Never have two American presidential candidates been so different from one another. The Black-Indian daughter of Left-wing academics versus the white son of a wealthy Ku Klux Klan sympathiser. The woman who spent her entire career in public service versus the man who only left the private sector on the day of his 2017 inauguration. The life-long liberal Democrat versus the ideological shapeshifter who finally gravitated to the extreme Right. The candidate supported by nearly two-thirds of all college-educated voters versus the one supported by nearly two-thirds of non-college-educated whites. The conventional politician versus the insurrectionist who broke the American political mould.
While Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both frequently described as “charismatic”, they clearly have very different sorts of charismatic appeal. And this “charisma divide” helps explain why Harris, despite her almost flawless performance since replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee — uniting the party behind her, staging a close-to-perfect convention, and besting Trump in the 10 September debate — has had such difficulty pulling ahead in a presidential race that still stands on a knife edge. A comparison with Barack Obama’s victorious 2008 campaign is illuminating in this regard: a part of the electorate that saw Obama as charismatic and attractive in 2008 does not feel the same way about Harris 16 years later.
This difference is not just a matter of the candidates, for charisma is not just a personality trait — the ability to attract, charm and inspire others. It is more properly understood as a social relationship, an intense emotional bond forged between an individual and a community of admirers. Different communities find different things charismatic, and, depending on their political and cultural leanings, often dismiss as “fake” in one person the qualities they find deeply attractive and inspiring in another. Between 2008 and 2024, it is not just the candidates who have changed. So has the electorate.
Donald Trump, love him or hate him, has by any measure succeeded in forging the most intense charismatic bond with his supporters of any American politician in recent memory — perhaps, of any in history. Part of the reason is that he projects an image of strength — even if it is the strength of a bully, and mostly false. He also knows, instinctively, how to reach supporters in their own language. Elite commentators mock Trump for his garbled syntax and spelling, for his love of crude insults, for his language of “us versus them”. They compare him with the proverbial drunk uncle ranting at the holiday table. But, of course, many people have ranting relatives. You may not take them seriously, but they are still family. And social media only heightens the sense of familiarity that Trump instils — and that is crucial to the charismatic bond — because their feeds deliberately mix posts from politicians with ones from family members and friends. Trump fits right into the feed in a way that most Democratic politicians have failed to do. Harris sounds like a politician on social media. Trump does not.
Most important — and this is a point that elite commentators generally miss — Trump’s charismatic bond with his supporters is reinforced, rather than shaken, by his constant outrages: his lying, his law-breaking, his racism, his threats of violence. The point is not whether his supporters believe him, take him seriously, or are ready to follow him in an attack on democracy. The point is that he so flagrantly, and joyfully, breaks the rules of American society and politics, again and again. For men and women who believe that those rules are rigged against them by corrupt and feckless elites, this behaviour is thrilling. The fact that Trump is transgressing matters far more than the particular rules being transgressed.
Of course, the hard core of MAGA supporters who feel the bond most intensely amounts only to a minority of the electorate, concentrated among whites with non-elite educations — although not just struggling ones (if one paradigmatic Trump voter is an unemployed factory worker on disability, another is a successful car dealer). But the elections of 2016 and 2020 have both shown that plenty of other Americans are sufficiently tolerant of Trump and receptive to his message to keep the presidential election agonisingly close.
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SubscribeOne really has to wonder about the mental sanity of Professor Bell. if he wants to make any sort of case about Harris, perhaps he needs to temper the hyperbole about Trump in his opening paragraph which is sheer popycock. One wonders how Prof. Bell even managed to get tenure if the quality of his research is anywhere close to that manifested in this article.
You must not know how easy it is to get tenure if you are on the proper side of the ideological divide. On some campuses it is impossible to find anyone who is not a Democrat and rather zealous about it.
The people reviewing his work are just as biased.
I can understand his desperation. He’s a professor at Princeton. You don’t get much more ruling class than that. Trump represents the end of everything he stands for. The irony is that that end is coming anyway. If we didn’t have universities we wouldn’t invent them. We have the Internet.
What a load of garbage. Is someone actually paying this author to write this crap? Both Harris and Trump have about as much charisma as a colostomy bag and whichever of them wins will be elected by voters holding their noses and trying to triangulate the lesser of two evils. The weird bottom line is that Nikki Haley, who for reasons defying logic is no longer in the race, would have mopped the floor with Harris.
