It pains me to say this, but this is why buttigieg polls so low. I agree we need a candidate that fucks at least twice a week. Preferably more when they’re campaigning for maximum aura.
Buttigieg is kinda autistic-coded (he was the trains secretary) but lacks the high nerd-out energy one would expect from an autist so he comes off as overly neutral & boringly nerdy.
There’s an old(ish) gay archetype known as “the best little boy in the world.” It’s a gay man who grew up knowing he had socially unacceptable sexual desires, and in response to living with that knowledge, he became ridiculously accomplished and “square” so as to prove to himself that he was a good and worthy person. Buttigieg reads like that.
He does not, and I say this as someone who likes him. He's too mild-mannered and elite-coded. He's got elite-coded charisma, but that's very different from fucking and working class-coded charisma.
This is also why I'm a bit worried about Josh Shapiro - he's got charisma, but he might be perceived as too elite-coded (plus, he's a bit shorter, grew up in a wealthy suburb, and wears glasses). He's popular in PA, but that's more because of his moderation and his record of accomplishment than his ability to "fuck".
He may not fuck but when he gets invited over by an enemy to repeatedly humiliate them like he does with Fox News regularly it should qualify as some sorta erotic fill-in
I keep telling all of the Boomers who love him and think he's so smart/polite. .Buttigieg has zero rizz and a POTUS candidate needs that in the post-Trump social media age.
Buttigieg is the liberal Trump. By that I mean he wins over his supporters by displaying the cultural signifiers of their socioeconomic class. Trump appeals to the fantasies of the sort of people who eat a lot of fast food, are awed by big trucks, and spend all day watching Fox News. Buttigieg appeals to the fantasies of the sort of people who get graduate degrees, learn Norwegian, and spend all day listening to NPR. It’s easy to miss because the cultural signifiers are so different, but they have the same sort of appeal to different sorts of people. And the problem for Buttigieg is that not enough people have graduate degrees for his shtick to work.
Yes, that’s why a lot of people missed that it was her and Buttigieg competing for the same voters in 2020, not her and Sanders. They assumed it was about policy, not culture.
And this is also why Sanders-Trump voters make sense if you think about it. Politics doesn't have just a left-right component but also an up-down component that really isn't policy-based, but rather "trust in institutions"-based, which impacts culture. Hillary and Kamala were perceived as too far up despite being more "centrist" (and this is why they were perceived as being less moderate than Trump), and why in Kamala's case, campaigning with Liz Cheney didn't really do anything for her. The never-Trump Republican types were already Dems, and realigned out of the GOP when the GOP shifted down. Those types were in the right-up quadrant, while the Dem establishment is in the left-up quadrant. Meanwhile, millions of "left-down" voters realigned out of the Dems and into the GOP when the GOP shifted down while the Dems shifted up. Bernie is in the left-down quadrant (and further left), while Trump and MAGA are in the right-down quadrant (and even then, there's some heterodoxy). The median voter? Ever so slightly right culturally and left economically, but firmly in the down side of the up-down spectrum. Shifting *right* (i.e. appealing to conservative Never Trumpers) doesn't really do anything for the Dems if they keep being "up". Meanwhile, they can be rather left on economics and still overperform if they shift downwards. As for Sanders-Trump, those voters are firmly down and a bit left, but once Sanders was out, they shifted to the next-closest candidate, which wasn't Hillary, but Trump, as only the latter shared their "down" orientation even if they were left-wing.
The closest Trump equivalents among the Dems (as in they perform the culture of Trump voters the best) are Manchin, Tester, and to a lesser extent, Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan. Even they couldn't hang on eventually, but if the Dems start running these types in swing states, they'll do a hell of a lot better. There's a huge difference between being left-wing and "up" (Warren) and being left-wing and "down" (Sherrod Brown), and the same on the right (Liz Cheney vs. Trump), and voters judge based on that just as much if not more than the left-right positioning. Center-left but up (Hillary, Kamala, Pete) is better than further left and up, but it's no substitute for moving downwards. The ideal candidate for the Dems should be center-left and down, not center-left and up.
Yep - what made Trump work is that a lot more people are in Trump's performed SES than in Pete's (and Hillary's, and Kamala's for that matter). The way for a Dem to win is for that Dem to perform the same SES as Trump does. Nobody did it better than Bill "Bubba" Clinton, because he was literally of that SES growing up, and indeed when plotted by education/income, Trump's 2024 base (low edu/low income) was pretty much *Clinton's* 1996 base. Obama wasn't the greatest at it, but he did it better than McCain and Romney. Scranton Joe did it well enough to win in 2020 but only because COVID limited campaign activities. Combativeness alone isn't what wins you elections. It's giving off the vibe of a working class tough-talking man, with more importance on the working class part.
Gavin is too fancy and elite-coded to pull this off, not least because of the fact that he's the governor of California and came from SF. He's the Resistance fantasy candidate - he's nasty and combative like Trump, but he gives the vibe of punching down at the plebs, not punching up at the elites. America has never had an open "punch down at the plebs" presidential candidate in the modern era because elite-coded candidates believe (probably correctly) that it's politically toxic (typically, they tend to be the polite/genteel ones), but "punch up at the elites" candidates are of course very common.
Don't get me wrong - I like Pete. I supported him in 2020. But back then, I had a very elite-coded view of what is charisma, and I now realize that that being charismatic doesn't matter if you're too elite-coded.
This is really quality analysis. As a corollary, I’d add that the reason that JD Vance will forever be associated with fucking a couch is that he really comes across as a guy who fucks couches
The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was really close, and the obvious fuck-gap between the two of them probably made the difference.
Outstanding example. The thing was, Nixon fucked too (which is why he absolutely demolished McGovern in 72), but he ran into a world-historic example of a candidate who fucked with JFK.
Completely agree with your AOC hot take. I like and respect her a lot, but a skinny, nerdy, feminine woman with a high pitched voice and leftist policy positions will struggle in a presidential election.
She’s basically built in a lab to appeal to reddit socialists, but that’s not at all similar to what working class swing voters in the Midwest and South find charismatic and appealing.
There’s always one sentence in a CHH essay that jumps out at me and makes me wants to give a hot take, and this was it. AOC doesn’t fuck?? What?! Are you kidding me??
But they are not curves of the middle aged matronly sort that we associate with female presidential candidates. They are young woman curves. She has a little waist.
