Trump supporters are stuck supporting Trump

Marketing professionals can explain it.

Political pundits have wondered why Republican voters, who took a chance by voting for Trump, still support a man who they see break so many Republican values and policies.

Answer: It's human nature. 

Presidential campaign speeches are infomercials.  The candidate has a few minutes to attract our attention, make a persuasive argument, and then attempt to get commitment. In Iowa the close was a request that the audience meet with supporters and caucus on the candidate's behalf. In New Hampshire, they ask for ones vote.

I am here in New Hampshire watching and evaluating presidential "infomercials". I am seeing at least three candidate presentations every day, and fifteen of them on Saturday.

Tony Farrell

Tony Farrell is a marketing professional with a long and successful career doing strategic branding of products and creating infomercials. Farrell once again brings his perspective to presidential campaigns. He does it by reiterating some of the principles of persuasion written in what he calls "the best marketing book ever," Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, which included a chapter on consistency.

Farrell observes that people want to be consistent, as outlined in Cialdini's analysis.  Once they have committed, humans justify being committed and therefore stay committed.

Trump got voters to commit to him when they voted in 2016. I am watching that process at work again right now. Presidential candidates are seeking people who will mentally commit to them. 

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

"Commitment and Consistency."

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” (Leonardo da Vinci)

Like other weapons of influence, this one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done. Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.

To understand why consistency is so powerful a motive, it is important to recognize that in most circumstances consistency is valued and adaptive. Inconsistency is commonly thought to be an undesirable personality trait. A high degree of consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. It is the heart of logic, rationality, stability and honesty.

Without consistency, our lives would be difficult, erratic and disjointed.

COMMITMENT IS THE KEY

Once we realize the power of consistency is formidable in directing human action, an important practical question immediately arises: How is that force engaged? Social psychologists think they know the answer: Commitment. 

If I can get you to make a commitment (that is, to take a stand, to go on record), I will have set the stage for your automatic and ill-considered consistency with that earlier commitment. Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.

                  
                      The Magic of Writing Things Down

Some door-to-door sales companies use the magic of written commitments to battle the “cooling off” laws recently passed in many states…. The companies have since learned a beautifully simple trick that cuts the number of such cancellations drastically. They merely have the customer, rather than the salesman, fill out the sales agreement (which) has proved to be “a very important psychological aid in preventing customers from backing out of their contracts.”

                                 

There is yet another attraction in commitments that lead to inner change—they grow their own legs. There is no need for the marketing professional to undertake a costly and continuing effort to reinforce the change; the pressure for consistency will take care of all that. What is important about this process of generating additional reasons to justify the commitment is that the reasons are new.

The advantage to an unscrupulous marketing professional is tremendous. Because we build new struts to undergird choices we have committed ourselves to, an exploitative individual can offer us an inducement for making such a choice, and after the decision has been made, can remove that inducement, knowing that our decision will probably stand on its own newly created legs.

                       The Car Salesman

New-car dealers frequently try to benefit from this process through a trick they call “throwing a lowball.” A very good price is offered on a car…(say $400 under competitors’)…but it’s not genuine; the dealer never intends it to go through. Its only purpose is to cause a prospect to decide to buy one of the dealership’s cars. Once the decision is made, a number of activities develop the customer’s sense of personal commitment to the car—a raft of purchase forms are filled out; extensive financing terms are arranged; sometimes the customer is encouraged to drive the car for a day before signing the contract “so you can get the feel of it….” During this time, the dealer knows, customers automatically develop a range of new reasons to support the choice they have now made.

Then something happens, an “error” in calculations, etc. “For only another $400” the car can be had, which, in the context of a multi-thousand-dollar deal, doesn’t seem too steep since, as the salesman emphasizes, the cost is equal to competitors’ and “This is the car you chose, right?”

No matter which variety of lowballing is used, the sequence is the same: An advantage is offered that induces a favorable purchase decision; then, sometime after the decision has been made but before the bargain is sealed, the original purchase advantage is deftly removed.

Automobile dealers have come to understand the ability of a personal commitment to build its own support system, a support system of new justifications for the commitment.

Tom Steyer. Very impressive.

Tom Steyer

I expected to think "ho-hum" vanity candidate, who shouldn't have bothered to run.

