I wish I had a cite, but I have the impression that political scientists think the more-money-wins-elections view is pretty discredited.
Linda McMahon’s two failed Senate campaigns are examples of how an even greater spending margin than Clinton’s is no guarantee of victory. (I believe Meg Whitman and Fiorina also outspent their Senate opponents pretty heartily? Sorry to use rich GOP women as all of my examples - not intentional.)
Edit: oh, hey, there’s Jeb! Bush this year in the primary.
Hey, if you vague it up enough anybody can serve as your example. :rolleyes: You’ve got nothing that comes within a mile of Trump, and you know it-give up.
On Question Time last night, Louise Mensh had an interesting observation: she said that the Press took Trump literally but not seriously whereas the voters took him seriously but not literally.
Linda learned that sometimes it isn’t how much you spend, but where you spend it. She gave $5 million to The Donald J. Trump [del]Slush Fund[/del]Foundation, and that certainly paid off for her.
I agree with this.
If you admit that narcissism and vanity play a positive role in the politician’s drive to succeed (as you seem to), then it’s not that much of a leap to say more of those qualities would lead to higher drive to succeed.
for historical reference -
“Deflection”? This thread is about Hillary outspending Trump and still managing to lose her 2nd attempt to become POTUS.
Why believe Trump? Because he’s not Hillary.
Your quote was:
Trump doesn’t seem to want to be remembered well. Trump wants to be well-remembered, the difference being that he doesn’t care what people say about him, as long as they are talking about him, and it doesn’t interfere with is money-making schemes. If he has to choose between doing the good that is needed and the bad that will bring publicity and/or profit there is no question as to which he will pick.
That’s a belief. But you asked what other people may have believed about Trump. You may not agree with it, but it is a valid belief. But anyway, this line of argument has nothing to do with the money-in-politics topic of the OP…
It’s a nice conclusion, and one I’m partial to (that money in politics isn’t as big a deal as people make it out to be, despite appearances otherwise). But can we quantify the “free” publicity that Trump got? Because most of the money politicians raise goes to buying air time and other forms of publicity, and Trump got most of his without spending a dime.
It might very well be that if you count up value of the air time “donated” to Trump by the media, he could have been the one outspending Clinton. He just didn’t pay for it out of his own pocket or campaign fund. Sort of a Washington version of “Hollywood accounting”.
True, plus your the OP and just one more counter point
I can almost see Donald Trump in a bed with gold bed post with his lovely first lady in Trump Tower on Saturday night watching SNL and saying hand me my gold iphone honey as he tweets his dissatisfaction to the world (every Saturday night so far).
They probably didn’t. They saw that the brass ring had passed them by and believed four more years following the same path was not going to turn their situation around. Change just for the sake of change appeared to be a viable option.