Donald Trump is finally the greatest at something

[trotsky]

11. Oh there's plenty of credit to go around.

1. Lee Atwater really got the ball rolling with his nasty, vicious, personal attacks on Democrats. He made it permissible to launch the kind of baseless, hateful charges against Democrats that we're now used to seeing. On his deathbed he regretted it, but too late mofo.

2. Media-savvy Republicans in the 80s who successfully started the meme that the media is liberal.

3. Newt Gingrich and his development of the scorched earth / spoiled child political strategy.

4. Roger Ailes / Rupert Murdoch for launching FOX "News" and making it acceptable for a media outlet to fabricate stories and purposely slant their coverage to "balance" things out. (See #2 above.)

Putting all that together allowed the GOP to succeed in crafting and supporting a false narrative of how terrible (traitorous) the Democrats are, and programmed their base to uncritically accept what they are told (and dismiss anything reported that they don't like).

A demagogue like Drumpf was bound to happen, and here he is.