked home to his empty house.

First in schoolgirl crushes but alas, last in hearts of his country's pundits. Yeh, that explains it.

Whole thing here.

Comments

[Ron Hardin]

He'd have done better if he didn't come across as a crazy person.

[thoreau]

I suspect that very few people actually vote on personality, but the number who do is still enough to matter.

The last 2 elections had the same narrative: A stuffy and robotic Democrat with intellectual airs vs. a plainspoken, folksy, maybe not too bright Republican. And lots of people fed into the narrative by swooning over Bush's alleged common touch or arguing that Kerry is so much smarter than Bush, even if he is a little distant.

But most of the people who gave Kerry kudos for being more intellectual than folksy also voted for Clinton, and most of the people gushing about Bush's folksy demeanor voted for Dole in 96 and Bush in 92, neither of whom possessed much charisma.

Then again, Dole and Bush Sr. both lost. So somebody must be voting on charisma rather than policy. Let's find these idiots and strike them from the voter rolls.

[Twba]

He would have fought a more sensitive war on pundits.

[John Kerry]

I was in favor of a more charismatic approach before I decided against it.

[gaius marius]

I suspect that very few people actually vote on personality, but the number who do is still enough to matter.

i suspect, mr thoreau, that the vast majority of people like to think they vote for rational reasons, but actually vote on abstract or emotional ones.

[grimus]

"i suspect, mr thoreau, that the vast majority of people like to think they vote for rational reasons, but actually vote on abstract or emotional ones"

That assertion is untestable.

[Brian]

The first time he came across as having human qualities was during his concession speech.

I'm no political strategist, but I think that's bad timing.

[Pavel]

I suspect that very few people actually vote on personality, but the number who do is still enough to matter.

The interesting thing about appeals via charisma/emotion is that *everyone* thinks other people are influenced by it, but not themselves. Yet mountains of political strategy and market research show otherwise. People decide emotionally, and look for reasons to justify their decisions intellectually.

That assertion is untestable.

Tell it to Frank Luntz.

[Warren]

IMHO Kerry lost because he lacked the courage to stand behind his Vets Against Nam activities. Instead, he tried to make himself into a war hero. I think he should have abandoned any claims to heroism, medals, etc. and drawn the line at having served honorably. Then contrasted that with Bush, while harping on "I know about politicians sending young men to war out of political expediency... As Commander in Chief, I would never sacrifice blah blah blah"

[PapayaSF]

Not to be a troll or anything, but I'd like to put in a good word for "voting on personality".

We can't, of course, accurately predict what a candidate's policies will be, or measure just what the effects will be. So when choosing a chief executive, doesn't it make sense to use some more general "personality" factors? So many people vote for the person they find more trustworthy, more understandable, more stable, etc. It doesn't surprise me, and it seems like a fairly sensible practice. Certainly it can get a society in less trouble than choosing leaders who are ideologically correct but untrustworthy, unstable, etc.

(I wonder if Hayek ever wrote anything about this? It seems Hayekian to me for people to choose stable/trustworthy/not-too-ideological leaders rather than ideologues with Big Plans they wish to implement.)

[thoreau]

gaius-

Saying that people don't vote based on personality is not the same as saying that they vote rationally. Even voting on the issues might be irrational in some sense of the voters' stances are irrational.

Pavel-

I'm not saying that everybody else votes on personality except me. I realize the danger of assuming that everybody else's votes are frivolous. But when there's significant overlap between those who vote for the highly charismatic Bill Clinton and those who vote for Gore and Kerry, well, maybe there's more than charisma at work here.

Likewise, while charismatic might not be quite the right word for Bush, he definitely comes across as "folksy." Dole and Bush Sr., on the other hand, didn't. Nonetheless, there is significant (not perfect, but significant) overlap between Bush Jr.'s supporters and those who supported Dole and Bush Sr.

The fact that so many people stuck to the same party despite the varying personalities of the candidates suggests to me that most people don't vote based on personality. But the fact that the candidates with more outgoing personalities tend to win suggests that the "swing voters" do tend to vote based on personality.

[Les]

Is it possible that the personality meshes with the policies? Bush and Kerry and Gore and Clinton and Bush Sr. are all assholes (in different ways, of course). And their policies were/are terrible.

