I didn't want this to happen, but I believed it would. There were a lot of signals, for those ignoring the group-think. e.g. Clinton needed a lot more help than Trump to get big crowds to her rallies, and Obama had to get involved at the last minute in allegedly "safe" states.
There is deep frustration with our economic system, which isn't being addressed. Clinton is unfortunately a very clear embodiment of the current system.
Trump is far from a perfect vessel for his messages, but he only needed to be better than Clinton, and he hit the key notes (e.g. regarding trade and jobs) over and over.
Trump won despite being massively out-spent, despite his party being against his nomination, despite the entire mainstream media being against him, despite his business "issues", and despite all the publicised gaffes and scandals. In the face of that he seems to have won significantly more of the "white women" vote than Clinton.
Anyone seriously believing he won due to bigotry etc. needs to reassess. The USA is a better country than that, and he has won convincingly.
Edit: I forgot Wall Street. Almost unanimous support for Clinton.
To be fair, money in presidential elections typically just buys exposure. In a ceaseless chase for ratings, every media source for the past two years has shown every Trump speech and event live and in whole. Even with her stash, Trump saw more airtime than Hillary.
Trump played as an outsider. And media, his own party and everyone treated him as pariah or an outsider. This just confirmed Trump's credibility in eyes of voters looking for outsiders. I'd say that's a large part of why he won.
More than a second actually. If you read both my comments, I think we agree.
The Democrats managed to persuade themselves that the public would elect the most "establishment" candidate imaginable. This after their own anti-establishment candidate had done incredibly well in the primaries (and had been polling above Trump). Books will be written about this self-delusion.
you had no argument he didn't win off bigotry. all you said was "USA is a better country than that". Too bad it isn't. Half the country is in fact uneducated racist bigots. they can have the country for 4 years and democrats can try to obstruct it.
I think you're being unfair to the people voting for Trump. Yes, some of them are racist bigots (like white supremacists groups), however Trump struck a cord with rural USA. I doubt all are racists bigots, they just have different life style, and try to defend it from further deterioration.
This Cracked podcast[1] really opened my eyes to some issues rural America faces each day. It's not that they hate Hillary, but Hillary both tells them that everything is fine, and for them things aren't fine. They see no jobs and Walmart just waltzes in and ruins small shops, sucking the money out of the rural parts.
So, if Hilary tells them America is doing fine and we need more X, it poisons both messages. Which makes some sense from that perspective. If she's lying about America doing fine, then she is lying about X being good for country as well.
yeah after sleeping on it i take it back. trump to me is essentially 1/3 Hitler, 1/3 bernie sanders, and 1/3 orangutan. I think people voted for his 1/3 bernie sanders message for infrastructure, fighting bad trade deals, and fighting the establishment, and stupid wars. This was despite the other 2/3 not because of it. Hillary on the other hand had no reason to vote FOR her only to vote against the 2/3 portion of Trump.
There is deep frustration with our economic system, which isn't being addressed. Clinton is unfortunately a very clear embodiment of the current system.
Trump is far from a perfect vessel for his messages, but he only needed to be better than Clinton, and he hit the key notes (e.g. regarding trade and jobs) over and over.
Sanders would have won.