I still remember watching the first debate between him and Hillary and even though I wasn't wild about Hillary I was like wow that's that then such a belligerent moron could never be president.
Hillary was a hilariously unpopular candidate, and the GOP had spent literal decades raking muck about her and preparing for a presidential campaign against her.
Trump had much better control of his (very limited) faculties at that point, allowing him to do a slightly better job of seeming coherent.
Trump was a newcomer to politics, and many simply thought he was a joke - he wasn't taken seriously.
Many people suspected he was performing, and would "pivot" to a less outrageous...everything if elected.
The extreme right had spent decades worming their way into the party, displacing the simply evil members in a race to the extremes.
Polls treated Trump as a joke, giving him such slim odds that Clinton seemed more inevitable than Thanos.
That all combined to create a perfect storm - Democrats were very unmotivated and complacent, and the crazies saw a chance to draw blood.
You're forgetting the most important point, that "Russia interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping and systemic fashion." -The Mueller Report
Your first and sixth points are directly related to this. The idea that Hillary was an unpopular candidate was one of the major Russian-led propaganda points that was pushed onto social media, and the polls at the time were correct, they just didn't factor Russian disinformation and espionage into their algorithms (because how could they?) Leaving out the Russian election interference is pushing the same narrative that Putin wanted, which is summed up pretty well in everything you just said.
2016 was not a normal election, and Trump ultimately winning it wasn't due to normal circumstances or being underestimated. He had help, we investigated it, and determined that it was true, despite Mueller stopping short and kicking the ball to Bill Barr's Justice Department and a Republican-led Senate that did absolutely nothing with it other than make it a matter of record.
Trump's rise is probably one of Putin's greatest tactical achievements and needs to be brought up every time this conversation about the 2016 election comes up.
You can blame her unpopularity on whatever you want, but the Russians didn't make her say women who don't vote for her are the worst or Bernie supporters who don't fall in line are deplorable. She ran a terrible campaign and was horribly unlikeable
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u/R67H 10h ago
Yea, seconded. I mean...I'm still baffled he won the first time, knowing everything about the guy. But here we are.