Do you think Trump took the election because he is the polar opposite of Obama?

He appealed to a great many good ole boys, he promised them the moon.
And they ate it up, and yeah probably he took the election because he was so opposite of any polished politician they have seen before and it resinated with(this guy tells it like it is)them.

I personally don’t believe so, I think after Obama, the MAGA mindset/ campaign slogan was brilliant though, as it played into Obama’s perceived weaknesses.

With “took the election”, you mean won, or run for it, or?

I agree with it as far as the article goes.

But the question title here takes it a lot farther. Trump is not the “polar opposite” of Obama except within some inaccurate and extremely reductive frame of mind.

That’s one of the traps of US politics. A centrist 21st Century US Democrat is not accurately the opposite of an buffoon corporate tool (etc would take all day to describe all the horrors etc etc).

But in the atrocious frames of mind of far too many right-wing “voters”, because our inadequate-as-shit binary voting system only lets you pick one of the two big-party-corporate-&-big-money-beholden parties’ candidates OR the other, and the media and politicians successfully have got most US voters to think in terms of binary opposites, yes, this kind of thinking can work in US elections.

I know nice smart benevolent people who agree with many “far left” ideas, but always vote® because their minister has them thinking about abortion rights as “killing babies”, which “trumps” all other considerations when making their binary voting “decision” (of which one of the two big-party-corporate-&-big-money-beholden parties’ candidates to vote FOR, because voting for one of those is the only choice considered meaningful).

That man read my mind.

The very existence of Boris Johnston and largest majority win since Margaret Thatcher, destroys that writer’s premise completely. Lol!

Trump won the election because he has a penis.

Red State voters still wouldn’t vote for a woman for president in 2016. They might now.

That played into it too, I’m sure.

Yes, I definitely think part of the reason Trump won was because Obama (the black guy who passed penalties for not enrolling in healthcare and who was portrayed as and believed to be a Muslim and anti-Israel by many conservatives) had been president. I also think part of the reason Bush II won was because Clinton had been president, and Bush ride in as the family values man after Monica Lewinsky.

Every action gets a reaction.

Don’t forget that in the first election GW lost the popular vote. EC to the rescue again.

Interesting.
Clinton was brilliant, GW was stump stupid.
Obama is brilliant, trump is dumber than GWs stump.
Nixon was a criminal, and the next president, Carter, couldn’t be any squeakier clean.

I’m starting to have real hope for the next election!

@elbanditoroso I’m skeptical that (my) red state voters would vote for a woman, even now. And they flippin love Trump, still. <eyeroll>

No. I think people in general have become so pissed off and confrontational that the same presented by Trump was just too good to be ignored. I think this point and another I’ve mentioned in other posts on the subject of why Trump won pushed Trump over the top. Not by a landslide, but just enough.

In my lifetime, there seems to be a pattern. Usually, one party gets the white house, and the other gets the congress, and Senate. It goes back, and forth.

American people, don’t seem to like one mindset, running things. And they’re NEVER jointly accepting of the POTUS.

@Dutchess_III Except all of the examples were after two terms except Nixon, but Nixon never ran for a second term.

@JLeslie Nixon ran for a second term and he won, inaugurated in 1973. He had to resign in 1974.

^^Oh good point. Thanks for the correction. I was thinking it was his first term.