Miller Hudson
My wife spends more time sifting through the Internet morass than I do. When she told me a few weeks ago that the literate generations have adopted the term “rizz” as shorthand for charisma, she also warned me that the terminology as a “thing” may already be on the way out. Let’s stick with that for the sake of the discussion. The term charisma takes many forms. For musicians, comedians, athletes, and Hollywood idols, the personal qualities that attract fans are inherent in the people we admire. They may be sexy, smart, funny, attractive, or compelling, but their “rizz” is externalized and broadcast throughout their fan base. It’s a top-down transmission.
After 50 years in the trenches, I’ve come to the conclusion that political rizz travels from the grassroots to the candidates during the campaign. They aren’t blessed with rizz, they welcome it. This is why landslide elections surprise both pundits and the public. Much like the ocean earthquakes that trigger a tsunami, no one could have predicted them before we developed seismic monitors. The first warning came when the surf slid off the beach beneath the incoming tidal wave that swept everything and everyone ashore. Before I go on to describe specific campaigns, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Vice President Kamala Harris will win the November election in a landslide victory so large that no one can deny it, with the sole exception of former President Donald Trump. Just as dogs start howling minutes before an earthquake is felt, my inner seismic detector flashes bright red.
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Political landslide victories are rare events and can be caused by circumstances that have little or nothing to do with a candidate’s wealth. Franklin Roosevelt would have won his 1932 presidential election after the 1929 stock market crash even if he hadn’t been a fascinating orator. Hoover was the first candidate to claim, in the face of an apparent stock market collapse, that the country’s economy was basically healthy. That claim worked no better for John McCain in 2008. Barack Obama, a black man whose candidacy was seen by many as a bizarre Democratic mistake, managed to attract just a thousand supporters at Broomfield’s Jefferson County Airport that spring. The only surprise was his wife, Michele’s, eloquence, which matched his own. That fall, I sat on the steps of the State Capitol in Denver and witnessed a sea of people converge on the City and County Building. Police estimated that a quarter of a million Coloradans hung on Obama’s every word.
I first heard Obama’s name in the spring of 2004 in the cafeteria of the U.S. Senate in Washington. I was slurping my bowl of white bean soup when a group of black women took over the table next to me. Their conversation was about a meeting with President George W. Bush that morning at the White House. I couldn’t figure out why or what had brought them there. One asked her companions, “Did you hear what the president said when I asked him if he had met our Senate candidate in Illinois, Barack Obama?” He had apparently replied that he had not met Obama, so she advised him, “You should, because one day he will be sitting at your desk.”
Near me, John Hickenlooper’s 2003 bid for mayor of Denver and Federico Peña’s 1983 campaign featured low-profile candidates. Federico announced his candidacy in December 1982 with only 3% name recognition, competing with 14-year incumbent Bill McNichols and District Attorney Dale Tooley. Wellington Webb also campaigned. But on St. Patrick’s Day, three months later, when I was invited to accompany Federico’s campaign team to a parade party in the basement of a vacant Jake’s Auto Parts store on 14th Street, a few blocks west of City Hall, 500 supporters crowded into a stuffy room chanting “Peña, Peña, Peña!” I recognized few in the crowd—they were certainly not Democratic Party staples.
Those of us who had served in the House with Peña as our House Minority Leader would have said many good things about him—bright, articulate, perhaps the best off-the-cuff political speaker I’ve ever met in person, and full of energy. I’m not sure anyone would have noticed his demeanor. He was more of a political freak. Similarly with Hick: Although he had organized a popular campaign demanding that the new Broncos stadium continue to be called “Mile High,” and although he was a nice guy to have a beer with, few would have called him charismatic. But an unconventional campaign style that involved feeding parking meters for overtime violators downtown changed the perception of this bar owner. Nonetheless, both transformed into charismatic “beauties.”
In Peña’s case, Denver’s demographics had shifted beneath the feet of the old guard. A yuppie generation didn’t want to live in a cow town known as the “Queen City of the Plains.” They aspired to become a regional capital for the Rocky Mountain West and were cosmopolitan enough to elect a young Latino lawyer as mayor. Federico appealed to the gay community, long ignored in Denver politics, and talked about eliminating the “brown cloud” as part of a larger environmental agenda. He promised a new world-class airport. Hicks’ reputation as a master of the downtown brewery promised a more vibrant downtown where Denverites could play late into the night. Voters projected their political preferences onto both men, seeing in them the rizz they sought. In turn, each was savvy and smart enough to hear those voices and present them with agendas that matched the desires of the base.
So how does that dynamic translate to Kamala Harris? Voters are sick of the whining, whiny nastiness of Donald Trump. They want a president who is proud of America—proud that we just won the most Olympic medals—and who is desperate to restore our international respect. They want a president who laughs with us and at himself, who is considerate and listens to them. As Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate, noted in Denver last week, “Democrats don’t agree on everything, but we still work together to help everyone.” That’s normal. Harris has spent half her life training for this job. She’ll probably do it well. That’s why her Rizz score keeps rising, and there’s damn little Republicans can do to reverse that. Proof that that electricity is flowing upward from voters is the fact that today’s landslide victory rarely guarantees another reelection.
In her 2020 campaign book, The Truths We Hold, Harris explains her position this way: “Americans are a hard-working bunch. We pride ourselves on our work ethic. And for generations, most of us have been raised to believe that there is nothing more honorable than putting in a day’s honest work to provide for our families. We grew up believing that if we work hard and do a good job, we will be rewarded for our efforts. But the truth is… that hasn’t been the case for a very long time.”
Trying to deal with this perspective will prove to be a futile endeavor.
Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and former Colorado state legislator.
