Thirst Traps Over Think Tanks: Dems Want Hotter Candidates on the Ballot
Awkwardly flirting with questions of attractiveness.
THE DEBATE AMONG DEMOCRATS over how to win back disaffected voters has touched on virtually every aspect of campaigns, policy, and politics. But what if the answer is so primal, so shallow, so inherently biological that to hear it out loud would make you uncomfortably chuckle?
What if the key to winning was to run more “hot” people?
Don’t laugh.
The idea that the Democratic party has a hotness deficit it needs to address has come up repeatedly in conversations I’ve had over the past few months as I’ve talked to strategists about what the party can do to improve how it’s perceived. Yes, they say, Democrats need to shed litmus tests, put aside purity politics, and drop the academic-sounding language. But they also would benefit from simply having more thirst-traps on the ticket, more candidates who could make voters swoon.
“It’s easier to elect hot people. America is a superficial nation, and we want our politicians—especially those that are representing us on an international stage, as the number-one world power—to be hot, to look good,” said Yemisi Egbewole, the former Biden White House press office chief of staff, adding that this had become a “foundational brunch time conversation” among the D.C. Democratic class.
“We are drawn to attractive people. That’s just science.”
Wait, is it science?
In fact, it is.
“There’s lots of evidence that people focus on appearances just all the time,” said Gabriel Lenz, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who coauthored a 2010 study that found that the physical appearance of candidates strongly influences voters.1
“We’re asking [voters] to make really hard decisions—which is who’s going to be the best leader, representative, whoever it is. And we’re often not making it that easy for them to get a lot of other information about the candidates. So people exhibit a very basic pattern that’s well established and well documented,” he added. “They swap in who just looks like a leader, and don’t realize they’ve done that.”
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Whether motivated by the data or more carnal desires, the “hot people” conversation has begun to take over parts of the political internet, where a number of left-leaning influencers and podcast hosts have expressed their desire for the next class of Democratic leaders to have some sex appeal.
“Oh my God, I want a hot president,” Jennifer Welch of the I’ve Had It podcast said in an interview last week. “Hot democrat alert,” posted Democratic influencer Keith Edwards in response to a video clip of Sam Forstag, a 31-year-old smokejumper running for one of Montana’s two House seats. If you search Jon Ossoff’s name on X or TikTok, you’ll be met with a number of thirsty posts calling the Georgia senator a “total hottie.”
“Jon Ossoff—there was just something about him,” said the content creator Qondi Ntini, who runs what can best be described as an Democratic thirst-trap X account, where she frequently refers to Ossoff as “Senator My Boo.” She’s raised thousands of dollars for Democratic candidates through the account and has been invited to the White House and the DNC as a part of their content-creator programs.
“The way I see thirst and the people that I choose to support, it’s more about their values and what they can do for their constituents. The hotness stems from that, and it makes them hotter. It’s also kind of a rebuke of toxic masculinity,” she added. “It’s a fun way to still stay engaged with politics without burning out.”
It goes without saying that simply running for office as a “hot” candidate doesn’t guarantee your election, even if the research suggests it could enhance your chances. For starters, there is no universal definition of what constitutes “hot.” Beauty, in this case, is in the eye of the voter.
HERE’S THE THING: Good looks are fairly synonymous with an aura of youth or vitality—and that seems to be a real driving motivation for Democrats. The party is in the middle of a mass rejection of its gerontocracy—slamming the door shut on the Biden presidency that wasn’t exactly known for its, uh, sex appeal. There is a deep desire to recapture the cultural relevance the party enjoyed during the Barack Obama and Bill Clinton years and to shed the current perception that Democrats are the dweeby teacher’s pets who sit at the front of the classroom.
“Obama and Clinton both had kind of intoxicating personalities; they were young and they were the cool ones. I do think that’s a huge part of this—people think of Democrats in this era as the ugly, hall monitor indoor kids,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Lehrich. “It’s just time for us to have a hot, young, charismatic face in the party.”
It’s not an irrational or even materialistic concern. Some of the most influential voices in the media have remarked that Democrats lack a certain panache that they had in the past—dating back to John F. Kennedy. But there are also real complications and discomforts that come when the conversation moves to this place.
Case in point: Last year, comedian Andrew Schulz—one of the biggest stars of the so-called “manosphere”—went on the TRIGGERnometry podcast and offered his candid thoughts on why the Democratic party had lost its appeal.