The challenge for Democrats is, as always, waaaaay more about getting people excited enough to get out the door to vote than it is about winning over the “working class swing voters.” I don’t know if she can do that or not but I think it’s very possible she could—I do think she’s a real political talent. Whether she’s really ready for this is another question.
You gotta expand on your AOC take because it makes no sense wrt the rest of the article.
Also, wouldn’t mind seeing the polymarket disclaimer at the top of the article vs the bottom. Feels like a rug pull to read something and then realize it’s like backwards-justified sponcon.
I like AOCs politics and she is clearly hot, but CHH is right. She gives off “we need to have a long boring conversation about our relationship” vibes, not girl who likes to fuck vibes. If she released more early videos like the old one of her dancing on the roof it could change
"Here, sit on the couch for a minute. Before we think about going into the bedroom, we need to have a discursive conversation about consent, the evolution of feminist views on sex, Marxist attitudes on sex and emotional labor, and what pronouns we will be using. So strap in."
See this is exactly why I’m shocked we only got a one-liner on AOC. Even if this article is using “fucks” to mean “cool”, men have this insane reaction where somehow she’s not cool because it doesn’t seem like she would fuck them.
I don’t think “fucks” is literal. I would assume CHH would readily admit she does not “fuck” even though in the technical, literal, sense, she has quite a lot of sex for a married mother of two
It doesn’t work either bc conservative women who do well in politics definitely don’t have stereotypically cool girl vibes. The difference on a purely aesthetic level I think is more seeming “above it all.”
If I understand the CHH's take, it's not about being fuckable or even about having sex, its about having agency. AOC sometimes has her "one who fucks" moments, she's got slick direct-to-voter videos and self-confidence. Other times she lacks that energy, seeming comfortable to just lament the system and take on hopeless causes, rather than be someone who moves the agenda forward. Vs other leftists she does have a pragmatic streak which I think is quite underrated.
Early AOC most definitely fucked. She probably still does, but I think she's in a position where she needs to tamp down her aura a bit to be effective. I think she can reignite it if she gets in a leadership role or runs for another office.
Maybe that's what CHH is responding to, I dunno. This is by far the hottest take in the post.
I would love to hear her expand on that, but as a conventionally attractive woman who has zero rizz, CHH is uniquely qualified to make this assessment.
As someone who also has zero rizz, I think it’s very possible for CHH to write tons of charming and funny articles and still suffer from the condition. It’s oddly separable from your actual communication skills. More to do with high social anxiety and an inability to hide it or maladaptive ways to hide it (I’m more Type I and from her anecdotes CHH seems more Type II).
CHH has taught herself rizz (and even wrote some helpful guides). But she has many, many stories of her rizzless life prior (which you've described well). Like many drama kids, she had some rizz-gredients but not the total package. A lot of comedians are like this.
Being charismatic is innate for some and not others. While it's learnable to some degree, CHH's perspective is unique because 1) she has deep enough insight into her mental conditions to learn, and 2) can effectively describe her journey to rizzdom.
I think that when talking about her flaws she can be an unreliable narrator, like how she describes herself as being physically unattractive as a teenager, and then you see actual pics.
I think she clearly falls under a quirk chungas aspergers type of person. If anything, her hot girl style probably adds to a cognitive dissonance since normies probably can't believe a conventionally attractive girl can be autistic because "she doesn't look autistic" (For the record CHH says she doesn't have autism but a lot of people assume she does based on her articles, like that viral "no one likes me at the office retreat")
I think CHH demonstrates some amount of self awareness wrt her physical attractiveness and her insecurity/anxiety around it. Like talking about how when she was in high school, it was easier to get along with guys because they only cared if you were attractive. And you know, she posts plenty of pictures of her body, which given her anxiety, if she didn’t on some level know she was hot…
But she’s also describing at length and thoroughly analyzed her difficulty fitting into groups and making friends. I mean I don’t think she has literally zero rizz. She kept getting hired for higher paying jobs (before she quit for Substack full time) despite being a poor performer.
But I feel like she’s thoroughly analyzed her own hotness and comparative lack of charisma and that makes her uniquely qualified to evaluate AOC on those parameters
Curious to see whether CHH commenters will get as mad about the Polymarket thing as Yglesias's did.
Also, people forget that during the entire Obama administration The Onion had a running gag about Biden that could basically be boiled down to: he fucks.
Senator Biden had a lot of swagger, and he carried that into the VP role, and the first part of his presidency. That's one of the reasons people were always pointing out his gaffes -- he wasn't afraid to swing a big stick (pardon the pun), and sometimes he missed. Sometimes Aaron Judge strikes out, too.
I don't mind that much about the Polymarket thing because of the context. This is a shitpost about how we need politicans with ineffable fucking-ness; the Polymarket widget is superfluous and doesn't have anything to do with the thesis of the article.
Yglesias' article was about how non-elites are stupid and get worked up over things that aren't actual out-and-out corruption. Getting money from a malign source for no discernable analytical benefit while saying in essence, don't worry your pretty little heads about corruption rubbed people the wrong way. If he had used it for an article about, say, counter-cyclical potato price subsidies, I doubt he would have gotten half the pushback.
That’s an extremely bad faith reading of his thesis. He wasn’t saying “don’t worry about corruption”, he was saying “corruption is very bad, but voters’ understanding of what corruption is makes essentially every politician ‘corrupt’ and that makes it harder to punish actual corruption”
Yeah, I was really pre-disposed to dislike that Maddie article, but after reading it I agree with maybe 80% of it. A lot of people really do have this kneejerk tendency to think "this politician's position on issue ABC is very unpleasant to me, therefore they are clearly taking money from Big XYZ", even when the position is 100% consistent with said politician's general worldview. Kinda like how some folks here will attribute points of view they disagree with to virtue-signaling, even when there's zero reason to think that the person is being dishonest about their beliefs.
Highly disagree, plus that incorrect take on things *always* benefits the most corrupt politicians. If you think that they're all equally devious and corrupt, you'll put up with anything, right?
I didn't say they're all "equally" corrupt. Low grade corruption is still corruption. Petty nepotism is still nepotism. Goldman Sachs paying $200,000 speaking fees to politicians is all perfectly legal and above board, but it's also obviously corrupt.
I think the average voter is right to smell the fish is rotting from the head.