Instead, I got blown away. He is good. Very good.

He is electable. He could be a good president, the FDR-type that Democratic activists are asking for. All he needs are for Democrats not to hold against him the fact that he got really, really rich.

Tom Steyer met with Salem, New Hampshire Democrats Thursday morning.  I got there early, saw the table and venue setup, and thought "amateur hour for a vanity candidate." The event was badly advanced.

It was in a coffee shop that could not accommodate even 20 people, and the event conflicted with the lunch business of the proprietor. They put him in the middle of the room, so as he spoke he had to keep turning in full circles so he would face the entirety of the room. There was no microphone.

I came to the event with a negative presumption, that a guy who made a billion dollars from scratch would feel very entitled, and would be insufferably corporate in orientation and likely condescending. He would be the liberal version of Trump, thinking he was special and consider himself a savior, another "chosen one. I had that presumption in part because his ads all have a format: Tom Steyer, alone, looking at the camera, telling us something big and important.  He was positioning himself as the truth teller, a lonely unheard Cassandra, but not as the leader of multitudes. Steyer all alone. The presidency is a job of leadership and persuasion. Where are your crowds, Mr. Steyer?

I was wrong. Steyer was very impressive. His campaign does not do him justice. Maybe he will fix it, and if he does he has an impressive and persuasive story to tell.

He is a liberal progressive, sounding a lot like Elizabeth Warren, but without the Pocahontas problem, and he doesn't remind people of Hillary.

He started his investment business alone a single room with no windows and no employees and in thirty years made a fortune as an investment manager.  He turned to politically liberal advocacy, philanthropy, and direct organizing campaigns on climate, on voter access, on requiring corporations to pay more in taxes, in opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, building grass roots involvement of young voters, and most recently, calls for impeaching Trump.

He speaks with conviction and intensity. His political views are essentially the same as those of  Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, or Pete Buttigieg, i.e, liberal progressive but not Bernie. He sounds as anti-corporation as does Warren, citing the stranglehold of the drug companies on drug prices in America. He said that corporations have corrupted the our government to secure and enhance their own power.  Steyer proposes a 1% annual wealth tax, on people with assets greater than 30 million dollars, rather than Warren's 2% on people with assets greater than $50 million.

He supports a public option, not Medicare for All, at least not immediately, voicing his opposition to immediate Medicare for All on the basis of honoring unions and their hard-won negotiations to secure health insurance as part of their compensation. Don't take that away from them, he said.

Steyer says the American economy is failing. The rich are getting richer but everyone else is falling behind because housing, health care, and education have become very expensive in comparison with wages. There is no unemployment problem, he said, there is a wage problem. Jobs don't pay enough to support a family. He supports unions, opposes so-called right-to-work laws.

He brings to the table one of the assets that Trump brought in his primary, the presumed and independence that comes from self funding, and the presumed practical skill in the world of business that is documented by business success. He matches up nicely against Trump. Trump is a genial huckster; Steyer is sincere. Trump is notoriously self serving; Steyer is public spirited. Trump's fortune was inherited and squandered; Steyer's was earned and is now the subject of philanthropy.

Steyer can win the general election.

His problem is the primary, where Democrats make the same assumption I made--that he simply must be irredeemably corporate and protective of an exploitive establishment. He isn't. He could, instead, play the role of the patrician Theodore Roosevelt, with the dedication to break up the trusts organized by his friends and college classmates at Harvard, and of Franklin Roosevelt, the accused traitor to his class.
Tom Steyer has the ability to motivate and inspire. It takes a thief.

Steyer is a credible liberal progressive change agent.

So far, his campaign has not communicated that he can lead a nation, and indeed I strongly doubted it until seeing him up close.

He could be president.


Watch him:
Two minute clip on why he's running:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7XudWnxW98U
Two minute clip on corporations:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_DObHu8xAf0

If age is the subject, Joe loses.

It isn't a matter of whether Joe Biden is "too old." 

 

The very fact that his age and well being is discussed, makes it a loser issue.

I write this with regret.

