Obama winning the "Have a beer with" vote

Before I begin, do yourself a favor and go read this by Andrew Sullivan. It's a piece on why Obama can appeal to even conservative, small government minded voters.

In 2004, conservatives described Bush's charm as "a guy you'd want to have a beer with." Putting aside the fact that most Democrats, including myself, would certainly NOT want to have a beer with Bush, what does this have to do with anything? At the time, I believed that it's merely a poor sustitute for the quality speaking skills of a Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, which Bush sorely lacked.

Looking back, I may have been wrong. Bush presented a simple, uncomplicated view of the world. He seemed like he was trying to relate to people, even if he was failing at it. Both Kerry and Gore seemed to be wooden, uncharismatic, unreal people. When they tried to fake charisma, it almost seemed to make the problem worse.

At any rate, in today's political world, it would be foolish to discount the will of voters who decide their candidate based on who they'd like to hang out with, even if their reasons are foolish. (How many of those Bush voters ended up getting that beer with Bush, I wonder?) It should be no surprise that the most charismatic candidate, Barack Obama, is winning that vote already.

The particular poll in question says "Who would you like to have a Memorial Day picnic chat with," but, it's close enough. The poll only pitted Obama against other Democrats. (In a similar poll with Republicans, Giuliani was the winner.) Perhaps what was particularly surprising about the poll was that Obama even led among all female voters.

Obama has other good polling news. He's the candidate most people expect to win the election. He also has the highest amount of "base" support, meaning 33% of the country already says they will "definately" vote for him (the highest amount of any candidate of either party.)

In related good news, Democrats are now trusted more than Republicans on Healthcare, Taxes, Abortion, the Economy, Ethics, the War in Iraq, Immigration, Education, Social Security, and even National Security. Republicans outpreformed Democrats in exactly zero catagories. Democrats are also holding a 10 point advantage in terms of the congressional ballot. To put that in perspective, in 2006, Democrats won the national ballot by 7 points.