This comment is silly too. There is absolutely no question, like him or hate him, that Trump has charisma in spades. Harris, on the other hand, is a complete and utter airhead. As for Nikki Hailey, she was not without baggage, especially since she is a neocon forever war type.
Charisma in spades my ass. Anyone who believes Trump is charismatic is silly. The guy is a buffoon to all but his small undereducated knuckle-dragging base. He is a contender only because many centrists, who otherwise find him disgusting, are so terrified of the progressive Left machine that they would vote for anyone not a Democrat. My point is not that Nikki Haley is the reincarnation of Winston Churchill. My point is that THE POLLS HAVE ALL INDICATED SHE WOULD HAVE BEATEN HARRIS IN A LANDSLIDE. That is a paradox that speaks volumes to the perversity of American politics at this moment. Get it?
the only problem is that nikki haley is part of the same elite that stands for corporate fascism as harris. they are like tweedledee and tweedledum
trump on the other hand stands for true american ideals, which are freedom and self determination. just look at who supports harris and who supports trump. faceless bureaucrats vs all star team.
In reality, he’s a contender because the status quo is effed up beyond belief. The professional political class that comprises the uniparty is what makes Trump even possible, let alone electable.
The fact that Haley would have bean a Reagan/Bush style of President is what I liked about her.
Not sure I see the similarity between Reagan and Bush (assume you meant Bush I). The US electorate certainly noticed there was a difference.
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Reagan and Bush I were quite different personally, but I always saw Bush I’s Presidency as “Reagan’s third term”. I guess the electorate did too.
Bush I or II? Both of them were very different to Reagan. Bush I fell on his sword when he said: “Read my lips No New Taxes” and continued in his first year of office signing into law a “stealth budget”. Many conservatives/ libertarians left the GOP and voted for Perot the next term , making it possible for Clinton to win. Bush II was an establishment candidate and neocon war monger. Nothing like Reagan, although during his term he had the very disappointing contra affair…. Voters are totally disillusioned with another Bush like candidate. With all his flaws, Trump wants to smash the Washington Elite, stop the Great Green Scam, get the economy going again and stop the endless foreign wars.
To me, Reagan’s greatest achievement was winning the Cold War without having to resort to any shooting. Even I thought the collapse of the Belin Wall might lead to a better world, but then along came Putin.
If referring to Bush II you mean a neocon who would manage decline just a bit slower than the Dems. And get us into another war to juice the military-industrial complex. Haley is no Reagan.
I was referring to Bush I. Bush II seemed to be a nice enough guy, but not all that smart. He did go to war in Iraq though, so he wasn’t all bad.
If Trump has charisma, then why (by your own account) do people hate him? He couldn’t even win the popular vote in 2016 or 2020.
There’s a big difference between charisma, which implies impressing almost everybody, and the ability to impress a significant minority of morons (whether those morons are conservative or liberal).
You give yourselves away every time. I am thinking it is nearly impossible for the Progressives to comment on anything Trump without somehow name calling and insulting those who don’t hate Trump.
It’s strange to me because I don’t feel like a “knuckledragger”, moron, or Nazi. I feel more like an electrical engineer, Grandfather, and middle class American citizen.
The way I would answer your question is this: Lets say that Ron DeSantis (to pick another right leaning politician at random) had run for President in 2016, and Trump had not done so. Let’s also say this “2016 DeSantis” had adopted every policy that Trump adopted, and had given every speech that Trump gave. Would he have won? I don’t think he would have got anywhere near winning, because he still would have been DeSantis, not Trump.
You’re arguing that Trump is a more saleable politician than de Santis and others. That may be so, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as having “charisma in spades,” which was the term I was challenging.
Again, if he had charisma in the sense of mass appeal, he wouldn’t have lost the popular vote twice. Nobody is arguing that Hillary and Joe have charisma.
And I think that in your other-than-Trump scenario, the Republicans would still get at least 40% of the votes cast, even if they lost.
There is no getting away from the fact that Trump has that “X-factor” that few politicians have (and I say that as someone who is no friend of his at all). If he didn’t, he would have never occupied the White House. I mean, if you gave Trump’s resume to someone who had never heard of him in 2015, and asked if he should run for President, the answer would be “No, he has no chance at all”. Conversely, the same person on seeing Hillary’s resume would probably say “Yes, she’d be a perfect President”. However, it wasn’t about resume’s. Trump had charisma. Hillary didn’t.