This raises the question, who was the last non-asshole in the White House? Was Ford an asshole? Most people agree that Lincoln was a great President. I haven't heard any asshole stories about him.

Okay, it's a silly suggestion, but kind of fun (at least for simple folk like me).

[Isaac Bartram]

"Most people agree that Lincoln was a great President."

You don't spend much time at lewrockwell.com, do you?

I know, you said "MOST PEOPLE". 🙂

[thoreau]

Les-

You don't even have to go to lewrockwell.comn. Right here on this forum, your statement about Lincoln is controversial to some posters.

[Akira MacKenzie]

"You don't spend much time at lewrockwell.com, do you?"

Please no "Lincoln-was-a-fascist-who-oppressed-the-libertarian-South" silliness. I have a headache.

[Isaac Bartram]

Akira MacKenzie

I had hoped I had raised the sarcasm flag high enough. Apparently not. 🙂

[Les]

So, is it genuinely controversial among historians as well? I'd appreciate any links to respected sources or biographies that paint a more objective picture of the man. Thanks in advance.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Maybe Kerry should have grown a beard, it worked for Lincoln.

Apparently Kerry is considering becoming the gift that keeps giving -- to those of us who didn't like him, anyway. Imagine, after sharing with us the spectacle of his life's ambition being smashed by a supposed hand-puppet, he seems resolved to give us more.

Sounds like he's never heard of test marketing. I'll bet all those Democratic moneybags guys have, though.

[Brian]

Here's the thing, I think. It's impossible for someone running as president to say that american soldiers are dying overseas in vain. Just can't be said. So he was stuck with this muddled support the war/do it differently thing. It was awkward and failed the most important test in politics: can you fit it on a bumper sticker? Can't fit your campain on a bumper sticker it's all over.

I don't think he was Dukakis bad. He almost unseated an incumbent president in wartime. An incumbent with a last minute GOTV effort by none other than Osama himself.

[joe]

I agree with Warren that Kerry didn't handle his history as a war protestor right, but I disagree that he had to choose between portraying himself as a war hero and as a resistor. He could have done both. Standing up against government evil can be presented as heroic, just like serving your country with honor in a war zone. In fact, the war hero history (which he had a genuine right to claim) would have made it much easier to present his anti-war activities as patriotic dissent. But he never even really tried.

If he had decided to go toe to toe with Bush's surrogates about his service and his testimony to Congress, it would have gone a long way towards disspelling the impression that he didn't have solid convictions, even among a certain number of people who disagreed with his opposition to the war.

Someone with a Kerry-esque personality can win the presidency, but not if he tries too hard to be a grinnin' "man of the people." Look at Nixon.

[Ruthless]

Kerry and I are about the same age. We were in VN at the same time: he on one end, I on the other.
When I learned an Eastern Liberal Establishment buddy of mine from the Marine Corps--yes there exists such a possiblilty--knew him, double-dated with him, even, and hated him, I was intrigued.

If Kerry could have had the services of Karl Rove, he'd have won with 60 percent.

Shrum rhymes with dumb.

[asshole stories about him]

"This raises the question, who was the last non-asshole in the White House? Was Ford an asshole? Most people agree that Lincoln was a great President. I haven't heard any asshole stories about him."

Les,
Please don't go back to Lincoln.

Silent Cal Coolidge was a wonderful Prez.

Sic semper tyrannis.

[thoreau]

joe-

Isn't it possible that maybe Kerry said too much about his military service? That maybe nobody would have cared about the SwiftVets if he hadn't made such a big deal about Vietnam?

I know that he needed to say something about Vietnam, since any Democrat who criticizes a GOP President's conduct in a war runs the risk of being called unpatriotic. But if he had simply said "I know what our troops are going through. I've seen war from the frontlines..." and then talked about current events, he would have innoculated himself while still sticking to current events.

Sure, the Swiftvets probably would have come forward anyway. But (1) fewer people would have cared if Kerry hadn't made Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign for a good portion of the summer and (2) by letting them be the ones who made Vietnam a major campaign issue, he wouldn't come across as focusing on the past.