Yeah, I'll grant you that those kinds of things don't inspire confidence, and are also fairly bipartisan. But the "they're all crooks" thing will always play right into the hands of the most corrupt person in the room.
It’s not accurate in the slightest. You’ll come closer to understanding, explaining, and predicting political outcomes by adopting the default assumption that every politician is doing their best to advance the public good as they see it and that conflicts are the result of disagreements about what constitutes the public good or what the best strategy to achieve it might be.
Polymarket and kalshi are terrible. Gambling is terrible. It’s funny that this is a free article in the name of getting more people addicted to gambling.
Can you give more detail about why "gambling is terrible"? I'd agree if you said gambling doesn't benefit society as a whole, because of its negative-sum nature. But lots of things don't benefit society as a whole. How many hours that might otherwise be productive are going into watching the winter olympics?
We don't require that everything someone does benefit society. We allow people to seek and acquire entertainment in various forms. And we generally trust adults to choose their entertainment as long as they don't scare the horses.
I like the idea that 39-y/o polyamorous men with Weezer glasses are so inescapable that people subscribe to you just as a temporary reprieve, until they inevitably have to go back out and face the ubiquitous polyamorous mobs again.
I mean this is a “tongue in cheek” post but I’m reading this thinking that there is some real research indicating this is true. If I’m not mistaken wasn’t there a pretty consistent finding that the taller Presidential candidate consistently won?
By the way, this is kind of dark I admit, but it’s hard not to read this and not think about why elites wanted to still not only hang out with Epstein after his first conviction but almost pathetically groveling for his advice or just to hang out with him like 15 year olds desperate to hang out with the cool kid. I mean there were the creeps who almost certainly knew the full story and wanted “in” on actual horrific sex crimes. But I’d say a lot of the others just wanted to hang out with the charming sociopathic “guy who fucks”. I mean, to repeat, it’s pathetic but it seems to me you basically nailed in this post what was going on.
I think similar to Diddy and Elizabeth Holmes, they built up too much social proof & you would assume the legal stuff was just getting misrepresented rather than there actually being a massive illegal operation going on behind the scenes.
I’ll add to this that one of the reasons it was difficult for the religious right to attack Bill Clinton was because he had a reputation of being womanizer. The rumors of affairs and confirmed affair only helped his image.
I’d argue “fucks” is not the right word. The “it factor” successful candidates of the past had is about a very American version of masculinity. So women will always struggle with the average voter (a/k/a morons). That is at least when we are talking about the presidency.
The most appealing candidate should have cowboy energy. They should give off independent, cool indifference, and domineering vibes. For Democrats particularly, youthfulness (in a man) has always helped defeat the notion that all democrats are feminine coded (antithetical to the cowboy persona).
Though, I agree with Yglesias. The candidate’s record will matter because policies give off their own vibes.
This is the most reddit shitposty article ever (and it was awesome).
I'm sadden CHH doesn't like Clavicular because everyday he is getting into some wacky shenanigan. The best way to describe him is he is a reverse IShowSpeed, where Speed is constantly getting into situations but it's an upwards trajectory, Clavicular's life is constantly getting worse and worse.
Also with the Obama photo, I'm waiting for the (((CHH))) conspiracy theories, that she is the daughter of a high ranking illuminati member or something. It would explain why she thinks ISIS is trying to kill her.
Sipping my coffee and contemplating being brutally aura-mogged by Bernie Sanders. It is a beautiful world you created for us, CHH.
At the risk of making everyone reading along throw up, my first election was Reagan versus Carter, and I can sign on with the thesis here. Between those two men there is no doubt on who fucked. However, the previous election of Carter versus Ford is a head scratcher - our country must have been at an all time low. No fucks to be found.
I wasn't born yet, but my sense is that Chevy Chase somehow aura-mogged one of the most chadmaxxed humans in existence. Ford had political issues, no doubt, but:
National champion QB
Model
Decorated Navy vet
Survived two assassination attempts
Defeated Reagan
Ford obviously had some major political liabilities, but losing to Carter is may be one of the greatest upsets in rizzstory.
Carter had chronic kindness, not rizz, and in a world where everyone was getting over the fact that the guy who had previously won the aura-mogging contest (Nixon) had stabbed them in the back, they were like "Not gonna fool me again!" and then got bored and went chasing after another shiny aura 4 years later.
Crazy how the public chose the pure-of-heart politician and then decided "nah." Democracy is the best system and should be defended vigorously, but I am sympathetic to anyone who distrusts the wisdom of the public.
Ford was the center for the Michigan national title team, not QB. Hence the title of Rumsfeld’s book about Ford.
Also, ‘76 in KC was the last gasp of what used to be called “liberal republicans”, before Reagan fully took over and remade the party in mostly his own image.
Winston Churchill was right: “the best argument against democracy is a 15-minute conversation with the average voter.” And he lived before “mogging” was a concept.
(Btw, my phone tries to autocorrect it to “logging.”)
What I think is interesting about this framework is that "one who fucks" is totally independent from "is fuckable". Female politicians have debated for decades whether it is a blessing or a curse to be regarded as "fuckable", but CHH knows the real-deal is about being able to wield the power. It's all about being the one who fucks.
I feel like AOC's "Tax the Rich" dress was her most "she fucks" moment. Followed by her totally boomeranging the "scandals" about her high school music video and (allegedly) having naked feet in the bathtub. But since then it's been mixed (Defund the Police and Gaza)
Or how about Carly Fiorina when she specified exactly how many naval ships and army battalion she wanted and subsequently rose in the polls?
First Lady Hillary Clinton fucked.
Did VP candidate Sarah Palin fuck? The greatest 50-page forum thread flame war of all time...
Marjorie Taylor Greene? Lauren Boebert? Anna Paulina Luna? Tulsi Gabbard?
This is so hard. I think the background of misogyny makes it hard to sift through.
Pop culture is easier. Rihanna fucks, Beyonce fucks, Kim K, Margot Robbie, Cardi B, Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya. While Taylor Swift is probably the most influential female celebrity not to fuck.
This hilariously makes it sound like a. right-wingers have a beef against people who take off their shoes and socks before bathing, and b. AOC proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she in fact does not take off her socks before bathing.
Late Texas governor Ann Richards comes to mind. Unfortunately, I think a lot of really good women in politics have kept their lights under a bushel, so to speak, in that regard because of the media and political consultants telling them to tone it down.