I hate Trump, but even I would accept that he has bags of charisma. I would have been happy if Nikki Haley had become President. I even bought one of her t-shirts (and I live in Australia).
You and what’s left of the collapsed Neocon party.
The world was a better place when the Neocons ran the US.
Now the U.S. leaves the dirty work to Bibi and Zelensky.
Go Bibi!
“From the Liver to the Knee, for Peace through Victory, call Bibi.”
Ok, maybe they should always have done that, but there’s no getting away from the fact that Iran (and its proxies) and Russia need to be dealt with.
“The Black-Indian daughter of Left-wing academics versus the white son of a wealthy Ku Klux Klan sympathiser.” Two falsehoods in a single sentence! That’s impressive even for an Ivy League professor and no need to read further. Kamala’s parents were Marxists and the Charleston protest angle, promoted by the deep state arm called the legacy media, has been thoroughly discredited. Good people on both sides is what Trump said, including those who were opposed to rubbing out history in the interest of forever promoting victimhood.
What’s your evidence that Harris’s parents were Marxists?
The article says that Trump’s FATHER was a KKK sympathiser, not Trump himself.
This is embarrassing. It’s almost like the professorial class has no idea that it’s just parroting propaganda. They truly know not what they do. This should be presented to a Museum so that future generations can study the Absent Minded Professor. The observations here make no effort to be objective. It’s as if the entire concept of objectivity has been transcended by the utility of joyful vibes.
Harris is an actor. Thay want her to be a figurehead that unlike Biden can fill the role of a cultural ambassador. The Democrat Party no longer believes the Executive Branch should be led by one person but by a committee of “experts.” Nobody cares what Harris’ ideas are because she doesn’t have ideas. Ask a Harris voter what she believes in and its almost certain they’ll revert to a TDS diatribe.
Don’t buy the “educated voters” narrative. Most of the “educated voters” have fake degrees and are demanding “debt relief” from the government as we speak.
Excellent comment.
Yes you can sure tell what the democrats really care about. Giving money to their base is all they care about.
I disagree with one point – they do know what they’re doing. Kamala didn’t sneak up on anyone. She’s the same person Dems rejected in 2020 and saw as a liability right up to when Joe was pushed out.
Yes, Harris is an actor, but she is acting along with all the other political actors in the theater of the absurd. As for charisma, it is all a charade, the charade being carried out in front of the omnipresent cameras.
We’re talking about Kamala Harris, right?
Ms. Harris has charisma? That’s funny, I thought what she had was a plethora of reporters suddenly chanting, “Charisma charisma beauty joy …” Weren’t those the same media folks who kept saying Biden was sharp as a tack?
Which end of the tack?
Ha ha.
My sentiments exactly! Good one!
Which rock does this author hide under?
What explains the author’s bizarre assessment of Harris as being charismatic? Willful blindness? Motivated reasoning?
She displays zero charisma. She always comes across as an actress playing a part. You never get the sense that she is being real – that she is engaging in a real conversation, as opposed to reading a script. She actually reminds me a lot of Justin Trudeau. They both seem fake.
Trump is many things and there is wild disagreement about his character, but at least he’s authentic. He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. The author clearly has a case of TDS, but he doubles down on his delusion by describing Harris as charismatic. She is superficial and voters can smell that a mile away.
Maybe the author is simply in love with Ms Harris and, as we all know, love is blind.
That’s the only explanation I could find.
How do you know Trump is authentic? He might very well be a great actor in projecting authenticity. I do not know. Your knowing is sheer speculation.
Good story. I often wonder what will happen to the Republican Party post-Trump (and that day will come – even his most fervent supporters don’t think he is immortal, and he is in his late 70s). Various people are mentioned as his ideological successors, but even the most capable of them are but pale shadows of him. In order to sustain a personality cult, you need a personality. Trump certainly has one (for better or worse), but Ron DeSantis (to give an example) doesn’t.
Your worldview is confusing. Its unclear what traits you admire in a leader?
There are many, but “not being a pathological liar”, and “not being a convicted felon” would be up near the top. I guess “not being best buddies with warmongering dictators” would rate too.
So, once again: it boils down to TDS.
Well, this “TDS” thing that seems to afflict a lot of people is something that Trump brought on himself.
I don’t think any of those traits actually apply to Trump but I understand Anti-Trump sentiment. The DeSantis disdain is a bit more puzzling because his “charisma” while not electric is still better than most politicians like say a Romney or McCain.
