It's Charisma, Stupid (2004)

As someone aptly put it on twitter (Nate Cohn), the "white working class" is voting like a minority block--and why would they not? The elites have ignored the working class (white and black) for ages and when they do think of them, white (and other) elites look down at them with the contempt of 'white privilege' while they, the elite whites, sit comfortably in their protected perches rarely exposing themselves to insecurity. It's possible this is a consequence of overplaying…

I want to nod along with this, but I can't shake the feeling that it's just too simplistic, with too small of a dataset. So Johnson was supposedly more charismatic than Goldwater, and that's why he won, not because Kennedy had been murdered 11 months earlier? Nixon beat Humphrey because he avoided a heads-up showdown, not because Humphrey had just served as Johnson's yes-man for several unpopular years in Vietnam? Carter beat Ford because he was charismatic, not because Ford…

My first impression was that you were doing a lot of work to explain every single exception or near-exception to your theory. The case of Gore winning the popular vote is probably the most damaging. I'd consider downgrading the claim to "As video becomes more prevalent, charisma is an increasingly powerful factor." If you really believe your theory, you should buy Obama for president on Intrade. In fact, you should have bought Obama back when he was trading at 30%…