And while I share most of concerns of MattY wrt Newsome (who fucks and meh electoral record) and Susan Collins (who doesn’t fuck and awesome electoral record), when it comes to presidential elections, I feel like this element of fuckery is more important than say off year senatorial elections!
And I guess another type of election this matters - nyc mayor!
Pelosi fucks in reality, but she doesn’t give the outward impression that she fucks. The people who know how she works get it; that’s why she had a lock on the Democratic caucus for two decades. But she doesn’t convey that impression in media appearances. (For the most part. I think it came through most clearly when she showed how utterly unimpressed she was with Trump)
There's working class-coded fucking and there's elite-coded fucking. The former is far more common and it's the mark of a successful presidential candidate (Bill Clinton, Trump, arguably Bush to some extent). The latter (basically, aggressively progressive with a vibe of punching down at the uncultured plebs) is extremely unappealing outside of deep blue states and among MSNBC-brained Resistance boomers who populate the Bulwark comment section, and it's the category that Gavin Newsom and Pelosi are in. (Indeed, I'd argue that pretty much anyone coming out of SF has that vibe to voters by default.) AOC is an interesting case in that she's both working-class coded (former bartender, talks a lot about class) and elite-coded (Green New Deal, progressive activist-like social views). She's trying to lean into the former nowadays more because she knows that's a political winner, but being too elite-coded will be her downfall if she doesn't successfully purge that from her own image.
Oh duh, brain fart on my part... the whole time I was thinking "voting record". Obv her electoral record is great, she's very good at getting elected. Voting-wise, she's a marginally less insane Republican.
Maine is a state dominated by seniors and women who don't reward that sort of candidate. This discourse is about who appeals to young and working-class men, for whom this is a key reason for backing a particular candidate.
Gavin's problem is that he's too elite-coded and the governor of CA. I don't think America has had any elite-coded candidates at the presidential level who fucks recently, because elite-coded fucking is considered punching down (which is exactly what the combative Resistance types do), which is probably even worse for electability than being a mealy-mouthed weakling. America likes a *working class-coded* candidate who fucks, regardless of party, or at least the closer equivalent between the two barring special circumstances. The best exemplar of that is none other than Bubba himself. Bush was decent at it but he really benefited from weak opposition from Gore and Kerry on that front. Obama was fine at it but McCain and Romney were bad. Scranton Joe also did decently at it but only won because COVID was a special event that mitigated the advantage it would ordinarily give (arguably, the 2008 recession did the same). Trump is almost at the level of Bill Clinton in that respect, and that's why he does well.
Yeah I 100% agree with this - like I guess Gavin is in a sense Dems version of JD Vance (although I claim JD Vance is worse at it) in a sense - they like to pretend to be every day and like to fuck but excite Online base instead of checked out ppl.
I’d sayJD is even more obviously a faker fwiw but still
I actually think he's a sort of mirror opposite of JD Vance. JD Vance has very little personal charisma as far as politicians go and comes off as pretty uptight and annoying, but sort of derives his power from a willingness to drive more extreme ideological positions. Newsom is pretty much just charisma and is mostly untethered in ideological positioning outside of being generically a Democrat.
Nah, he's the Democrats' version of Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is someone who, like him, governs a "stereotypical" state of his party, is obsessed with owning the libs (Gavin is building a brand off of owning the cons), and appeals more to hardcore partisans than swing voters. Trump won because he came off as working-class in a way that neither Gavin nor DeSantis can manage.
Love seeing you use your massive platform to support small voices like George W. Bush's Substack 😂
I love supporting independent art!
It's not the political analysis that we deserve, but it's the political analysis that we need.
Personally I'd say other way round, Peter
There's a joke about substack subscribers being subs in here...
H.L. Mencken in spirit if not prowess.
It pains me to say this, but this is why buttigieg polls so low. I agree we need a candidate that fucks at least twice a week. Preferably more when they’re campaigning for maximum aura.
Buttigieg is kinda autistic-coded (he was the trains secretary) but lacks the high nerd-out energy one would expect from an autist so he comes off as overly neutral & boringly nerdy.
There’s an old(ish) gay archetype known as “the best little boy in the world.” It’s a gay man who grew up knowing he had socially unacceptable sexual desires, and in response to living with that knowledge, he became ridiculously accomplished and “square” so as to prove to himself that he was a good and worthy person. Buttigieg reads like that.
You don’t need to be gay for that. Growing up in an environment where _any_ sexual desire is unacceptable works, too.
You don’t, but the gay version has its own name (coming from a 1973 book).
Mayor Pete definitely fucks. I guess the awkward question CHH didn't broach was whether this requirement of voters is satisfied by a gay candidate.
Yes I think he does
I've known him for a long time. He does not.
He does not, and I say this as someone who likes him. He's too mild-mannered and elite-coded. He's got elite-coded charisma, but that's very different from fucking and working class-coded charisma.
This is also why I'm a bit worried about Josh Shapiro - he's got charisma, but he might be perceived as too elite-coded (plus, he's a bit shorter, grew up in a wealthy suburb, and wears glasses). He's popular in PA, but that's more because of his moderation and his record of accomplishment than his ability to "fuck".
He’s a gay Christian veteran in a monogamous marriage who is a nerdy technocrat and loves respectability politics. He does not fuck.
IMHO you gotta be a Ron Swanson looking bear
I disagree. I like him and would vote for him with a song in my heart. But that’s a man who does his fair share of the dishes but does not fuck.
He may not fuck but when he gets invited over by an enemy to repeatedly humiliate them like he does with Fox News regularly it should qualify as some sorta erotic fill-in
I still remember the David Brooks column lamenting the fact that millennials aren't supporting this nice young man who dresses so sharply.
I keep telling all of the Boomers who love him and think he's so smart/polite. .Buttigieg has zero rizz and a POTUS candidate needs that in the post-Trump social media age.
Buttigieg is the liberal Trump. By that I mean he wins over his supporters by displaying the cultural signifiers of their socioeconomic class. Trump appeals to the fantasies of the sort of people who eat a lot of fast food, are awed by big trucks, and spend all day watching Fox News. Buttigieg appeals to the fantasies of the sort of people who get graduate degrees, learn Norwegian, and spend all day listening to NPR. It’s easy to miss because the cultural signifiers are so different, but they have the same sort of appeal to different sorts of people. And the problem for Buttigieg is that not enough people have graduate degrees for his shtick to work.
elizabeth warren also does professional managerial class identity politics to the hilt
Yes, that’s why a lot of people missed that it was her and Buttigieg competing for the same voters in 2020, not her and Sanders. They assumed it was about policy, not culture.
