NYT "Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Trump?"
Sorry about the paywall. Posting because it is one person's view (not necessarily mine, at least to me it is missing big pieces). How can anyone assess the election outcome without explicitly referring to right wing hate media and it's effects)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/opinion/trump-democrats-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
To the dismay of Democrats, the president’s strategy of ignoring the pandemic mostly worked for Republicans.
Will Wilkinson
By Will Wilkinson
Contributing Opinion Writer
Nov. 27, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
President Trump’s disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic probably cost him re-election. Yet it seems mind-boggling that he still won more votes than any incumbent president in American history despite his dereliction of responsibility at a time of a once-in-a-century health crisis and economic devastation.
Why are President-elect Joe Biden’s margins so thin in the states that clinched his victory? And why did the president’s down-ticket enablers flourish in the turbulent, plague-torn conditions they helped bring about?
Democrats, struggling to make sense of it all, are locked in yet another round of mutual recrimination: They were either too progressive for swing voters — too socialist or aggressive with ambitious policies like the Green New Deal — or not progressive enough to inspire potential Democratic voters to show up or cross over.
But they should understand that there was really no way to avoid disappointment. Three factors — the logic of partisan polarization, which inaccurate polling obscured; the strength of the juiced pre-Covid-19 economy; and the success of Mr. Trump’s denialist, open-everything-up nonresponse to the pandemic — mostly explain why Democrats didn’t fare better.
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last paragraph
Democrats might have done better had sunny polls and their own biased partisan perceptions not misled them into believing that backlash to indisputably damning Republican failure would deliver an easy Senate majority — but not much better. Until the mind-bending spell of polarization breaks, everything that matters will be fiercely disputed and even the most egregious failures will continue to go unpunished.
= new reply since forum marked as read
In the previous elections (ETA - the number for the Democratic Presidential candidate) -
Philadelphia’s voter turnout disappointed this year, but these strategies helped raise it in the 21st Ward | Opinion
FALSE.
Philly was supposed to turn out huge for Biden. It didn’t. What happened?
FALSE.
Despite dance parties, Philly Dems disappointed in 2020 turnout. But we can fix that. | Opinion
FALSE.
And thank YOU for the thank you!!!
No one in "the media" ever questions the "rural" dwellers (notably 45's supporters) about what THEY might "do differently" or why THEY "lost" their President, beyond simply repeating their crazy conspiracy theories.
I don't have a problem with people who live in rural areas. Hell, it starts getting "rural" in some places just a few miles outside of my city.
Throughout the history of humanity, you have always had "the trading centers" (cities) that served as a distribution point of a variety of goods and services, and the "rural lands" where the "food" was produced (either through planting or animal husbandry). The two sectors were not mutually exclusive and were and still are, inter-dependent.
This tactic to drive a wedge between these natural alliances is the latest stark evidence of the "divide and conquer" mentality. The parroting of false narratives is done by endlessly bloviating "pundits", who often twist themselves into pretzels in order to run with the "well both sides" sentiment, never requiring the one side to "accept responsibility" but expecting our side to accept their framing.
They are quick to scold us about calling many of them "racists", but are just as adamant about demanding that we call ourselves "coastal elites". 
This past summer, I saw the reactions of people living in the areas that intersect the urban and the rural - the "suburbs" - where a populace suddenly woke up and responded to what was going on around them, both nationally and in their own lives, with respect to their own behavior.
The overlaid "narrative" about the BLM movement was that the months of protests were somehow "all black" (a "black thing" ). But it WASN'T. I still sit here shocked and in awe to see who actually came out to protest on behalf of "black lives" and it wasn't "black people" other than a small number (outside of the movement's leadership around the country) who were cherry-picked to appear at the front of march in photos or video clips.
I.e., there was a REAL "revolution" going on and it was out in the suburbs around the nation, including in "red states", and that is something that the "pundits" have YET to address in any meaningful way because they are still stuck on stupid with the stereotypes that they helped to promote. What was reported lacked any understanding of the value of that "revolution" that literally upended some the most egregious symbols of white supremacy (e.g., statues and monuments that celebrated it). People have been begging and protesting for that stuff to be removed for decades and it fell on deaf ears, yet it happened "almost overnight" during this past summer and into the fall, just like that. A house of many cards that fell and the media missed it because they obsessed over a term "defund the police".
This tells me that they are talking but not hearing or seeing.
(the media) then you'll never get the word out save for door-to-door. And even that is difficult with the social media poison.
As soon as "Democrats" start utilizing "GOP tactics", here comes the whine parade about being "too centrist" and "to the right" and "not caring about people". 
My mother (history/political science major) would tell me and my sisters that they used to call this in her day as a young adult ('40s/'50s) "yellow journalism". It has a long and storied history in the U.S.
We are past the time for continual self-flogging and need to put up some money for and commit to buying our own megaphones.
something I have posted about before. You will always have a segment of the populace who do value that "style" and "demeanor" and "dynamic", regardless of the consequences of the behavior that often goes along with that type of persona.
Sad to say but that is why "gangsters" and even "gangster rap" was so popular. It embodied a sense of ("physical" ) power and who doesn't sometimes admire the notion or appearance of "power"? 
