Seeking the Answer Under the Answer

For John, BLUF:  The elites are clueless.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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I thought this item from the FiveThirtyEight Blog post by Ms Clare Malone,"Why Donald Trump?", was interesting.  It is from about a week ago.  The sub-headline is "A quest to figure out what’s happening in America."

Here is the lede plus two:

The night before Super Tuesday I was on a plane from Oklahoma City to Cleveland, my hometown, when a thought struck me:  I truly had no idea what was going on in America.

I’d been traveling a fair bit during the rush of primary season, and you start to feel unstuck when you do that.  The moments of my days I would have otherwise spent doing soothingly banal things — grocery shopping, hand-washing delicates, pouring Drano into various plumbing orifices — I now spent alone in hotel rooms, contemplating the Donald Trump phenomenon.

I’d seen glints and glimmers of his wide swath of support — the man in New Hampshire who was following Trump around the country, hawking merchandise; the friendly middle-aged women in Iowa who just liked his style; the Oklahoma couple at a Bernie Sanders rally who, after a few minutes of pleasant chitchat about Sanders, started talking to me about their deep admiration for and likely support of Trump.  But the thesis was still missing for me:  Why him? Why these people?

This remind me, slightly, of the famous New Yorker staff member line:  "I don't understand how Nixon got elected.  No one I know voted for him."  The difference is that Ms Malone actually goes out and examines what is going on, looks at how our various media and political institutions are recognizing what is doing on in our nation.

Worth a read.

Hat tip to the FiveThirtyEight Blog.

Regards  —  Cliff