You can’t at once blame the media and then credit the voters for Trump’s success. Choose.
Say what? Reality isn’t a single variable equation.
Try this thought experiment. Leave all of Trump’s attributes and flaws in tact, save one - his P.T. Barnum-meets-Foghorn-Leghorn loud mouthed schnook act. Take that away and Ted Cruze would have more charisma than Trump. The media isn’t to blame for focusing on the loud mouthed schnook when every other candidate in the field is a sleeping pill. Trump won the popularity contest because 63 million voters LIKED the racist, misogynist, narcissistic orange idiot. He was “speaking their language”, remember?
Exactly! 
Yeah the media focused on the clown. But some in the media wanted the clown to be a spoiler. I need to find the YouTube video compilation that showed the progression of media personalities’ tone evolution from gleeful to concerned to despondent. Russian hackers and their 100k of ads was nothing compared to the free media from American corporations.
I would have voted for Biden in the primary and the general, no question.
I think Cruz would just be a watered-down Trump. And absolutely no to Jeb Bush, we don’t need another Bush or Clinton.
Fiorina might have been too wearied after her cancer experience… I know little about Kasich but I think he would have been OK, although he’d probably be just as uninspiring as McCain in 2008.
Maybe Rubio.
I voted for Hillary but I would have preferred almost any other Democrat, including Bernie, to her. I said well before her campaign started that she would be the worst candidate the Democrats could pick.
My preference would have been Joe Biden, by a mile. I know why he sat out but he’s got to be kicking himself every day.
I rather disliked both Clinton and Trump. So long as we’re considering hypotheticals anyway, I would have gladly voted for William Weld. Not that I think it matters one bit in terms of election results, but I would have personally found a Weld-Johnson ticket much more appealing than the Johnson-Weld ticket that actually occurred.
I liked Martin O’Malley in the 2016 primaries, but he wanted to be the anti-Hillary, and Bernie Sanders sucked all the air out of that particular room. O’Malley did a pretty good job as mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland, and had a can-do technocratic quality that I appreciated. I don’t just want candidates with whom I agree on the issues and who can give a good speech; I want a candidate who can actually DO stuff. O’Malley had that (and might again, although the early indicators for 2020 aren’t promising).
My wife is from Vermont and I’ve followed Bernie’s career for 20-some years now. He has long and stridently, even insultingly, insisted he’s not a Democrat. For him to say he was one just to seek the presidential nomination, and to since go back to calling himself an Independent, pisses me off. If you want to lead the party, be IN the party.
I voted for Hillary as far and away the lesser of two evils in November 2016.