John Hood, you make an important point about presidential candidates — that voters want to have things in common with the people they vote for. This is why I consider Mitt Romney’s candidacy problematic strictly from a electoral point of view — being a Mormon makes him an Other, not a One of Us. I would have no problem voting for a Mormon. But then, I’m a Jew, and in my 28 years as a voter, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a position to cast a vote for One of My Own for a Washington office (save for Joe Lieberman in 2000, I guess, but then that vote would have been for Al Gore really). So being One of Us isn’t part of my voting calculation. But as you suggest, John, it is for tens of millions of voters.

On the other hand, when you’re talking about geography, I have to part company with you a little bit. The reason Sunbelt politicians have done well since 1964 isn’t because they are Southerners but because the region’s politics forces them to deal with issues in a way that is best suited to getting national votes. One of the reasons you’d be hard-pressed to find a Northeastern politician who knows how to talk about guns in the most effective possible way is that law-abiding gun ownership isn’t a feature of life in the Northeast, and there isn’t a lot of hunting in a region packed with cities and suburbs.

But there is one aspect of the Hillary-Rudy candidacies that can trump some of this, and that is the enormity of their celebrity. Celebrities succeed in convincing people that they are One of Us even though they really aren’t — think of that bizarre Us Weekly feature in which they show movie stars getting coffee at a Starbucks or taking their kids to the park. “Celebrities! They’re Just Like Us!” is the name of the feature.

All that said, as you suggest, Michael Bloomberg is too short, too Jewish and way too rich ever to be elected, as I explain here.