“It’s not as if we didn’t see some of this coming,” said Barack Obama, a note of bleak humour in his voice. “I will admit it’s worse than even I expected, but I did warn y’all!”
The crowd at a sports arena in Norfolk, Virginia, half-laughed and half-groaned. “I did,” Obama added. “You can run the tape.”
Now Obama is back on the campaign trail, for Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. It gives him a platform to deliver an alternative State of the Union address. And the gloves are off.
To hear the expectant buzz of the 7,000-plus crowd in Norfolk as candidate Abigail Spanberger promised that Obama’s entrance was just moments away was to be reminded that Democrats did once have a president who could match Trump’s superstar charisma.
I’m so sick of people saying this dipshit with diarrhea of the mouth is charismatic.
The problem is: he is charismatic to other dipshits with diarrhea of the mouth.
He’s persuasive to idiots. That’s not the same thing as charismatic
He is charismatic. He does grab people. Hitler was also charismatic, undeniably so, a great orator. Trump is incoherently charismatic in comparison 😆
It’s fun watching people debate whether the populist dictator that created a cult of personality using words and delivery is charismatic or not 😂
It’s all in how he communicates, not what. He’s an old-school con man, a confidence trickster. That whole style relies on the fact that people are really bad at judging character, and someone who lies with a straight face and never shows an iota of guilt will be believed to be innocent and truthful no matter what evidence is presented against them.
Combine that with a heavy dose of sunk cost fallacy and an increasingly uneducated and desperate electorate, and it’s easy to see why many follow him despite his near complete lack of articulateness.