And all of this would be moot if he had articulated his criticism of Bush's conduct in Iraq in a clearer and more consistent manner. He came within a hair of winning against a wartime President. If he had done a better job on the Iraq issue right now this forum would be freaking out over his cabinet picks. Maybe there was a indeed a consistent stance on Iraq amidst all of the nuances, contexts, caveats, and whatnot. The fact remains that it wasn't articulated in a consistent manner. Like I tell the students in my optics class: It doesn't matter how correct your understanding of the science is if your words and diagrams don't convey it in a clear manner.

[Gimme Back My Dog]

Anyone who votes for one of the two major party candidates is voting for them because, either, they are only looking for the (D) or (R) after the name, or they are voting on personality. Now that the two parties have officially become clones of each other, there is no other way to make the decision.

The winner of the last few elections has been the winner of the Beer Test. That is, the candidate who seems like they would be the coolest to have a beer with. I was too young to get a feel for Carter/Ford, but it works on all the elections since then.

[Dan]

Gimme Back My Dog:

Idiotic comments. Perhaps some vote for infantile reasons (like I would guess yourself), but most vote for reasons related to larger issues, like battling fascist Islam, for example (my personal motivator). Now maybe Nader or Badnarik have real answers, but I don't think I'll risk it. This is why I voted for Bush: The Brilliance of the Bush Plan

That has slightly more relevance than having a beer with the man.

[thoreau]

Dan-

I agree with you that most voters are probably concerned about things other than personality. But I don't think we can discount the importance of personality to a significant fraction of the electorate. Otherwise campaign strategists wouldn't try to make their candidates personally appealing.

I don't think it's literally a matter of having a beer with the guy. But the idea is to make him somebody you can relate to. Some people are, apparently, more likely to vote for somebody that they can relate to. "Having a beer with him" is just a figure of speech.

I agree with you that being able to personally like or relate to the candidate might not be the best way to vote, but I suspect that it plays a part in the decisions of some people. And if I knew of a reliable way to identify those idiots without hitting any false positives I'd gladly take away their right to vote. But since that's an impossible task, we have no choice but to let those idiots vote.

[thoreau]

And, for the record, I don't think the idiots who vote based on personality have a partisan bias. A lot of them probably voted for Bush the last 2 times around, but Clinton the 2 times before that.

[dhex]

i still think kerry was some sort of plot by left wing elements in the democratic party. or someone lost a bet. it's a hard one to pick.

speaking of beer buying, i'd like to buy whomever came up with the name "logic times" a few cold ones.

[TWC]

Gimme Back My Dog is a great handle. Makes me smile every dang time I see it.

[deron]

I think personality matters more than people will admit. I don't think that means people will necessarily pull a lever for one guy, but it I think it may be a bit more subliminal. The Swift Vote guys for example... they were able to influence peoples perception of Kerry. Had the table been turned I don't think it would have stuck on Bush. The personality issue can make the difference between reacting to an attack like, "Kerry did that... I don't like him," vs., "why can't they just leave him alone."

Bush enjoys a lot of slack, because people don't connect the personality with the accusations.

[plunge]

"Sure, the Swiftvets probably would have come forward anyway."

The Swift Vets were formed and had their big kickoff long before the convention or Kerry had said much of anything on the summer stump. In fact, at the time, that the media didn't pick up on the swift vets rights away was a huge kvetch among right-wing circles: yet another case positive that the media is biased: they just tried to keep the SwiftVets down.

[kevrob]

I wouldn't mind having a beer with W, but I'd make sure the barkeep gave him a Clausthaler.*

There were actually some pretty funny accounts of Kerry trying to drink beer with reg'lar folks during the campaign. He held his mug like it was a cup of hemlock. Probably wanted to complain to the sommelier about the vintage. 🙂

Kevin
Voted entirely on a non-personality basis, for Badnarik.

*http://beeradvocate.com/beer/rate_results/290/842/

[thoreau]

Voted entirely on a non-personality basis, for Badnarik.

Me too!

See, that proves that I am immune to a candidate's personality! ;->

[huskermet]

I have only red state, anecdotal evidence to go on, but I don't think it was Kerry's personality alone that did him in.

My post election conversations with people in both parties tell me that (at least in my state) it was a combination of two things: a personality that made it difficult to effectively articulate simple, understandable solutions to serious issues( Iraq, WoT) to a fearful public, and the seriousness of the issues themselves.