And this is also why Sanders-Trump voters make sense if you think about it. Politics doesn't have just a left-right component but also an up-down component that really isn't policy-based, but rather "trust in institutions"-based, which impacts culture. Hillary and Kamala were perceived as too far up despite being more "centrist" (and this is why they were perceived as being less moderate than Trump), and why in Kamala's case, campaigning with Liz Cheney didn't really do anything for her. The never-Trump Republican types were already Dems, and realigned out of the GOP when the GOP shifted down. Those types were in the right-up quadrant, while the Dem establishment is in the left-up quadrant. Meanwhile, millions of "left-down" voters realigned out of the Dems and into the GOP when the GOP shifted down while the Dems shifted up. Bernie is in the left-down quadrant (and further left), while Trump and MAGA are in the right-down quadrant (and even then, there's some heterodoxy). The median voter? Ever so slightly right culturally and left economically, but firmly in the down side of the up-down spectrum. Shifting *right* (i.e. appealing to conservative Never Trumpers) doesn't really do anything for the Dems if they keep being "up". Meanwhile, they can be rather left on economics and still overperform if they shift downwards. As for Sanders-Trump, those voters are firmly down and a bit left, but once Sanders was out, they shifted to the next-closest candidate, which wasn't Hillary, but Trump, as only the latter shared their "down" orientation even if they were left-wing.
The closest Trump equivalents among the Dems (as in they perform the culture of Trump voters the best) are Manchin, Tester, and to a lesser extent, Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan. Even they couldn't hang on eventually, but if the Dems start running these types in swing states, they'll do a hell of a lot better. There's a huge difference between being left-wing and "up" (Warren) and being left-wing and "down" (Sherrod Brown), and the same on the right (Liz Cheney vs. Trump), and voters judge based on that just as much if not more than the left-right positioning. Center-left but up (Hillary, Kamala, Pete) is better than further left and up, but it's no substitute for moving downwards. The ideal candidate for the Dems should be center-left and down, not center-left and up.
Yep - what made Trump work is that a lot more people are in Trump's performed SES than in Pete's (and Hillary's, and Kamala's for that matter). The way for a Dem to win is for that Dem to perform the same SES as Trump does. Nobody did it better than Bill "Bubba" Clinton, because he was literally of that SES growing up, and indeed when plotted by education/income, Trump's 2024 base (low edu/low income) was pretty much *Clinton's* 1996 base. Obama wasn't the greatest at it, but he did it better than McCain and Romney. Scranton Joe did it well enough to win in 2020 but only because COVID limited campaign activities. Combativeness alone isn't what wins you elections. It's giving off the vibe of a working class tough-talking man, with more importance on the working class part.
Gavin is too fancy and elite-coded to pull this off, not least because of the fact that he's the governor of California and came from SF. He's the Resistance fantasy candidate - he's nasty and combative like Trump, but he gives the vibe of punching down at the plebs, not punching up at the elites. America has never had an open "punch down at the plebs" presidential candidate in the modern era because elite-coded candidates believe (probably correctly) that it's politically toxic (typically, they tend to be the polite/genteel ones), but "punch up at the elites" candidates are of course very common.
Don't get me wrong - I like Pete. I supported him in 2020. But back then, I had a very elite-coded view of what is charisma, and I now realize that that being charismatic doesn't matter if you're too elite-coded.
Men det er så få ganger det er nyttig å kunne norsk at vi må bruke det når vi får en sjanse. Og norsktalende kan knulle.
I feel like he pops up and people remember he’s cool, just … not ina way that seems to penetrate deep into the electorate. He’s too cute a dweeb imo
How about Ossoff?
This is really quality analysis. As a corollary, I’d add that the reason that JD Vance will forever be associated with fucking a couch is that he really comes across as a guy who fucks couches
Exactly
An adult convert to Catholicism who fucks is like a round square.
I haven’t met a single person who isn’t the type to leave a dinner early in order to catch Maddow who thought the couch thing was clever.
I agree, but there’s a reason it landed while a thousand anti-Trump bits never did
You're begging the question, Marxist Grandpa. It landed with chuds only.
and he is still wearing eyeliner for some reason
The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was really close, and the obvious fuck-gap between the two of them probably made the difference.
Outstanding example. The thing was, Nixon fucked too (which is why he absolutely demolished McGovern in 72), but he ran into a world-historic example of a candidate who fucked with JFK.
I don't think any winning other presidential candidate of the 20th century could compete with JFK on that front
Eh I actually maintain prime Bill Clinton was the most charismatic President of modern times, JFK with his prep-school Massachusetts accent included.
Completely agree with your AOC hot take. I like and respect her a lot, but a skinny, nerdy, feminine woman with a high pitched voice and leftist policy positions will struggle in a presidential election.
She’s basically built in a lab to appeal to reddit socialists, but that’s not at all similar to what working class swing voters in the Midwest and South find charismatic and appealing.
I’m not super confident on my take there I overall like her, but I just don’t know if she “has it.” Certainly more than Hillary Clinton but yeah.
There’s always one sentence in a CHH essay that jumps out at me and makes me wants to give a hot take, and this was it. AOC doesn’t fuck?? What?! Are you kidding me??
“I have to be honest, I don’t think AOC fucks.“
“Skinny?” AOC got *curves*, yo!
But they are not curves of the middle aged matronly sort that we associate with female presidential candidates. They are young woman curves. She has a little waist.
Lol AOC is RAPIDLY gaining weight
The challenge for Democrats is, as always, waaaaay more about getting people excited enough to get out the door to vote than it is about winning over the “working class swing voters.” I don’t know if she can do that or not but I think it’s very possible she could—I do think she’s a real political talent. Whether she’s really ready for this is another question.
You gotta expand on your AOC take because it makes no sense wrt the rest of the article.
Also, wouldn’t mind seeing the polymarket disclaimer at the top of the article vs the bottom. Feels like a rug pull to read something and then realize it’s like backwards-justified sponcon.
