this columnist at the LATimes visits Trump-to-Biden swing town of Pueblo, CO and finds idiosyncratic voters who are pleased with the "pleasantly boring" nature of Biden and specifically mentions: as opposed to the polarizing nature of not just Trump but also Hillary:

Meanwhile Susan Glasser at the New Yorker is definitely seeing a 'class not race' thing shape up as she says it is starting to seem like, not Bernie, but Elizabeth Warren of the primaries won the presidency and not the Joe Biden of the primaries:

It makes me think of what we discussed about the results ot the Louisiana special House election results the other day. We were definitely thinking of people choosing "boring" instead of passionate activism; there was also the "calm" thing, a word which the LATimes guy also uses as well as "pleasantly boring".

But that's personality, not policy! The opposite of what this thread is about.

A reminder: the Democrats LOST seats in the House this last election, purportedly, according to post-election "family meetings" with moderates and activists arguing about it, because of framing policy along the lines of "defund police" activism and "socialism"

Which begs the question: how do you get the idiosyncratic voters on board with strong policy changes that might be framed as radical culture wars by the other side?

I intuit a clue., and am inspired here from the LATimes piece, not from the independent types at the beginning, but from this guy quoted at the end of it. He looks like a Trump fan but calls himself a "Republican conservative"

Eric Yoxey is a conservative Republican who gives Biden a B, mostly for his handling of the COVID pandemic.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

excerpt from end, throwing in the comment from an Independent as well

Eric Yoxey, 58, is a conservative Republican who owns a pharmacy in Pueblo’s Mesa Junction neighborhood, on the hillside overlooking the Arkansas River. He echoed concerns about Biden’s gusher of spending — “too much money being pushed too fast” — and criticized the president’s handling of the immigration crisis on the border with Mexico. “He’s made a bad thing worse,” Yoxey said.

But overall, he gives Biden a B for his performance so far.

“He’s done a great job” handling the COVID-19 pandemic and listening to medical and scientific experts rather than winging it or, worse, downplaying the disease the way Trump did, Yoxey said. “He’s also on the right track trying to pull people together, to bring us together as a nation.”

Elkins, the third-party-voting independent, voiced a similar sentiment.

Trump was willing to tear the country apart to win a second term, he said. Elkins’ hope is that Biden lowers the political heat and lessens the unease many Americans felt — about economic displacement, about the country’s role in the world, about exactly whose interests Washington is serving — which all played large parts in Trump’s election and in the unrelenting turmoil that followed.

“Decisions made out of panic or fear are rarely good ones,” Elkins said, “as we saw.”

Back to Hillary, then. I sense you think of her as unfairly tarred as a divisive personality. But I for one, always saw her that way, I think it was an obvious Achilles heel she always had. Althoiugh actually moderate about policy, she was always passionately feisty, a fighter, going back to "well I suppose I could have just stayed home and baked cookies", and even as a Goldwater kid. Which made it easy to paint her as a lefty activist. There was no calm, no boring. I've seen you suggest more than once that this is a prejudice towards powerful women.

I think it is more about feistiness, the passionate fighter persona. Joe doesn't do that, and he's not female. Clearly the new Rep. from Louisana doesn't do that either and he's male.

 Neither did FDR as I see him. I just think passionate fighter personalities can't sell radical policy change. On the world stage, I think of Angela Merkel, not often seen as angry.

 I think Liz Warren straddles the line ot both, I think she seems too angry too often, when her policies are actually quite moderate.

I think it's not about feminism, it's about having a more feminine, moderate approach to your public persona as a  politician It's the "leader" thing, it's about being the calming safe parent that's not going to turn on you and scream at you.  Bernie's biggest downside was his "angry old man shaking fist" persona. Bernie's "more socialist" policies can often sell to Vermont independent types and Reagan Dem types if you tamp down his "angry old man" thing.

It's about having a stereotypically strident male personality, not actually about being male of female. Keeping in mind male chauvinist pig Trump never had a majority with his selling of politics of resentment and anger, won through other means...

tweet from Krugman thread on how GOP really ain't got nothing to offer in policy, all they have is to "be afraid" of the passionate strident personalities you suspect because of their personality;you're right to be suspicious they don't like you, they won't leave you alone, and they are going to end up taking your job and your hamburger