There has to be some DeSantis policy or you don’t like the group he represents. I’m guessing it’s more the latter.
It is fair to say that before he threw his hat into the Presidential ring, I had barely heard of DeSantis (as I have said, I live in Australia, and don’t really follow US politics at the State level). Beyond a few COVID-related things, and that weird fight with Disney, I have little idea of what DeSantis has done as Governor of Florida. However, since the Primaries started, he is probably the US politician I have come to dislike most (excluding Trump, but he was a “known quantity” by then). If I were to sum him up, it would “whiny-assed, thin skinned ‘small man’ without an ounce of personality or charisma”. The fact that he appears to wear lifts in his boots pretty much sums him up for me. By way of comparison, I acquired a fair but of respect for Nikki Haley.
Calling MAGA a cult is unserious. Trump is not a unique figure, occupying some singular space in the world. There are literally a dozen Trumps across the globe – in Argentina, El Salvador, Austria, France, Germany, Italy etc. The populist movement will carry on once Trump is gone.
See, I don’t think so. There are any number of “populists” in any number of places, but there is only one Trump. You occasionally get wannabe-Trumps, but they mostly don’t make the grade. Bolsonaro in Brazil was one, but he just didn’t have the personality. When he lost his reelection bid, and tried to “go Trumpy”, other senior members of his party told him it was over and get out of office.
What are you talking about? Geert Wilders in the Netherlands is an oddball. Javier Milei in Argentina is an oddball. These two have been around a lot longer than Trump. All of these populists are unique in their own right, but they all share the same contempt for the incompetent ruling elite. And the response has been the same in every country – they are called racist, misogynist and dire threats to democracy. Wake up and look around. If it wasn’t Trump in the U.S., there would be someone else.
Javier Milei likes Trump, but his political philosophy is quite different. I would say he is a flamboyant version of Ron Paul.
He is very much different than Trump because the issues Argentina is grappling with are very much different than America, just as the issues are very much different for Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Each populist leader and populist movement is unique to each country, but they all share opposition to a political and technocratic elite that is incompetent and unfit for purpose.
I can’t say I know anything about the El Salvador guy, but most populist politicians have a “political philosophy”. To the extent Trump has a “political philosophy”, it can be summed up as “Trump”.
Virtually none of them have a political philosophy. Gobsmacking comment.
Agree. He is a radical politician, but he has levels to him that go beyond pure narcissism (unlike Trump).
Neither of those people are Trump (and Wilders isn’t going to be the leader of the Netherlands any time soon). “Being an oddball” is not the same as “being Trump”. Trump (viewed from a distance) isn’t even that much of an oddball. He seems (in a superficial sense) quite “normal”. I guess that is how he came to be elected President.
“Never have two American presidential candidates been so different from one another.”
I beg to differ, I think they are just one letter different. One’s a blithering idiot, the other’s a blathering idiot.
There is one big difference the professor wants you to ignore – the two have records. Compare things during Trump’s time with the present-day. How many people are better off today than they were four years ago?
How about you, Katherine? Perfect, wise, thoughtful, just?
What sycophantic and inaccurate drivel. The writer could’ve saved his and our time by saying ‘Kamala good, Trump bad’.
This guy also thinks Biden handled the pandemic better than most other countries. And Americans would know that if they would only read European news! FFS!
The trouble with these non-compliant people is they base their opinions on what is actually happening to them not what the newspapers are telling them. (Irony alert)
An interesting if queasy making glimpse inside the Dem bubble – am hoping November is hoping to break his TDS afflicted heart frankly…
It’s magnificent really, isn’t it: the lengths that these guys will go to convince themselves that Harris, possibly the most vacuous politician that the US has produced, is some kind of star?
Just skimmed the first few paras and realised this should be redirected straight to Private Eye for an OBN (if the Order of the Brown Nose still exists there).
Unherd’s endless parade of TDS-suffering opinion pieces on the US elections is starting to look very herd-like. Disappointing.
Ooo. That hurt. (as truth often does)
My “this is OBN material” comment seems to have been held up …
Let’s see if I can rebuild the comment here piece by piece …
There used to be a Private Eye column specifically for this sort of writing. Having spotted immediately what this was, I didn’t get beyond the cringe first few paragraphs.
stopped reading this conceited piece of nonsense after the second sentence, glazed over the next few sentences and decided to skip the rest and go straight to the comments.