I think it was a "devil you know vs. devil you don't" proposition for the swing voters. Kerry's ponderous nature made it difficult for people to understand exactly what he would do in office, and voters instinctively understood that the stakes for both Iraq and terrorism were too high to take a gamble.

Had Kerry been an incumbent, I think he would have mopped the floor with Bush. But then Rove in that case would have had a different strategery, so maybe not.

Say what you want about GWB's low-ball intelligence and bad policies, but one thing is becoming abundantly clear- he is proving to be a very cagey and vexing politician to do battle with.

[Dan]

I agree with Warren that Kerry didn't handle his history as a war protestor right, but I disagree that he had to choose between portraying himself as a war hero and as a resistor. He could have done both.

I disagree that he could credibly have done both, but that's a moot point, because the smart play would have been to do neither. Vietnam was 30 years ago, most Americans think we should never have gone there, and the conventional wisdom among the under-60 population is that everyone did what they could to get out of fighting in that war. 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996, and 2000 all provided convincing evidence that the American people simply do not give a rat's ass who fought in what long-ago wars or who weaseled out of them. Why Kerry's staff opted to run on his Vietnam service is a mystery to me; I put it down to his not really having done anything in the last 30 years besides cash government paychecks.

[Dan]

thoreau,

And if I knew of a reliable way to identify those idiots without hitting any false positives I'd gladly take away their right to vote

I don't know why you're calling those people idiots.

Let's say you had the option to buy two seemingly-identical used cars: one being sold, by a guy who seems trustworthy, for the price of $20,000, and the other being sold for $19,999 by a guy who seems sleazy and untrustworthy.

Now it seems to me that you're saying that anyone who doesn't buy the $19,999 car is an idiot, because they're making their purchase based on the personality of the salesman. But I think you'd be an idiot to not buy from the guy who seems honest. Human beings are pretty good at reading one another. If you think someone's cold and uncaring, or shifty and untrustworthy, or careless and flaky, odds favor your being right. Better to pay the extra $1 than take a $19,999 gamble that you're wrong about the second salesguy.

The same sort of thing holds true for Presidents. If you have no strong preference, but one guy seems like he cares about people and the other seems like he doesn't really give a shit, and you think it's important that the President care about people, then you SHOULD vote for the first guy, because of the two candidates he's the one most likely to care about people.

It's also worth noting that it is "stupid" to put much thought into which Presidential candidate you vote for, because the odds of your vote deciding the election are essentially nil. So rationality favors remaining ignorant about the candidates -- which makes it more likely that the candidates will seem equal in your mind, which in turn makes it more reasonable to use personality as the deciding factor.

(by the way, this is a different Dan from the one you responded to above)

[thoreau]

Multiple Dans? Aaarrgghhh!

If I had a reliable way to tell that one of the candidates is a trustworthy guy, and the other is a sleaze, I would agree that the "personality voters" aren't idiots.

But when you're voting for Bush just because he's a "simple" guy while Kerry seems way too complicated, or voting for Clinton just because he can conjure up the tears while Bob Dole seems kind of mean, well, that's just dumb. You have no clue what their real personalities are, because their real personalities were discarded long ago in favor of whatever their strategists tell them to do.

Vote for Bush because you want a tax cut or because you think he'll be tougher in Iraq. Vote for Clinton because you want, um, whatever it is that he stood for. But don't vote based on the fact that somebody's marketing people told him that it looks good to clear brush on a ranch, or based on the fact that Clinton's handlers...um, OK, unfortunate term...advisors told him to turn on the tears like a faucet when hearing a tale of woe.

Also, I think that maybe I should take back all of my speculations on why Kerry lost. In a close race you can point to anything you want and insist that if that thing had just been done differently the candidate would have swayed a few percent more and won. So everything I said in other posts is bull.

[Jadagul]

I think on some level personality makes a lot of difference, and a candidate's general approach to life...sometimes more than the issues. GWB's first term was a perfect example of this. The 2000 campaign was run almost entirely on domestic issues. Bush's first term was dominated by foreign policy. If you liked Gore's general outlook better, but voted for Bush on specific policies he talked about during the election, you'd probably be disappointed by his reaction to unexpected circumstances--which always happen. It's possible that one major contributing factor to a lot of people's votes is that, even if Kerry sounded more articulate or had deeper-thought positions or whatever, a lot of voters felt Bush would react to stuff generally the way they would and the way they'd want him to, while Kerry would react to stuff in a way they wouldn't want to. So in that sense, your read of a candidate's personality and general approach can be a beter predictor of how you'll like him in office than what he says on specific policies.

