Leave it to the political class to turn elections into a casting call — and yes, the ridicule came fast and furious.
A bizarre debate over which politicians qualify as “hot” erupted on The Five this week, after a left-leaning pundit floated the idea that Democrats’ real problem isn’t policy… it’s aesthetics.
The spark? A column from The Bulwark, where writer Lauren Egan argued Democrats might need fewer lectures and more lookers on the ballot.
“The idea that the Democratic party has a hotness deficit it needs to address has come up repeatedly in conversations I’ve had over the past few months,” she wrote, adding the party should ditch “academic-sounding language” and maybe recruit “more thirst-traps on the ticket, more candidates who could make voters swoon.”
Yes, seriously — “thirst traps” for Congress.
That set off fireworks on Fox.Dana Perino kicked things off with a dose of reality, pointing to Kamala Harris as Exhibit A against the theory.
“To me, Kamala Harris was an objectively beautiful person, and she couldn’t win, so I don’t think that’s what it is,” Perino said flatly.
“I have to disagree with Dana,” shot back Jesse Watters. “I didn’t think Kamala was hot.”
Greg Gutfeld split the difference: “No, she was attractive.”
Perino clarified, “I said she was beautiful — I didn’t say hot.” Welcome to the cable news version of a high school cafeteria debate.
The panel then veered into even more awkward territory, with Gutfeld floating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a possible example of Democrat “hotness.” Watters wasn’t biting.
“I’m not going to go there,” he said, pivoting back to Harris. “I mean, she was okay. But if we’re talking hot, she’s not hot.”
Watters then delivered the blunt takeaway: television changed politics — but looks alone won’t save bad messaging.
“You’ve got to have a good-looking person,” he said, before taking a swipe at the left’s shifting priorities. “I like the fact that Democrats have gone from like, we need a transgender Native American amputee, to just someone who is hot. And I feel like that’s progress.”
Ouch.
Naturally, Jessica Tarlov jumped in to call the whole thing absurd — while simultaneously proving the point by rattling off her own “hot list.”
“Jon Ossoff is really good at his job. He’s also attractive… AOC is very hot. Gretchen Whitmer is very hot. Kamala Harris is very, all right, whatever. Maybe not,” she said.
She insisted the real shift is Democrats finally “talking like normal people,” not auditioning for a modeling agency — though the segment suggested otherwise.
Gutfeld, meanwhile, delivered the knockout punch, mocking what he framed as the left’s sudden abandonment of its own “body positivity” gospel.
“What happened to your love for the body positive, non-binary activists who stopped shaving and bathing to protest capitalism?” he quipped.
“You can find a hot candidate, but who’s going to buy it? People aren’t attracted to ugly ideas. Beautiful people like good ideas. It’s a fact… And if you’re on the wrong end of every issue, that makes you a loser.”