I am in New Hampshire, sitting at a table, waiting to see Tom Steyer. I have checked my schedule. I see Joe Biden Friday at 1:00 p.m. I realized the entire purpose of my seeing Joe Biden tomorrow, for the fourth time in 3 weeks,  was to look at his bearing, his tone of voice, the strength of his grip if he shook my hand again. Will he stumble with words?  Any gaffes?

I was looking ahead to writing a report on his frailty. Or vitality.

We know his policy positions well enough. He is a Democrat and a liberal, but not a "progressive." There are some details people can fight about but that pretty much describes it. His policy positions aren't dispositive in the upcoming nomination fight. What is important is whether he is "up to the job." 

The subject is the problem for him. I thought he looked pretty strong, but I have to admit the reality that I was going to look closely at him, looking to see if his hands trembled.

Bob Warren sent me a Guest Post.  Bob is a retired musician. He played piano in bars, he played the tuxedoed piano player in movies, and he experienced life richly for 92 years so far. He can be accused of being ageist, but cannot be accused of being in-experienced in the nature of getting old.

Guest Post by Bob Warren     

"Give it up, Joe"

     Joe Biden, the present front runner in the crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, has always been an honest and decent man but suddenly at age 77 (November 2019) his judgment and intellect seem questionable.  Someone has to risk the charge of being branded as an ageist by fearlessly confronting Mr. Biden with the message he needs to hear: “Frankly, Joe, you’re just too damn old!”

     As a ninety-two year old I am painfully aware of the gradual but inexorable loss of mobility and dexterity that have transformed hitherto simple tasks of every day living into stressful encounters of the worst kind. Fulfilling the function of   chief executive of the USA is perhaps the most stressful job in the world. For the good of our nation Joe Biden should forget his pipe dream of the presidency to lend a guiding hand to someone younger, someone at the beginning of a political career. Someone who possesses the instinctive ability to win both the interest and loyalty of young voters. Hopefully, someone not beholden to anyone.

         It would also be well for Mr. Biden to recall that Ronald Reagan, who was 69 years of age in when he entered the White House in 1980, was coincidentally 77 years of age in 1986 when rumors began  surfacing that he was occasionally exhibiting worrisome signs and “sleeping a lot” . While some maintained at the time that those rumors were both politically motivated and overblown, Mr. Reagan was subsequently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  So bury your ego Joe, before it buries you. Be a class act.  Stand above the fray and utilize the skills you’ve learned as a distinguished senator and vice-president to unite the party behind a candidate who will restore honor and civiity to a position now being shamelessly abused and dragged through the political swamps of America. 

Blaming voters

Some people think we need better politicians.  I think we need better voters.

But don’t blame them. It isn't the voters fault if they don't buy what one is selling.

Leftist Facebook group members are expressing a lot of frustration this week. Joe Biden is still leading in the polls. 

Harris had her bump after the first debate, but she fell back to 8%. Mayor Pete had a quick start, but has settled back to 5%. Warren has moved up, Sanders has moved down. Most of the 20-something candidates register at approximately zero support.

Meanwhile Biden is back to to some 32% support, almost as much a the sum of Warren (19%) and Sanders (15%). That polling seems implausible and self destructive to young Sanders supporters. Voters are being so stupid!

 Click for the poll

Biden's support reveals a generation gap, with 37% of voters aged 50 to 64 supporting Biden and 48% of people 65 and older supporting him. But only 10% of young voters 18-34 support Biden.  The young prefer Bernie.

Sanders is describing a country in crisis and he proposes dramatic changes to address the problems, and yet the bulk of voters are foolishly choosing the status quo. Don’t the geezers understand how terrible Biden is?  Don’t people realize the power structure is screwing them over? What's wrong with them?

Click: Satire website

Expressing frustration with voters is a losing proposition and when voters get whiff of it they rebel. Candidate Obama was recorded saying people cling to their guns and religion, and Fox News still cites it. Voters don’t like hearing a politician thinks they cling. Mitt Romney was recorded saying 47% of people were "takers" and would never vote for him; MSNBC cites that, knowing voters feel they deserve whatever they get. Hillary referred to a basket of deplorables, racists who would never vote for her, and "Deplorable" tee shirts are still for sale. 

