To those insisting that we "reach out to" and "understand" Trump supporters, let me break it down

[muriel_volestrangler]

231. *The media* spent too much time focusing on Trump, not enough on the Democratic message

An analysis by Duncan J. Watts and David M. Rothschild in the Columbia Journalism Review drives at the scandal-leveling tendency of large media organizations in presidential campaign coverage. As this blog has noted before, investigative reporters at major media outlets did a crackerjack job of highlighting the excesses and scandals of Donald Trump’s history as a businessman. USA Today counted his thousands of lawsuits; the Associated Press dug deep into his connections with questionable figures, his unsavory business tactics and the Ukrainian ties of his campaign aide Paul Manafort; The Washington Post wrote an entire book on the guy, an investigative undertaking that included his bogus claims of charity, his impersonation of his own flack and a great deal of other things; the New York Times pounded away at his mistreatment of women. So many other outlets contributed to the impressive patdown.

And yet: “The various Clinton-related email scandals—her use of a private email server while secretary of state, as well as the DNC and John Podesta hacks—accounted for more sentences than all of Trump’s scandals combined (65,000 vs. 40,000) and more than twice as many as were devoted to all of her policy positions,” write Watts and Rothschild.

The sentiment may sound familiar to readers of the Erik Wemple Blog. Back in December 2016, we cited a study by Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center covering the final stages of the 2016 campaign. On this very topic of investigative focus, Patterson wrote, “Clinton’s controversies got more attention than Trump’s (19 percent versus 15 percent) and were more focused. Trump wallowed in a cascade of separate controversies. Clinton’s badgering had a laser-like focus. She was alleged to be scandal-prone. Clinton’s alleged scandals accounted for 16 percent of her coverage—four times the amount of press attention paid to Trump’s treatment of women and sixteen times the amount of news coverage given to Clinton’s most heavily covered policy position.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/12/08/another-study-bombs-clinton-trump-campaign-coverage/?utm_term=.20c1aba9a0a5

And Clinton had extensive detail of her policies available. But the media ignored it, and just repeated Trump's soundbites, though they were usually stupid, insulting, or contradictory.

Saying "Ds tend to be more issue oriented voters" and "when they go low, go high" is, however, saying "don't try to get the Trump voters". Trump voters were those who didn't go for issues (unless "issues" to them means "ban all abortion" or similar), they went for his insults of Hillary, and his general "don't trust any politician" schtick. They showed you don't get their vote by going high.