I like AOCs politics and she is clearly hot, but CHH is right. She gives off “we need to have a long boring conversation about our relationship” vibes, not girl who likes to fuck vibes. If she released more early videos like the old one of her dancing on the roof it could change
"Here, sit on the couch for a minute. Before we think about going into the bedroom, we need to have a discursive conversation about consent, the evolution of feminist views on sex, Marxist attitudes on sex and emotional labor, and what pronouns we will be using. So strap in."
See this is exactly why I’m shocked we only got a one-liner on AOC. Even if this article is using “fucks” to mean “cool”, men have this insane reaction where somehow she’s not cool because it doesn’t seem like she would fuck them.
I don’t think “fucks” is literal. I would assume CHH would readily admit she does not “fuck” even though in the technical, literal, sense, she has quite a lot of sex for a married mother of two
Correct. I don’t fuck.
That said, the fact I know that about you means we’re getting too far into a paradoxical relationship
Read the post I’m replying to.
It doesn’t work either bc conservative women who do well in politics definitely don’t have stereotypically cool girl vibes. The difference on a purely aesthetic level I think is more seeming “above it all.”
Does Lauren Boebart fuck? In a literal sense, yes.
IMO she does she’s just done in by being too unstable to capitalize on the victory
I also did a double-take at that.
If I understand the CHH's take, it's not about being fuckable or even about having sex, its about having agency. AOC sometimes has her "one who fucks" moments, she's got slick direct-to-voter videos and self-confidence. Other times she lacks that energy, seeming comfortable to just lament the system and take on hopeless causes, rather than be someone who moves the agenda forward. Vs other leftists she does have a pragmatic streak which I think is quite underrated.
Early AOC most definitely fucked. She probably still does, but I think she's in a position where she needs to tamp down her aura a bit to be effective. I think she can reignite it if she gets in a leadership role or runs for another office.
Maybe that's what CHH is responding to, I dunno. This is by far the hottest take in the post.
I agree with this.
I was taking it as updated shorthand for “who do i want to have a beer with” and I don’t understand how AOC doesn’t fit.
Yeah that polymarket disclaimer was a jumpscare. I don't like that creators are partnering with them at all. Kalshi and them are pure evil
Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with the polymarket sponcon lately? Seems like a weird partner to have.
I would love to hear her expand on that, but as a conventionally attractive woman who has zero rizz, CHH is uniquely qualified to make this assessment.
I strongly question the “zero rizz” part.
As someone who also has zero rizz, I think it’s very possible for CHH to write tons of charming and funny articles and still suffer from the condition. It’s oddly separable from your actual communication skills. More to do with high social anxiety and an inability to hide it or maladaptive ways to hide it (I’m more Type I and from her anecdotes CHH seems more Type II).
CHH has taught herself rizz (and even wrote some helpful guides). But she has many, many stories of her rizzless life prior (which you've described well). Like many drama kids, she had some rizz-gredients but not the total package. A lot of comedians are like this.
Being charismatic is innate for some and not others. While it's learnable to some degree, CHH's perspective is unique because 1) she has deep enough insight into her mental conditions to learn, and 2) can effectively describe her journey to rizzdom.
Like half her essays are about having zero rizz
I think that when talking about her flaws she can be an unreliable narrator, like how she describes herself as being physically unattractive as a teenager, and then you see actual pics.
I think she clearly falls under a quirk chungas aspergers type of person. If anything, her hot girl style probably adds to a cognitive dissonance since normies probably can't believe a conventionally attractive girl can be autistic because "she doesn't look autistic" (For the record CHH says she doesn't have autism but a lot of people assume she does based on her articles, like that viral "no one likes me at the office retreat")
I think CHH demonstrates some amount of self awareness wrt her physical attractiveness and her insecurity/anxiety around it. Like talking about how when she was in high school, it was easier to get along with guys because they only cared if you were attractive. And you know, she posts plenty of pictures of her body, which given her anxiety, if she didn’t on some level know she was hot…
But she’s also describing at length and thoroughly analyzed her difficulty fitting into groups and making friends. I mean I don’t think she has literally zero rizz. She kept getting hired for higher paying jobs (before she quit for Substack full time) despite being a poor performer.
But I feel like she’s thoroughly analyzed her own hotness and comparative lack of charisma and that makes her uniquely qualified to evaluate AOC on those parameters
I've always understood the situation to be that CHH has rizz, but it's cancelled out by other traits that subvert rizz.
Curious to see whether CHH commenters will get as mad about the Polymarket thing as Yglesias's did.
Also, people forget that during the entire Obama administration The Onion had a running gag about Biden that could basically be boiled down to: he fucks.
Senator Biden had a lot of swagger, and he carried that into the VP role, and the first part of his presidency. That's one of the reasons people were always pointing out his gaffes -- he wasn't afraid to swing a big stick (pardon the pun), and sometimes he missed. Sometimes Aaron Judge strikes out, too.
I don't mind that much about the Polymarket thing because of the context. This is a shitpost about how we need politicans with ineffable fucking-ness; the Polymarket widget is superfluous and doesn't have anything to do with the thesis of the article.
Yglesias' article was about how non-elites are stupid and get worked up over things that aren't actual out-and-out corruption. Getting money from a malign source for no discernable analytical benefit while saying in essence, don't worry your pretty little heads about corruption rubbed people the wrong way. If he had used it for an article about, say, counter-cyclical potato price subsidies, I doubt he would have gotten half the pushback.
That’s an extremely bad faith reading of his thesis. He wasn’t saying “don’t worry about corruption”, he was saying “corruption is very bad, but voters’ understanding of what corruption is makes essentially every politician ‘corrupt’ and that makes it harder to punish actual corruption”
Yeah, I was really pre-disposed to dislike that Maddie article, but after reading it I agree with maybe 80% of it. A lot of people really do have this kneejerk tendency to think "this politician's position on issue ABC is very unpleasant to me, therefore they are clearly taking money from Big XYZ", even when the position is 100% consistent with said politician's general worldview. Kinda like how some folks here will attribute points of view they disagree with to virtue-signaling, even when there's zero reason to think that the person is being dishonest about their beliefs.
I haven't read the MattY piece but..
> voters’ understanding of what corruption is makes essentially every politician ‘corrupt
...seems a broadly accurate reading by the electorate. #notallpoliticos
Highly disagree, plus that incorrect take on things *always* benefits the most corrupt politicians. If you think that they're all equally devious and corrupt, you'll put up with anything, right?