Of course, his policies are important to figure out his approach to stuff, but sometimes you can say "I don't like this specific policy, or that one, but they show that he thinks the way I do." Or even, "X suggests these policies, and Y suggets those policies; but they can say anything. I get the impression that Y thinks more like I, even if X says policies that are slightly closer to what I'd like, so I'll vote for Y."

[raymond]

The Economist is having a competition.

Today we are after that rarer oxymoron: the wisest fool. He or she must be fundamentally an idiot, But a shrewd or cunning one... [T]hey must be alive, or have been in the past 50 years.

...Nominate your contender, explaining why he or she deserves the title in no more than 100 words, to reach us by January 17th.

Though I don't know that I agree with the definition of "wise" here, I'm pretty sure I can predict the winner. His name sort of leaps out at you from the page.

[Onibaba]

Kerry lost because he had nothing coherent or convincing to say about the decisive issue of the 2004 campaign: national security. Waffle, waffle, waffle. You know the old saw--try to please everybody and you end by pleasing none.

[kevrob]

Sometime between his first Senate campaign and his inclusion among the Democratic presidentebili, Kerry needed to inoculate himself against the charges that he was some sort of traitor for his anti-war activities. Had he written a self-critique of his rhetoric, and, more important, his meeting with North Vietnamese officials while still an officer in the Naval Reserve, while the U.S. was still negotiating with NV, he might have persuaded those voters who balked at voting for him because of that part of his biography that he was older and wiser. He needed a "Sister Soulja" moment on that score. Explaining it all to Baba Wawa or some other TV squishy could have helped, too. If he'd laid this all out about ten years ago, so much the better.

What we got was the story of "Live Shot" Kerry, the middle-class scion of a cadet branch of an upper-class family, who took every chance to claw his way back up to the rungs on the social ladder inhabited by his maternal Winthrop relatives. It's one thing if all your classmates and teachers are quoted as saying "We all thought he could be President someday." It is quite another when they depict you as plotting your march to glory as a prep schooler. It was this "commitment to a tradition of public service" or "naked ambition" - take your pick - that made people believe that when Kerry made "home movie" recreations of his Viet Nam heroism that he was giving his future campaign managers the raw material for TV commercials. His marriages, to the sister of a rich schoolfriend, and later to the wealthy widow of a Senate colleague, just added to his adventurer's image. This doesn't even touch on his voting record.

There's a reason that our recent crop of Presidents, going back to LBJ, have not included one who leapt from the Congress to the White House. Heck, if you ignore JFK, the last candidate who made that jump was James Garfield.* Governors and Vice-Presidents don't have to take the hit for votes on controversial Federal legislation. Executives can sign or veto that stuff, but behind the scenes they can see that it is killed or watered down before they have to make that choice. They can even score points with the public by running against the legislature, be it "do nothing" or "runaway."

I don't think that Kerry got out-polled because he got out-proled. No matter how grumpy the public may have been about the Clinton recession and the slow motion recovery exacerbated by the 9/11 attacks, that domestic policy restlessness couldn't overcome the identification of the President with a strong defense/military stance. Maybe Kerry could have sold "I will fight the Terror Network better than Bush will", but his need to run to the left on the Iraq war in response to the Dean primary bubble put him in a box. He was never four-square for an immediate pullout, and he couldn't convince war supporters that he wasn't for a bug-out.

Kevin

*Garfield was shot, too. I don't think that signifies anything, but it is creepy.

[Dan]

But when you're voting for Bush just because he's a "simple" guy while Kerry seems way too complicated

I don't think anyone voted for Bush because Kerry seemed too "complicated". I think that's what Democrats tell themselves to make themselves feel better; it makes it sound like Democrats are just too intelligent for other people to understand. Kerry didn't seem complicated -- he seemed like he had no real political beliefs. He seemed indecisive. He seemed like an aloof aristocrat with little interest in what commoners do.