Wishing the cocoon of a Facebook affinity group people reveal their impatience and incredulity that there are people so wrongheaded that they willingly disagree.  Bernie Sanders himself changed the boundaries of who was inside and outside the circle of virtue. He used to condemn “millionaires and billionaires.”  Now just billionaires.

Facebook members are not so careful. Old people, centrists, moderates, and Warren supporters all get condemned as selfish or clueless.

The satire website The Onion spoofs this tendency to blame the voter with this faux story of Democratic frustration with rural voters. It imagines Pelosi and Schumer saying, “Hey, you redneck simpletons, put down your whittling sticks, drag yourself away from the Cracker Barrel, and let us tell you how it is.”

The Onion is done for humor, but it points to a real problem I witness directly on the political left: blaming those foolish voters. 

It isn’t the voters fault if they don’t agree with you.

Recession

Recession talk is in the air. And not just from Democrats.

     "Peter, Why not stay with political stuff -- where you do pretty well --  WHY are you now the Sage of WALL STREET? You are not paid tor predicting economic downturns. 
      Maybe you WANT to tell people to believe a recession is coming because Democrats pray for a horrid downturn every day at the alter of LETS DESTROY TRUMP!! TODAY AND EVERY DAY!!"

                       

                      Letter to me from a successful retired businessman

CNBC's Web page greeted viewers yesterday with a recession warning.

Economists and financial advisors have talked about yield curves for decades, but all of a sudden the term "inverted yield curve" went mainstream. It simply means that short term interest rates are higher than long term interest rates, a reversal from the normal pattern in which there is presumably more risk to a long term loan than a short term loan, so interest rates climb as the duration increases. 

This isn't just lines on a graph. The inverted yield curve relates to something important in the real world of businesses and the economy generally. 

CNBC

Banks make most of their money from the spread between short and long term rates. They borrow money from depositors and pay little or nothing because depositor money is short term and can be withdrawn daily. They loan money for months or years at higher interest rates. That spread is a big source of income. If banks are making money they have capacity to make more loans to businesses, which fuels the economy. If that is reversed, then banks make less money and therefore pull back.

They pull back, too, because the presence of a yield curve is describing something ominous in the real world, that bond investors expect interest rates to go down because future demand for borrowing will be lower. Bond investors are thought to be sophisticated, informed people. The fact that they expect rates to drop is evidence of cues they see: recession.

And, third, there is the vicious cycle. People pull back because they think others are pulling back. Recession expectations help cause recessions.

But it isn't just Democrats "talking down" the economy. Republicans and conservative news outlets are describing objective signs of a slowdown. Something real is going on.

The CNBC story reads:

     "Data is coming at investors from every angle with so-called recession indicators flashing signs of an economic slowdown brought on by slower growth abroad and the U.S.-China trade war."

They list:  

     1. Interest rates are dropping.

     2. GDP growth is slowing.

     3. Corporate profits are dropping.

     4. Manufacturing is slowing 

     5. Freight shipments are down.

     6. The price of copper is dropping.

     7. The price of gold is going up.

     8. Global uncertainty index is up.

     9. Business spending is down.

CNBC amplifies each of these indexes and explains their relevance. CLICK

Meanwhile, Oregon readers start this first day after Labor Day with news in the state's flagship newspaper, the Oregonian, that business and farm leaders in Oregon are battening down for a recession, starting with Oregon's big export crop, wheat. It wrote that Trump's recent rally speech in Pennsylvania "disparaging" wheat exports "left Oregon wheat farmers aghast."

Signs of pulling back

Along with charts of slowing indicators-- CLICK -- the Oregonian article went through a list of business leaders who were complaining of Trump's trade policies and saying that they were pulling back. 

     

     Wheat farmers-- "In general, this uncertainty with trade issues certainly weighs heavily.” 

     

     Electronics manufacturer-- “It’s all preventative kinds of measures we’re taking right now, being cautious, keeping as much cash dry as we can." 

    

     State economists-- "Cracks may be forming due to the trade war.”

     Columbia Sportsware-- “There are some investments we’re choosing not to make because of uncertainty around trade.”

Bad timing for Trump

20 years of US unemployment data

The economy hit bottom ten years ago, in March, 2009, and we have been in a recovery ever since. Trump called the economy "carnage" in his inauguration, but has been talking it up beginning two months later. Obama failed to claim the economic recovery and Trump stepped into the vacuum.