I’m happy to encounter views diametrically opposed to my own (which this writer apparently has, at least about the execrable Kamala), but I’d at least expect a bit more bile and cynicism when discussing the machinery of politics rather than this tepid, conformist non-article? I get the impression the author thinks he is being ‘objective’ or maybe even ‘broadminded’ by mentioning some of Trump’s political strengths, but all I read is a great big left-wing Party Line being toe’d. All very “Herd”.
“Harris sounds like a politician on social media. Trump does not.”
That’s because she is a politician, and Trump is not. Ordinary people love that.
Right up to the moment that Biden was shoved out the door, Kamala was to Joe what Joe had been to Obama. Now she’s suddenly a combination of Cicero, George Washington, and a few others. Please stop. Until June, Harris was widely seen – by Dems – as a liability. For reasons that become increasingly obvious, even to an Ivy League professor like this author, with each pathetic attempt at an “interview.”
I have to admit that the “klan sympathizer” sophistry is a new one. It’s usually “he’s literal Hitler” and similar idiocy, but after two assassination attempts, this must be what passes for toning down the rhetoric on the left. But if we’re going to go that way, the professor left out the Marxist angle about Harris’ dad.
“The woman who spent her entire career in public service”! As a generality, Kamala Harris has served her own interests, not not the public’s.
“Harris, despite her almost flawless performance since replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee…” Unbelievable!
KH has declined all interviews except ones where she will be given softball questions and never asked for policy details. Thus Dana Bash intervewed JD Vance with a hostility and rudeness that was embarrassing and unprofessional, She then “interviewed” Kamala Harris with a kid gloved determination to avoid exposing the Vice President’s emptiness and ignorance. Kamala Harris may be intelligent – it’s impossible to tell. Her own staff leak stories of her refusing to learn the briefs she is given, and then blaming the staff when she is exposed as knowing nothing. This is why her staff turnover in the VP role is nearly 100%.
These days, I think that spending one’s entire career in public service is a damn good reason to vote against that person.
Very woke
Unadulterated drivel.
Whoa, this is some Class-A trolling from Unherd. If asked whether Harris had any charisma, Hillary Clinton would dodge it. If Bell actually believes his Harris observations here, David Icke was right and the lizard people took over back in the 90s.
I knew that this article was a hit piece on Trump when he refers to him as an “insurrectionist”. I am sure that he honestly believe that, but no one believes that except for the fellow travelers.This author is so completely in the tank that I could not read past the part where he compares Harris to Kennedy. …The man is clearly an idiot and a propagandist.
This is an important essay for Unherd readers. It’s important to know that there are many people, even those with ostensibly good formal educations, who believe what Prof. Bell believes.
What kind of weed are they smoking at Princeton these days?
Comparing Kamala and JFK?! How high are you? And glamorous? Sure Kamala Harris is glamorous in the way Californian’s tend to be: provincially, with too much money and total lack of style, grace, and class.
Perhaps you should pull your head out of the a$$ that is NJ and travel to Madrid, Paris, or Milan…?
Harris’ fans believe she is a Profile in Courage. Didn’t you know she was on PT-109 with JFK?
There’s so much hogwash in this essay. In no one’s imagination is Kamala ‘charismatic’. She dropped out of her own Presidential bid because she got ZIP attraction from the electorate. The only reason she’s is her position now is that she was placed there by party elders – no one put her there, no one voted for her, she never participated in a primary. For that alone the people should rebel; Democrats are clearly demonstrating that they are the ‘sheeple’ of the country. BAAAH.
What charm? I haven’t seen it yet.
I don’t find Harris charming at all. She is tiresome. And like Biden, incompetent.
What planet would one have to live on to consider Kamala Harris charming? Planet vacuous possibly?
“his disastrous handling of the worst American health emergency in a century”.
Any voter who hated Trump’s handling of Covid is going to hate Harris’s a lot more.
The opening paragraph was so nakedly biased against Trump that I failed to read further. This propaganda journalism is becoming more frequent in Unherd. Much more of this crap and my subscription will be placed in jeopardy.
I recognize everyone is entitled to their opinion but I subscribed to UnHerd because I thought this was an intelligent, sane publication. The glowing characterizations of Kamala Harris as charismatic and inspiring are too fanciful to be taken seriously along with the entire line of argument of this “article” (advertisement). I had subscribed to UnHerd hoping to encounter greater depth than MSNBC.
Swing voters haven’t fallen for Trump. They have seen through Kamala.