[joe]

This conversation can go too far. First and foremost, Kerry didn't lose because he was a bad candidate. He lost because he was running against an incumbent president during an ongoing war, with an economy that didn't suck. How bad a candidate could have he have been to come within 3% under those circumstances? While personality and history may have ended up as decisive factors, that only demonstrates how close the race was, not that these factors swung large numbers of votes.

kevrob, I think Kerry DID talk about Vietnam too much, especially at the convention, but the cost of doing so was primarily an opportunity cost. A political covention, especially an acceptance speech, is one of the only times a candidate can get a large chunk of the electorate to pay attention to ideas that are longer than a bumper sticker. Yet Kerry wasted it on touchy-feeling biographical stuff that, unlike a health care plan, can be conveyed very well in 30 second ads and local nooz sound bytes.

That's not to say it was unwise for Kerry to raise his Vietnam service. This turned out to be a wartime election, which revolved around national security. Any challenger has to prove himself to be a tough guy, what the pollsters call a 'strong leader.' Not having executive experience, that left his military service. And it served him well - it made a liberal Francophone Senator from Massachusetts in to a credible candidate against, you know, a "Real American." It also allowed him to criticize the war without appearing unpatriotic (to sane people, who weren't determined to vote against "Hanoi John, the Candidate of the Clinton Recession").

To the extent that the Swift Boat Vets and Bush were successful in scoring points about Kerry's past, their victories were tactical, not strategic. Overall, Vietnam was a big plus for Kerry's campaign, and it was only his handling of the ginned up controversies, not the underlying issues themselves, that kept this aspect of the campaign from being a pro-Kerry rout.

I agree with you that he should have made an effort to define the issue of his protest history, rather than letting his opponents define it. He could have done a Sistah Souljah on the radicals who took over the movement (credibly, since he fought them successfully on the issue of violent tactics, and later left the VVAW because of their growing cooption by movement leftists), while still talking about how he stood up for what he believed in, spoke truth to power, sided with the little guy against a corrupt Republican administration, highlighted his work to improve care for veterans...it was a treasue trove that he decided not to touch, because it was "controversial." Which, in the end, ended up hurting him, because his opposition was then allowed to provide the narrative.

[Jacob]

All the comments about Kerry are irrelevant. This election wasn't about Kerry. It was FOR or AGAINST Bush.
Kerry did so well not because of any traits of his, but because the massive recruitement of all the media, academia, Soros, etc. which were all against Bush and none great fans of Kerry.

Kerry's personality (if anyone is able to discern any) is totally irrelevant.

[not dan]

To Dan with the used car set-up: Why not look under the hood? There are a number of diagnositics and objective measures that can be used to compare used cars.

Oh, right, that's too much work.

[D Allen]

Additionally... Fair or not, but the presence of nutty billionnaire Teresa Heintz-Kerry was also a liability that helped drag down the ticket. I'm sure it wasn't a game-breaker, but she wasn't exactly helping JK.

[Jacob]

Scrappleface, as usual, got it right:
http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/002006.html

[thoreau]

I heard somebody say before the election that the worst thing that could happen to the Democrats would be a narrow defeat.

Victory is victory, and nothing's sweeter than that.

Next best is overwhelming defeat, because at least then you know that you need to do things differently.

The worst is narrow defeat, because you get no clear indicator whether you need to do things differently or just need to do the same things a little better.

[joe]

thoreau, even worse is three consecutive close "losses." (2000 was an odd mixture of winning and losing).

In the last three presidential elections, Democrats won 49%, 49% and 48% of the vote.

On the one hand, this can be read as proof that the Dems are a minority party, since even the smallest margin becomes significant with a large enough sample size. In this case, three small defeats equals on big one.

On the other hand, it can be read as being even less helpful than one close defeat, because there isn't even a trend to look at. Usually, after a close defeat, the viability of doing the same thing again is tested in the next election, and either the defeat or the closeness of the race shown to be a fluke. Not this time - three straight near-ties < one close race.

[Dan]

To Dan with the used car set-up: Why not look under the hood?

Because I know nothing about cars and it isn't worth my time to educate myself about them.

[Stevo Darkly]

... especially if millions of other people are voting to decide which car you end up with. Your personal decision is just one of millions, therefore unlikely to actually decide the outcome, so it's not worth the investment of your time. Public choice theory. Also, David D. Friedman's explanation of why we usually have a better choice of cars than presidents

[Nike Dunk Shoes]

thanks