“When I was younger, like, Democrats were cool. They were getting their dick sucked in the office,” Schulz said. “It was cool to be a Democrat. Now, conservatives got three baby mamas, the president got three baby mamas. He’s getting pussy left and right. He’s cool. . . . You want me to be a Democrat again? Get some pussy.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Schulz later explained that he was being “purposely reductive” to make a point—and no, of course he didn’t actually think that Democratic leaders simply needed to get laid more in order to win. But his point still resonated with Democrats, for two reasons. The first was because it was a clear signal about the current state of the cultural-political zeitgeist. The second was because it was crass and outdated. Monica Lewinsky was an intern—an employee—in her early twenties when she and the three-decades-older Clinton had an affair.
Even less scandalous discussions of sex appeal and “hotness” can quickly become awkward, such as back in 2008, when Amber Lee Ettinger became internet-famous for lip-syncing a music video called “(I Got a) Crush on Obama.” The video of Ettinger dancing in a bikini singing lines like “never wanted anybody more than I want you” and “universal health care reform, it makes me warm” was a viral sensation. And as the New York Times observed at the time, Ettinger, who became known as “Obama Girl,” helped “crystallize the view of the candidate as a pop culture figure and, to some, a sex symbol.”
The Obama team embraced the cultural phenomenon element of it. But they were not particularly thrilled when, a few months later, Washingtonian magazine put a shirtless photo of the then-president on the cover of their May 2009 edition and declared: “Our new neighbor is hot.”
The issue for the Obama team was that the focus on the aesthetics felt incompatible with the seriousness of the job. The issue for Democrats more broadly is that the soundness of the message (and the merits of the policy) should matter more than the symmetry of the face.
And then, of course, there are the thornier questions about the objectification of women. Can, or should, an open push to run hotter candidates extend to them? Would anyone dare say so publicly? As of now, no. Democratic operatives I talked to all agree that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is indisputably “hot”—but not a single person wanted to be on the record saying it.
If all this feels uncouth, I get it. I am acutely aware that the very act of turning this topic into a newsletter is bound to induce groans and even a few perplexed or angry comments. But the issue is very real—you can see it playing out on the campaign trail. Staffers told me that all those social media videos of candidates working out in muscle tanks and tight biker shorts tend to do quite well online. An adviser to Michigan senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told me they were left completely stunned at a campaign event last year after a throng of older women came up to El-Sayed and “latched on to his biceps.” I witnessed a similar phenomenon last fall at an event for Graham Platner’s Senate race in Maine; a voter sheepishly admitted to me that she’d come to the event because she thought he was attractive.
Then there is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who, as Vogue put it in a profile earlier this year, is “embarrassingly handsome.” As vain as it is, this is going to be a real element of his 2028 campaign, should he choose to run for president. In fact, some Democratic officials told me that they think Newsom might be too good-looking, arguing that candidates still need to feel relatable.
Yet that’s not how looksmaxxer influencer Clavicular views it. In an interview with the Daily Wire last month, Clavicular said he would vote for Newsom over Vice President JD Vance in the 2028 presidential race because Newsom was, well, hotter.
“JD Vance is subhuman,” he declared. “Whereas Newsom is a 6′3′′ chad.”
The hotness election is upon us, whether we’re turned on by it or not.
🫏 Donkey Business:
— Congressional Black Caucus members are pissed off at Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker for backing Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in the state’s Democratic Senate primary rather than the caucus’s preferred candidate, Rep. Robin Kelly. Keep in mind that both Stratton and Kelly are black women. Yet CBC leaders are warning Pritzker that he’s made a serious mistake and has a lot of relationships to repair, especially if he plans to run for president in 2028.
“He has to justify what he did,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told Politico. “I’m sure at some point if he decides to run, he’ll have to come with that justification. As to whether or not it has merit or not, remains to be seen.”
— Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear went after Vice President JD Vance in a speech on Saturday at a Democratic dinner in the Ohio county where Vance grew up, calling him the “most arrogant politician I have ever seen.” He argued that Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, was “poverty tourism” and “trafficked in this tired stereotype” about the region.
My open tabs:
— How White South Africans Are Reshaping the Mississippi Delta
— The Incredible Story of the Cartel Olympics
— Growing Frustration With Chuck Schumer Spurs Talk of Replacing Him
Here’s another study that found the impact of running attractive candidates to be fairly substantial even when “controlling for factors like partisanship, presidential votes, total money spent on the campaign, and the economic state of a given district.”
so… if people want “hot” candidates… then how do you explain Trump? lol
As JVL says, “Good luck America”.