The 2020 Presidential Election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy, emphasizing his personal history as a means of connecting with everyone from American workers who had lost jobs to military families who had lost loved ones. Although perceptions of candidate compassion are broadly understood to influence vote choice, less understood is the question of how candidates convince voters they truly "care about people like them." In Feeling their Pain: Why Voters want Leaders who Care, Jared McDonald provides a framework for understanding why voters view some politicians as more compassionate than others. McDonald shows that perceptions of compassion in candidates for public office are based on the number and intensity of commonalities that bind citizens to political leaders. Commonalities can come in many forms, such as a shared experience ("I''ve been through what you''ve been through"), a shared emotion ("