In America you can win office by running mostly on “vibes.”

We don’t like to admit that because it’s not how democracy is supposed to work. The people, in their wisdom and upon painstaking deliberation, opt for the candidate who offers the most appealing policy platform—in theory.

In practice, sometimes the right “vibe” is enough. You’ve seen the data on the height of U.S. presidents, I assume. You’re perhaps aware that, more than a century after women won the right to vote, the country has yet to elect a woman president and has chosen to nominate a woman to lead a major-party ticket exactly once.

Three months ago, a far-left liberal with a brain injury somehow defeated a centrist Republican in a swing state during an election cycle that was supposed to favor the GOP. How’d he do it? Vibes, mainly.