But now, after ten years, excesses have accumulated. The relationship between asset prices and incomes have become stretched. Credit quality has gotten loose. Deficits rose to new highs during a boom. 

Recessions are normal. Something causes them. People get cautious, maybe for good reason, and one of those reasons is that they believe others are getting cautious.

Labor Day Observation: Sexing hemp

Southern Oregon has the climate, the laws, the expertise, and the labor necessary to grow hemp.

It was wildly profitable in 2017 and 2018.

It is possible high margins for southern Oregon farmers will continue. Hemp is complicated, and we have the human capital here.

No THC. A CBD-only field is the result of complicated selective breeding. THC in the plant ruins the crop, so the specially created seeds cost a dollar or more per seed. There are typically 2000 plants per acre, and not every seed germinates, and not every germinated seed grew successfully to transplant size.

Labor intensive work: No males. The hemp fields are intended to be entirely female plants which are left un-pollinated. Un-pollinated plants create higher levels of CBD as the plant stresses and produces sticky resins as it seeks the pollination that never comes. Un-pollinated plants mean more CBD and no seeds. Seeds significantly reduce the value of the crop.

Male close up

Normally half the plants are males. Seed breeders get seeds that produce only female plants by forcing a female plant to create pollen, which pollen is then used to pollinate another female plant. The resulting seeds have two mothers, and that produces only female plants.

A female plant makes pollen? Yes. It can happen. 

One gets a female plant to create pollen by spraying it with colloidal silver at the right time. It is difficult, precise work, which is why feminized seeds are expensive, and why some supposedly feminized seeds turn out to produce male offspring. 

Here is a guide to how to do it: Click Here is another: Click

Sometimes, even when the feminization process was done correctly, a male plant is discovered in a field, and it isn't always done correctly. Seed quality is uneven. In a well managed grow site, field workers walk through their fields weekly, looking closely at each plant, hunting for males. Ideally, they are found when young. Sometimes they are missed, and sometimes the plants hermaphrodite, i.e. a female plant become male on their own late in the season.

Field workers who spot a male plant like the one shown here do not simply pull it out. Pulling it out would shock the plant and the pollen bulbs would explode while being pulled, spreading pollen everywhere, pollinating hundreds, maybe thousands, of plants. Instead, the correct practice is to wet the plant with water then carefully put a plastic bag over the whole plant, cinch it at the bottom, and then pull the whole plant, thus containing the pollen.

Male and female plants look different, if one knows what to look for. The male hemp plant, in this critical moment when it would be ready to explode its pollen, is covered with little balls, each oval ball a little bigger than the head of a pin, e.g. 3  millimeters.

Female close up

The female plant lacks those ball sacks and instead has long strands of hair, designed to catch the pollen emitted by a male.

Southern Oregon has "first mover" advantage in growing hemp. Our  growers here got experience back in the days when growing was illegal, and then during the years when one could grow a THC plant legally for medical patients. 

Many of those growers have transitioned to growing big fields of hemp for CBD.

The plant is vigorous, but to create a marketable crop the grower needs to deal with plant genetics and breeding in its infancy, with insect pests, with weeds, with mold problems, with the potential of too much THC, with complicated fertilization and watering schedules, with cumbersome state rules, with labor intensive planting, tending, and harvesting, with drying the crop, new marketing and distribution for a crop whose value is just being discovered, and as described here, with male plant contamination.

Labor Day. 
Lots can go wrong, and it takes expertise and crews of skilled and semi-skilled workers.  The economic opportunity is that well paid entrepreneurs and workers thrive here and bring outside money into the region. A reliable skilled worker willing and able to walk the field in the hot sun has market leverage. A worker can actually make a living, pay for an apartment, buy a house and car, pay off student loans, and enhance the local economy.

Of course, it also means that employers in the hospitality and other low wage industries need to raise their wages to retain workers. Why wash dishes for $12 and hour when a hemp grower is desperate to pay $15 and $20 to have a worker do a time critical task? 

Hemp margins may persist a while. The complications of hemp production also means Midwest farm belt growers, accustomed to farming thousands of acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat with huge equipment, may not be competitors. There is too much specialized knowledge and hand work. 

