Make America sexy again. In the mid-term elections, the Democrats are also banking on the handsome ones

Of course there’s the cost of inflation, of course there’s the war in Iran, of course there’s Gaza, of course there’s the gradual erosion of the rule of law, of course there are the deals with Putin – but physical appearance also plays its part. Not since the days of JFK versus Nixon has appearance played such a central role in an electoral contest as it has in these mid-term elections. Across America, voters are going to the polls today to renew Congress, to elect governors and, further down the bureaucratic and administrative hierarchy, right down to sheriffs and school board members. John F. Kennedy won back then because on TV he looked younger and more handsome and – above all – less sweaty than Richard Nixon. A bit like our own story of Occhetto’s brown suit. This time round, with the ‘rock-woke’ wave of Kamala Harris’s failed ‘Brat Summer’ now over, the Democrats have flexed their biceps: the religious lads with clean-cut faces in conservative states, the macho types in working-class areas with factories, and the performative men in the cities. Many New Yorkers have admitted that, deep down, they voted for Zohran Mamdani because ‘he’s a good-looking lad’, and because ‘he was always smiling’. Politics has always been partly about appearances, but for those accustomed to Tinder, it becomes a binary, clear-cut choice: yes or no. This time round, after ten years of populist contagion, the problem with Trumpism for the Republicans is that it corrodes not only the spirit but also the body. Memes make light of the damage caused by Botox to the various blonde ‘Maga’ women, complete with before-and-after photos. The GOP’s figureheads are flabby old men, no longer the preppy types straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue that you’d be proud to introduce to your mum. On the right, there hasn’t been the generational change that has taken place on the left. The Washington Examiner has calculated that at the ballot box, a good-looking candidate has a 10 per cent ‘beauty premium’ over an unattractive one.

Donald Trump, who has made the campaign his own, has, at rallies across the Rust Belt, praised the physiques of the men surrounding him – or of his own candidates – saying that the Democrats have “unattractive candidates”. On late-night shows, he was teased for praising the backside of one of his candidates from Ohio. In Texas, however, he admitted that his party’s candidate, Ken Paxton, “isn’t exactly the best-looking bloke I know”. Trump, as a former owner of Miss Universe, has always been attentive to physical appearance, with a shift towards male candidates in recent times, so much so that he said the new Syrian president, the former rebel Ahmad al-Sharaa, “is a young, attractive chap”. He had, however, never gone so far as to talk about men’s backsides. This time, the ‘body’ theme – perhaps due to the virality of ‘looksmaxxing’ – has caught on with everyone. In Georgia, the ‘Ossoff girls’ have emerged – named after the millennial senator seeking re-election, who is said to resemble a new Kennedy – whilst the real, living Kennedys, such as Health Secretary RFK Jr., are depicted in cartoons as mutant monsters, transformed by the toxic air of the Oval Office. The ‘gym bros’, meanwhile, have gone wild for the Michigan candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, who posts photos of himself at the gym, covered in sweat. It is no coincidence that the man who won this year’s “Sexiest Man Alive” title in People magazine is “The Pitt”, Noah Wyle, with his salt-and-pepper beard and deep-set eyes – he looks like the sort of person you might bump into at anti-Musk protests, in an Oregon pub or, indeed, on a Democratic ballot paper.