Primaries are more a measure of commitment than education. Anyone who was a registered Republican (and not even that, in some states) could vote in the primaries, and Trump obviously drew some of those who wouldn’t have voted otherwise.
I suspect part of the issue was that the publicity about the Cruz “steal the delegates” strategy worked in Trump’s favor, and particularly boosted his “outsider against the special interests” image. At around the same time that this came into focus, Trump began rising in the polls in the remaining states.
Don’t feel badly. Pretty much everybody got it wrong, including Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight, and nearly every journalist in the country. Nobody could have predicted that this buffoon would win out, or that voters could really be that stupid, but then the choices they had were like trying to decide which poison to drink.
I will never again underestimate the stupidity of voters, and as a result will be taking my next breath in November. Or not, depending on how that goes.
From your perspective as a liberal Democrat, you can obviously view all Republicans as types of “poison”, but you should be capable of acknowledging that there are a lot of Republicans out there who don’t see things that way, and these are the ones who made Trump the nominee. Many political commentators (including 538.com, James Carville et al) have noted that the crop of Republican running for this nomination was perhaps the deepest of any in history. The suggestion that Trump’s victory came about because Republican primary voters viewed all these people as “poison” is completely without merit, to put it mildly.
If anything, the opposite is true. There were too many solid normal candidates, which splintered all the intelligent vote, and allowed Trump take the lead as the primary candidate for the stupider voters. But this wouldn’t explain Trump’s continued rise after the field was narrowed down, which is what really surprised a lot of analysts.
Just out of curiosity, why are you offering it as an explanation if it doesn’t explain?
The field was narrowed down to some of the “worst” choices. There was nowhere for the intelligent vote to go when you’re down to Rubio, Cruz and Trump.
Well, I myself am pro-pot and pro-guns, so there’s an appeal there.
I disagree, and you also left out Kasich.
Poor Kasich. Forgotten as usual. 
As Measure for Measure laborously showed in his "outsider index thread the non-normal candidates were leading as a bloc over the “solid normal” candidates. You can’t say splintering the intelligent vote was the problem when the stupid vote was at least as splintered but still more numerous.
That’s a fair point, but I don’t think the outsider vote is the same as the dummy vote.
Well let’s just say the Venn diagram would show some heavy overlap.
I think Cruz screwed up pretty badly. He had Trump on the ropes, voters were finally starting to turn away from him. Then after Trump’s “worst week ever” Cruz started with the delegate shennanigans. Trump’s complaints resonated with voters, they flatly rejected the “steal it at the convention” approach so Trump recovered and cruised the rest of the way.
First off, I’m not a “liberal” Democrat by any traditional definition. That’s simply an unfounded snipe by you, but having read other posts by you, it really doesn’t surprise me. If I characterized you as a radical Christian righty without knowing you, you’d rightly be offended. Secondly, the choices were narrowed to Trump, Cruz and Kasich at the end, the candidates to whom I was referring. The first two were intolerable choices for even a lot of Republicans, and Kasich was likely considered to be a wasted vote.
It was not intended as a snipe, and I wouldn’t have thought “liberal Democrat” was an insult. I think it was a reasonable inference from the fact that you characterized all available Republican alternatives as “poison”. But sorry if you’re offended.
I retract this apology.
You’ve described yourself as a liberal here, here, here, and possibly here, from doing just a very brief search.
So you’re a liberal Democrat and my inference was correct. Based on this post in which you insisted that “Obama is NOT a liberal; he’s a moderate being painted as a liberal by the right”, I would guess you’re playing a similar semantic game here. But that’s not my problem. Be offended or not, your choice.
I wonder if things would have been different if Jeb! hadn’t run. I think the last thing the GOP needed this cycle was a $100 million public discourse defending W. Bush and the Iraq War. I think Jeb! really reminded people of what sucks about the GOP establishment, a stink that I think stuck to other ‘insider’ candidates. That’s your ‘poison’ right there.
No Jeb!, less poison, and maybe Trump wouldn’t have won. Whaddy’all think?
ps. If anyone has a link to an English-to-Jargon translator app, I’ll run this post through it for anti-clarity.
Why do you assume the people who voted for the “normal” candidates are the “intelligent” ones? Sure, they might have some more knowledge of trivia about foreign policy and can give elaborate descriptions of their scams - I mean plans- for tax cuts or whatever, but when it comes down to it all the Republican candidates were vastly worse for the interests of both Republican voters and the American nation as a whole compared to TRUMP. Republican voters finally had someone who matched their class and ideological interests and voted accordingly. Also, I think it’s pretty silly to assume that the “intelligent” vote was split-consider that Marco Rubio got beaten almost 2 to 1 in his home state.
That’s a valid point but I would expand it to a wider variety of idiocy. Some people might have voted for Bush because they thought the Iraq war was a great idea so let’s get another Bush in the Oval Office. Hey, Kasich is from Ohio just like me! I’m voting for him! Scott Walker looks like my high school boyfriend! I’m sure he’s a good guy.