Vivek Ramaswamy is remarkably hateable

On distaste.

(Vivek Ramaswamy)

Let’s say this at the top: Last night’s Republican presidential debate didn’t change a damn thing in the overall dynamic of the race.

Donald Trump, who wasn’t there, is still almost certain to be the GOP nominee.

Nikki Haley, who was there, wasn’t at her best but didn’t do anything to disrupt her momentum as the person most likely to finish second to Trump in the race.

Ron DeSantis was better than he has been — low bar! — and is getting some positive media headlines as a result. But that doesn’t and won’t fix the fact that he is on a long term downward spiral in the contest.

Chris Christie was Chris Christie — an able debater and the only one on stage willing to directly and consistently criticize Trump. The problem? The Republican base hates Christie. And loves Trump.

And then there was Vivek Ramaswamy.

Vivek, Vivek, Vivek.

The honest truth is that Ramaswamy hasn’t really been relevant in the race for a while now. He peaked in the immediate aftermath of the first debate when his smartest-guy-in-the-room schtick drew him a bunch of attention and interest.

He’s now running a distant fourth nationally, averaging just more than 4 percent of the vote. (He’s the light blue line in the chart below.)

In short: It’s over for him. And has been for a while.

And yet, while I watched the debate last night, I kept being drawn back to Ramaswamy — and how remarkably unlikable he is as a political candidate.

I wasn’t the only one.

“This is the fourth debate, the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America,” Christie told Ramaswamy at one point.

Twitter X had a similar reaction:

And let’s not forget that we are only one debate removed from Haley telling Ramaswamy: “You’re just scum.”

I spent some time thinking about Vivek — both last night and this morning. About why he is the way he is — and what he thinks it accomplishes in the context of a political campaign.

I think, at root, he truly believes that he is just smarter than everyone else. If you listen to his answers in last night’s debate, every one (or almost every one) took the same form: All the other candidates on stage are missing the point. But I get it — and I will now explain it to you.

A little bit of that can be good. People, generally, want their leaders to be smarter than they are, to have a sweeping knowledge about most of the issues of the day — and to have ideas on how to solve them.

But Ramaswamy is all smarts and smarm. There doesn’t appear to be ANY question — ever — for which he doesn’t know the answer (and wants to make sure you know he knows the answer). I wrote last night — in our live debate chat for paid subscribers! — that I wondered whether Ramaswamy had ever uttered the phrase “I don’t know.” I doubt he has.

In writing about Ramaswamy in the past, I’ve turned to an assessment of him by sports media personality Pablo Torre, who went to Harvard with him. Pablo describes Ramaswamy as “That Guy” — and explains it this way:

‘That Guy’ is insanely ambitious, he’s incredibly image conscious — he cares about how he appears. But he is totally undeterred by how much the people around him are all cringing at how awful and uncomfortable all of this is.

I think Pablo’s assessment gets to another part of Ramaswamy that makes him very easy to hate: He is, fundamentally, a provocateur, not a politician. He says and does things (lots of things) for effect only.

The prime example of that tendency during last night’s debate was when he scrawled “Nikki = Corrupt” on a sheet of paper and held it up to the crowd.

Ramaswamy was doing it to attract attention. To be talked about. To stir things up.

He did the same thing at another point in the debate when he listed a series of, uh, “facts” that he says the government isn’t telling us including:

• January 6 was an “inside job”

• Democrats are behind the “Great Replacement” theory

• “Big Tech” stole the 2020 election

Does Ramaswamy actually believe any of this? Honestly, it’s scarier if he does. But I am pretty sure he doesn’t. I think, instead, what he is doing is provoking. He’s the classic college debate kid who takes up the most contrarian position on every issue because a) he can and b) he knows it will get him more attention that way.

What I have never understood is how Ramaswamy thinks all of this adds up to a winning presidential candidacy.

Sure, he has his people — especially among the very online set — who love him. (And there are a decent chunk of them.) But what is (or was) his strategy to persuade people who were skeptical about him?

Being smug is not a strategy. Saying a bunch of wild things is not a strategy. Being deeply unlikable is not a strategy.

The answer, I think, is that Ramaswamy’s main goal in this campaign wasn’t to actually win. If he did happen to catch fire, then great! But, his real goal was what his goal appears to have been all his life: Get better known. Bigger. More famous (even infamous).

There are, obviously, financial incentives that can drive that sort of behavior. (I give you George Santos.) But, by all accounts, Ramaswamy is very wealthy. And while you can always have just a little bit more money, I don’t think he is ultimately driven by his earning power.

I truly think he just wants to BE someone. To stand in front of crowds and demonstrate his intelligence. To be cheered (or even booed). To cause a reaction — any reaction.

In all my years covering campaigns, I have never comes across someone like Ramaswamy. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.