Trump talked about things people cared about in a straightforward, albeit bombastic, way. You may disagree with his approach, but others appreciated he was at least talking about things they cared about. Sure Hillary talked about those issues too, but she wasn't able to set a clear vision or ground her campaign in clearly defined and solid themes.
We can only learn from failure by accepting it and studying it, not by dismissing it as a fluke.
I don't think that is what happened. The media didn't hold him accountable for what he said. They wanted viewers. Websites wanted clicks. There was disinformation everywhere.
Even in discussions with people who could calmly talk about it, Trump supporters would cite obviously fake blog posts and other completely fake information that could easily be discredited with quick online searches. Even when shown that the information was fake they would not change the opinions that the fake information had created in their minds. He was talking about things that they cared about, because they had little grip on basic facts about reality. They cared about the wrong things.
Illegal immigration is a "wrong thing"? Bringing jobs back to blighted areas is a "wrong thing"? Trump talked about these things, that's real, not fake.
Media talked about Trump being terrible all the time. He was bashed at every opportunity on many of the big networks. All the free publicity he got probably helped him, even if much of it was negative.
Once Trump won the R nomination, media began to take him seriously and do their best to discredit him and his positions.
If crime is your issue, illegal immigration is probably the wrong focus. If general health of the economy is the issue, probably also the wrong focus. If competition for manual labor is your issue, illegal immigration might be a cause for concern, though in order to be a good candidate/official, it's best if you've got a policy that's likely to actually help (building a wall might help the big construction companies who can land the contracts for it, but it's not likely to help anybody who isn't helping build the wall itself).
> Media talked about Trump being terrible all the time. He was bashed at every opportunity on many of the big networks.
Welcome to politics. You run for office, you're going to get criticized. Is there anything more boring at this point than a persecution complex over that fact? Particularly when (a) we're talking about Donald Trump, who isn't exactly a stranger to dishing it out himself, and (b) it comes from a side of the spectrum that also often seems to make a fuss about safe spaces and snowflakes vs robust free speech.
But even assuming Trump drew more criticism than usual -- why is it that so many Trump supporters assumed that was a matter of bias rather than a matter of professionals seeing genuinely troubling thing in Trump's character and policy? Particularly when so many of the newspaper outlets that refused to endorse him were traditionally backers of Republicans?
The laws didn't change drastically from the time a few years earlier when all those people managed to get out and elect Obama. That doesn't seem like a deciding factor at all.
Not really. There have been such allegations going back to every election. There is no evidence that they were more prevalent this time around. In any case, it really seems to not be relevant in a statistical sense of playing a deciding role in the election.
>Trump talked about things people cared about in a straightforward, albeit bombastic, way.
My impression was that the man rarely said the same thing twice.
My theory was that he campaigned in the style that was popular before national media, wherein you say different things to different audiences, and that this meshed really well with facebook style targeted advertising, as he could, at least on facebook, give people the message tailored to what they wanted to hear.
My theory is that because most of my media still doesn't come from facebook, and the national media outlets I follow would report everything he said, to me? he seemed like a man who didn't have any coherent beliefs.
(This, assuming that Trump is cleared of collusion with the Russians, is what I feel was wrong with the current election. I feel that having the national media point out when a candidate makes conflicting statements is a good thing; I think it was a big step forward over what came before.)
Trump talked about things people cared about in a straightforward, albeit bombastic, way. You may disagree with his approach, but others appreciated he was at least talking about things they cared about. Sure Hillary talked about those issues too, but she wasn't able to set a clear vision or ground her campaign in clearly defined and solid themes.
We can only learn from failure by accepting it and studying it, not by dismissing it as a fluke.