Analysis: Do Campaigns Matter?

○ Here's what Clinton, Trump spent to turn out votes | CNBC |

○ Analysis: Do Campaigns Matter?

Personally my view is the effort put in by Trump's Texas troll factory of bots made the difference. Thanking Robert Mercer and his Cambridge Analytica. [Brexit too]

Unless one trusts Hillary Clinton's RESIST movement, pointing fingers to Putin's Russia. A budget of $4 million in ads from ISA in St. Petersburg did the trick? Hardly!

Amnesia and Gaza Genocide

Spending and the ground game do not necessarily turn out voters. IMO Clinton created her own head wind by her dismissive attitude towards the still largest ethnic group in the nation. She virtually wrote off all but the well educated, epitomized by her 'basket of deplorables' remark, but far from limited to it. I think her campaign was biased against even trying to compete for the working people because they thought they could win without them and didn't want to owe them anything. That was less offensive to the wealthy.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

I agree that was the expectation, and by offices Clinton's campaign was far ahead of Trump's, though not as far ahead of Trump+GOP. But in the end, Clinton's campaign appears to not have used their advantage to get out the base, but rather spent to much time chasing moderate Republicans.

Here's one article from the Jacobin - https:/www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clinton-campaign-gotv-unions-voters-rust-belt - claiming among other things that lack of on the ground knowledge led the Clinton campaign to turn out Trump voters.

And while Trump's lack of organisation was saved by the GOP, the Democrats as a party appears dead in large parts of the interior, partly from lack of organisation, partly from loss of offices during Obama. And Clinton's campaign added to that by using state parties as vehicles to increase donations to the campaign rather than raising money for the state parties. So the party couldn't save her.

Trump won because he is/was a maverick, coming into politics sideways from a billionaire's podium, a la Berlusconi.
His notoriety as a crook made him media red meat, they gobbled up every gaffe and vomited it back repeatedly creating a vortex and regaling him with millions of dollars free publicity. Hillary could not compete on this level at all, she was recycled old news. Old policies, reconstituted pablum, b-o-r-i-n-g.
She thought the answer was to buy fancier pantsuits and widen that rictus leer of delusional superiority.
Her femininity was supposed to be a big voter plus, but the bloodlust she showed around the manner of Ghaddaffi's dying revealed a level of sadism that  couldn't be unseen, not exactly the kinder, gentler leader many would have affirmed her as, purely on her gender.
She placed herself right in the Madeline Albright hag-bag, hobnobbing with Kissinger just in case anyone had any illusions by then as to her true nature.
Her lust for war with Libya made her a whitebread Condoleeza on steroids.
The Republicans were on the ropes, all their candidates had the charisma of cold mashed potatoes, so when Trump showed up with his base of aggrieved, angry voters eager to see their reality show superhero drain the swamp -as if!- the Party saw voters and grabbed with both hands onto his coattails.

Similarly again to Berlusconi, people thought riches symbolised a crude wisdom that politicians were too poor and savvy-deficient to understand, and if politics was really all about money then why not get a successful businessman to run the country like a corporation?
Straight-shootin', tuff-talking, the frisson of bad boy behaviour to grab ledes and shout soundbites.
Isn't he awful? Tut-Tut.
What did he do today? Oh how shocking!
The more he hated on the media the more they lapped up their profitable punishment, like johns with their dominatrix.
Whip me! I love it! Harder? Yes! Talk dirty to me! OK you asked for it!
Gimme scandal, abuse, and alt-facts, gimme wannabe fascists, give me peace with Putin, give me Mexican walls, give me Hillary behind bars!
And so we got to know his temperament, slalom mood swings, rabid tweet-olalia, the sneering superiority failing to cover up the cry-for-help insecurity that boastful bragadocio was always really about. He defied credulity, our cosy myths about normality shattering as we watched his trajectory dominate the narrative.
Love me, fear me, but never forget me.
We watched his high wire act with sanity like passers-by watch a train wreck, rubbernecking at his antics, marvelling at how a man so clueless about anything could have the epic hubris to want to be POTUS.
No way, can't happen, surely...
Yes way. We looked into the abyss with GWB, now with Trump the abyss is staring back -hard- at us.
The swamp is deeper than ever, the sheepskin off the wolf as we ponder what mayhem he can conjure before he self-combusts, and how many he will take with him when he does.
Bang or whimper? Time'll tell. (Bigly).  

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty