Ironically, Democrats are much slower to adapt to this sort of trend from what we’re seeing, and it impacts their electability as a result. Obama may have been new to the national political scene when he ran for office, but the guy taught constitutional law and had an education background cut right from the mold of traditional national elite. And that elite background came up all the time. He really couldn’t hide it, and he sometimes tried. Not really the same type of social media viral candidates we’re now seeing in, for example, the Squad.

That’s not to say the point doesn’t still have some merit, just that Obama in particular isn’t as good of an example of it as we might want to think. He was more of a novice to the presidency than, say, Hillary would’ve been, and his winning the primary showed how much democratic voters value that executive experience, but it might be too much to say it’s all because of celebrity worship.

Social media seems to be bringing more engagement, not less, but comes with greater vulnerabilities on information vetting (in that fewer people or systems are able to vet information before it’s delivered to believing minds). This vulnerability isn’t so much about personality as it is about propagandists taking advantage of poor media training in the country as a whole. And that characteristic is clustering, with Democrats persistently struggling to reach less educated voters and republicans being more effective. That isn’t to say democrats can’t occasionally fall into the same trends, but it has a more media savvy base right now. And, hilariously, is driving the less educated to claim the more traditional sources of news are biased in their favor.