I didn't say they're all "equally" corrupt. Low grade corruption is still corruption. Petty nepotism is still nepotism. Goldman Sachs paying $200,000 speaking fees to politicians is all perfectly legal and above board, but it's also obviously corrupt.
I think the average voter is right to smell the fish is rotting from the head.
Yeah, I'll grant you that those kinds of things don't inspire confidence, and are also fairly bipartisan. But the "they're all crooks" thing will always play right into the hands of the most corrupt person in the room.
It’s not accurate in the slightest. You’ll come closer to understanding, explaining, and predicting political outcomes by adopting the default assumption that every politician is doing their best to advance the public good as they see it and that conflicts are the result of disagreements about what constitutes the public good or what the best strategy to achieve it might be.
It’s a bad read but it’s probably an accurate description of why people were mad
Yeah, that's a fair point! It didn't really bother me much, but definitely a poor choice for the roll-out
Polymarket and kalshi are terrible. Gambling is terrible. It’s funny that this is a free article in the name of getting more people addicted to gambling.
Can you give more detail about why "gambling is terrible"? I'd agree if you said gambling doesn't benefit society as a whole, because of its negative-sum nature. But lots of things don't benefit society as a whole. How many hours that might otherwise be productive are going into watching the winter olympics?
We don't require that everything someone does benefit society. We allow people to seek and acquire entertainment in various forms. And we generally trust adults to choose their entertainment as long as they don't scare the horses.
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mills-to-prop-bets-prediction-markets-and-mobile-sports-betting-apps-are-fueling-americas-next-addiction-crisis/
I'll comment there because it's unrelated to this CHH column.
We lost Diamond Joe and his blue TransAm somewhere along the way. Sad.
Shirley Bassey lied to us: diamonds aren't forever
Diamond Joe
"I really don’t want to trigger some thirty-nine-year-old polyamorous men with Weezer glasses by relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary"
Yes. This is why I subscribe.
Always good to hear that some things are keeping people around because I hear a whole lotta whining and complaining every day! Sad!
I like the idea that 39-y/o polyamorous men with Weezer glasses are so inescapable that people subscribe to you just as a temporary reprieve, until they inevitably have to go back out and face the ubiquitous polyamorous mobs again.
I mean this is a “tongue in cheek” post but I’m reading this thinking that there is some real research indicating this is true. If I’m not mistaken wasn’t there a pretty consistent finding that the taller Presidential candidate consistently won?
By the way, this is kind of dark I admit, but it’s hard not to read this and not think about why elites wanted to still not only hang out with Epstein after his first conviction but almost pathetically groveling for his advice or just to hang out with him like 15 year olds desperate to hang out with the cool kid. I mean there were the creeps who almost certainly knew the full story and wanted “in” on actual horrific sex crimes. But I’d say a lot of the others just wanted to hang out with the charming sociopathic “guy who fucks”. I mean, to repeat, it’s pathetic but it seems to me you basically nailed in this post what was going on.
I think similar to Diddy and Elizabeth Holmes, they built up too much social proof & you would assume the legal stuff was just getting misrepresented rather than there actually being a massive illegal operation going on behind the scenes.
I’ll add to this that one of the reasons it was difficult for the religious right to attack Bill Clinton was because he had a reputation of being womanizer. The rumors of affairs and confirmed affair only helped his image.
I’d argue “fucks” is not the right word. The “it factor” successful candidates of the past had is about a very American version of masculinity. So women will always struggle with the average voter (a/k/a morons). That is at least when we are talking about the presidency.
The most appealing candidate should have cowboy energy. They should give off independent, cool indifference, and domineering vibes. For Democrats particularly, youthfulness (in a man) has always helped defeat the notion that all democrats are feminine coded (antithetical to the cowboy persona).
Though, I agree with Yglesias. The candidate’s record will matter because policies give off their own vibes.
Finally we get an explanation from CHH, our top political analyst, of why Epstein was the hub of the ruling class
More bitter irony, I'd say
Jokes about a sex trafficker who exploited underage girls will never not be hilarious!
Ok, I think it’s time for me to log off and go touch grass.
This is the most reddit shitposty article ever (and it was awesome).
I'm sadden CHH doesn't like Clavicular because everyday he is getting into some wacky shenanigan. The best way to describe him is he is a reverse IShowSpeed, where Speed is constantly getting into situations but it's an upwards trajectory, Clavicular's life is constantly getting worse and worse.
Also with the Obama photo, I'm waiting for the (((CHH))) conspiracy theories, that she is the daughter of a high ranking illuminati member or something. It would explain why she thinks ISIS is trying to kill her.
Haha it’s not that I don’t find clavicular funny, I just have my doubts about his staying power!
I like this comment for many reasons, but especially for “wacky shenanigan.” Who knew that “shenanigans” could be singular?!
Sipping my coffee and contemplating being brutally aura-mogged by Bernie Sanders. It is a beautiful world you created for us, CHH.
At the risk of making everyone reading along throw up, my first election was Reagan versus Carter, and I can sign on with the thesis here. Between those two men there is no doubt on who fucked. However, the previous election of Carter versus Ford is a head scratcher - our country must have been at an all time low. No fucks to be found.
Happy Monday!
I wasn't born yet, but my sense is that Chevy Chase somehow aura-mogged one of the most chadmaxxed humans in existence. Ford had political issues, no doubt, but:
National champion QB
Model
Decorated Navy vet
Survived two assassination attempts
Defeated Reagan
Ford obviously had some major political liabilities, but losing to Carter is may be one of the greatest upsets in rizzstory.
Carter had chronic kindness, not rizz, and in a world where everyone was getting over the fact that the guy who had previously won the aura-mogging contest (Nixon) had stabbed them in the back, they were like "Not gonna fool me again!" and then got bored and went chasing after another shiny aura 4 years later.
Crazy how the public chose the pure-of-heart politician and then decided "nah." Democracy is the best system and should be defended vigorously, but I am sympathetic to anyone who distrusts the wisdom of the public.
Two things:
Ford was the center for the Michigan national title team, not QB. Hence the title of Rumsfeld’s book about Ford.
Also, ‘76 in KC was the last gasp of what used to be called “liberal republicans”, before Reagan fully took over and remade the party in mostly his own image.
Winston Churchill was right: “the best argument against democracy is a 15-minute conversation with the average voter.” And he lived before “mogging” was a concept.
