Author:
madcows
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Date:
11/7/2020 6:14:38 PM
Subject:
RE: Lots of people in my circle of friends
I think unknown to most of the political researchers who tried to understand Trump's primary and general election success, and perhaps even to Trump himself is that he essentially merely regurgitated what the most successful pop-conservative pundits from the likes of Fox News and talk radio were saying. Trump, long before his candidacy, was eating up the rage-inducing talking points from these outlets just like millions of other people. So while most candidates tend to be wiser to this and are more footed in reality, Trump was peddling shit like birtherism (because obviously a nigger democrat can't possibly be legitimate). He continued this, and when he finally ran, he was saying the same things people have been hearing. And he definitely wasn't about it. It's certainly not the first time in history that strategy worked. Other candidates would touch on many of the same topics, but in a more realistic and nuanced way. That's not to say they weren't legitimate topics, but cable news tends to try to appeal to the least common denominator, which means providing simple answers to complex questions that might not have one correct answer at all. Sadly, most people don't realize this, and best I can tell, Trump really doesn't either. So while things like stagnating wages and deteriorating benefits has been affecting most people, the cause, according to any partisan tends to get pinned on the opposing party. How convenient. It's weird, sometimes I found myself agreeing with Trump, but generally for different reasons. After all, non-parallel streets must intersect at some point.
The most irksome thing to me that he was getting a lot of credit for was the state of the economy, which in reality was almost entirely about the performance of the stock market. I guess the S&P 500 and Dow Jones is the only metric anyone wants to use, because casting a wider beam would show that the situation for the average American is much more abysmal.
