Since 1968, did each loser come off as more elitist?

[RINO Tom]

1984 shouldn’t even count … neither was elitist, and neither really even needed to be there.

[RINO Tom]

No one's mentioned 1996 as an exception...

Bill Clinton did not come across as more elitist than Bob Dole.

[RINO Tom]

No one's mentioned 1996 as an exception...

Bill Clinton did not come across as more elitist than Bob Dole.

I guess I was defining elitist as “Ivy League education”. Clinton had one, and Dole didn’t…

I interpreted the premise of the OP to be that it’s hard for a candidate to win if he or she is perceived as more elitist than the alternative by the electorate.  And I think that’s undeniably true.  Even in an Eisenhower/Stevenson situation or a Coolidge/Davis election, the GOP often still portrayed the the Democrats as stooges for inner city unions trying to take “regular Americans’” tax dollars, which is a fundamentally populist pitch, too.

[RINO Tom]

Obama also kinda gave off an "elitist" vibe tbh. Not as much as Romney, but maybe more than McCain.

Also IDK if I'd call McGovern or even Humphrey more "elitist" than Nixon in any meaningful sense.

I get what you're saying but I still think "charisma" is the big factor in this period more than anything else. Even then, Nixon is kind of an exception. And in 1988, neither candidate was charismatic.

Obama seemed more “personally elitist” than McCain (wow, we’ve gotten into really strange terms here, lol), but his campaign/person certainly wasn’t.  I mean, the GOP literally couldn’t get away from the image of “pro-business party causes Great Recession” no matter how hard they tried, and Obama definitely leaned into it.