(Btw, my phone tries to autocorrect it to “logging.”)
Mogging is eternal. They just hadn't named it yet.
What I think is interesting about this framework is that "one who fucks" is totally independent from "is fuckable". Female politicians have debated for decades whether it is a blessing or a curse to be regarded as "fuckable", but CHH knows the real-deal is about being able to wield the power. It's all about being the one who fucks.
100%
Reading this in the cadence of Heisenberg.
Precisely
I feel like AOC's "Tax the Rich" dress was her most "she fucks" moment. Followed by her totally boomeranging the "scandals" about her high school music video and (allegedly) having naked feet in the bathtub. But since then it's been mixed (Defund the Police and Gaza)
Or how about Carly Fiorina when she specified exactly how many naval ships and army battalion she wanted and subsequently rose in the polls?
First Lady Hillary Clinton fucked.
Did VP candidate Sarah Palin fuck? The greatest 50-page forum thread flame war of all time...
Marjorie Taylor Greene? Lauren Boebert? Anna Paulina Luna? Tulsi Gabbard?
This is so hard. I think the background of misogyny makes it hard to sift through.
Pop culture is easier. Rihanna fucks, Beyonce fucks, Kim K, Margot Robbie, Cardi B, Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya. While Taylor Swift is probably the most influential female celebrity not to fuck.
"(allegedly) having naked feet in the bathtub."
This hilariously makes it sound like a. right-wingers have a beef against people who take off their shoes and socks before bathing, and b. AOC proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she in fact does not take off her socks before bathing.
Margret Thatcher fucked. You might not of liked her but the Iron Lady definitely fucked
Daenerys Targaryen, Queen Elizabeth I (ironically enough), and Angela Merkel
Late Texas governor Ann Richards comes to mind. Unfortunately, I think a lot of really good women in politics have kept their lights under a bushel, so to speak, in that regard because of the media and political consultants telling them to tone it down.
Lmaooo I really liked this one
And while I share most of concerns of MattY wrt Newsome (who fucks and meh electoral record) and Susan Collins (who doesn’t fuck and awesome electoral record), when it comes to presidential elections, I feel like this element of fuckery is more important than say off year senatorial elections!
And I guess another type of election this matters - nyc mayor!
I think it applies to high profile politicians, regardless of their office.
I really want CHH's take on whether Nancy Pelosi fucks (I think she does). Hakeem Jeffries? Not so much.
Pelosi would crush if she came up in politics today outside of SF, imo. The way people used to talk about her was insane for how steely she is.
If Pelosi didn't fuck, we need to redefine the term.
Pelosi fucks in reality, but she doesn’t give the outward impression that she fucks. The people who know how she works get it; that’s why she had a lock on the Democratic caucus for two decades. But she doesn’t convey that impression in media appearances. (For the most part. I think it came through most clearly when she showed how utterly unimpressed she was with Trump)
There's working class-coded fucking and there's elite-coded fucking. The former is far more common and it's the mark of a successful presidential candidate (Bill Clinton, Trump, arguably Bush to some extent). The latter (basically, aggressively progressive with a vibe of punching down at the uncultured plebs) is extremely unappealing outside of deep blue states and among MSNBC-brained Resistance boomers who populate the Bulwark comment section, and it's the category that Gavin Newsom and Pelosi are in. (Indeed, I'd argue that pretty much anyone coming out of SF has that vibe to voters by default.) AOC is an interesting case in that she's both working-class coded (former bartender, talks a lot about class) and elite-coded (Green New Deal, progressive activist-like social views). She's trying to lean into the former nowadays more because she knows that's a political winner, but being too elite-coded will be her downfall if she doesn't successfully purge that from her own image.
Agreed!
Wait, Susan Collins? The “he’s learned his lesson” lady?? “Awesome electoral record”??? Sir, please step away from the crack pipe.
You can dislike Collins all you want and I will happily agree with you, but she indisputably has an awesome electoral record.
Oh duh, brain fart on my part... the whole time I was thinking "voting record". Obv her electoral record is great, she's very good at getting elected. Voting-wise, she's a marginally less insane Republican.
She survived 2008 in a blue state when Ted Stevens couldn’t in Alaska.
Maine is a state dominated by seniors and women who don't reward that sort of candidate. This discourse is about who appeals to young and working-class men, for whom this is a key reason for backing a particular candidate.
Gavin's problem is that he's too elite-coded and the governor of CA. I don't think America has had any elite-coded candidates at the presidential level who fucks recently, because elite-coded fucking is considered punching down (which is exactly what the combative Resistance types do), which is probably even worse for electability than being a mealy-mouthed weakling. America likes a *working class-coded* candidate who fucks, regardless of party, or at least the closer equivalent between the two barring special circumstances. The best exemplar of that is none other than Bubba himself. Bush was decent at it but he really benefited from weak opposition from Gore and Kerry on that front. Obama was fine at it but McCain and Romney were bad. Scranton Joe also did decently at it but only won because COVID was a special event that mitigated the advantage it would ordinarily give (arguably, the 2008 recession did the same). Trump is almost at the level of Bill Clinton in that respect, and that's why he does well.
Yeah I 100% agree with this - like I guess Gavin is in a sense Dems version of JD Vance (although I claim JD Vance is worse at it) in a sense - they like to pretend to be every day and like to fuck but excite Online base instead of checked out ppl.
I’d sayJD is even more obviously a faker fwiw but still
I actually think he's a sort of mirror opposite of JD Vance. JD Vance has very little personal charisma as far as politicians go and comes off as pretty uptight and annoying, but sort of derives his power from a willingness to drive more extreme ideological positions. Newsom is pretty much just charisma and is mostly untethered in ideological positioning outside of being generically a Democrat.
Nah, he's the Democrats' version of Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is someone who, like him, governs a "stereotypical" state of his party, is obsessed with owning the libs (Gavin is building a brand off of owning the cons), and appeals more to hardcore partisans than swing voters. Trump won because he came off as working-class in a way that neither Gavin nor DeSantis can manage.
Lmao I forgot about desantis and yea I think he’s much better analogy
(And it’s lowkey funny how he basically lost relevance after that loss)
I was perfectly fine with not knowing what mogged means and kind of regret knowing now.
I actually appreciated the explanation...a bunch of previous CHH posts were inscrutable to me. But all this wisdom does only make one sadder. :-)