The current gold rush atmosphere cannot last forever, but it may not be over, not yet.

Can Biden Save Himself?

Gaffes.  I argue Biden has a fatal wound to his brand. He needs to try a desperation "Hail Mary."

A brand expert tells me to calm down. Biden is OK. Another Tony Farrell Guest Post.

The Sunday News shows are going on and on about the Biden "gaffes." 

Biden conflated two sentimental stories about a serviceman's patriotism and courage.

One can argue it is just storytelling, and to complain about details is like arguing that there wasn't really any Goldilocks, nor were there three bears--see, he lied!!  Biden and his allies say a lie is when one mis-states the facts for selfish advantage--something Trump does frequently-- and this was the opposite of that, utterly innocent. 

The Sunday shows are dissecting this. The discussion sustains the Biden-is-old-and-demented meme. Is Biden a congenital liar? Is he losing it? The question is: What is wrong with Biden?

A loser subject for Biden, and likely fatal.

I propose a desperation fix. Biden might make this a comparison with Trump rather than an examination of Biden.  He does that by challenging Trump to taking an IQ/SAT type test, for example the notoriously difficult test given to applicants for jobs in the US State Department, the Foreign Service Officer Test. It is the entry level qualifying exam, given by Donald Trump's own government, to evaluate candidates to manage foreign policy, a critical job of the president. 

Biden could say we each take the test, now, publicly, with results available to the public immediately. Say the public has a right to know if either Trump or he, two men in their 70s, are fit to be president. Biden should say he is smarter than Trump, has a higher IQ, knows more, and can prove it. 

Biden: "I haven't lost a step, you have, Mr. Trump. I can prove it. The public has a right to know if either of us are up to the job."

Lead crowds in chants: Take the test! Take the test! Take the test!. Of course, Trump won't take it.

This puts the attention back on Trump, and their comparative errors and gaffes. It would show that Biden stands up to Trump and gets into his face, not nastily, but with an assertion of the public having a legitimate right to know, and that Biden isn't afraid of the age issue.

A brand expert responds. He says I am wrong.

Farrell

Tony Farrell has the weight of experience and authority. He has a long, very successful career advising and managing brands, including senior roles at The Sharper Image, The Gap, The Nature Company, and then in the hardest league of all: in direct-to-consumer sales, infomercials. Among his former clients was once Trump Steaks, a product failure, because the product wasn't good and Trump interfered with marketing.

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

Thanks for the opportunity to think about Biden (born 1942), and on age and addled-ness. (For the record, I was born September 1949.)

Age is definitely on my mind this election; I’ve told friends that I prefer to vote for someone born AFTER me! This is perhaps not rational but seems a sensible selection criterion. Trump (1946) was born before I was, of course, but other elders in the race include Sanders (1941) and Warren (also 1949, but June).

I do believe Biden is gaffe-prone, but it’s not linked to age, and certainly not dementia; call it genetics.

I’ll tell a story: When I was in high school, I asked my Mom to stop by the record store to buy a current hit, “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas; so, she goes and asks the clerk for “Mother, Mother.” I believe my Mom was barely 40 at the time; now a spritely 94, her current such gaffes match those of her youth; she is as sharp, and gaffe-prone, as ever.

Joe Biden’s “brand” is one of human decency, and I would argue that includes all his human foibles, such as his gaffes. He is “one of us.” 

His moving story of family tragedy touches everyone who has lived a life. Biden’s understanding of the prototypical Trump supporter (blue collar; high school; flyover country) is real, and comes across as heartfelt and genuine.

My advice to Biden is to let the gaffes slip by without notice; without giving any help to the “gaffe-is-the-story-of-dementia” media in amplifying them; accept gaffes and instead promote Joe as a human being of genuine decency and high moral character, and a charming quirk (gaffes) that we can relate to and be glad that we, in contrast to any candidate, are not constantly in the public eye.

Joe Biden' brand. Biden’s age is an indelible fact, but not a distinguishing one. Therefore, it is not part of his brand. What IS distinguishing is that everybody likes Joe, and Joe likes everybody; a vote for Joe is an appeal to our better angels, and a hope for a return to decency, civility and morality in the public arena.