At this point, I am disassociating myself from people who voted for Trump.

[tblue37]

23. Actually, it is not hard to understand at all.

I posted this comment on another thread to offer some explanation of Republicans' electoral success:

The Republicans play the long game. One aspect of that is the willingness of right wing oligarchs to invest in communication channels and think tanks, as well as funding candidates, activists and activist groups, and party offices at all levels. They fund candidates for every office, no matter how local and insignificant, and those GOP candidates often run unopposed!

Those local and state politicians make their bones, gain invaluable political skills, and establish national profiles, thus becoming familiar to potential voters, many of whom vote largely on name recognition.

Unlike the Democratic Party, the GOP always has a lot of new talent in the pipeline because they actively cultivate their future officeholders, funding them, training/mentoring them, and providing them with opportunities to present themselves to politically active party members and to the general public.

Wealthy right wingers are true believers, willing to keep funding their RW media, even if they take a loss on some of them.

The GOP has most of the billionaires willing to commit to long term funding of political activism: the Koch brothers, the late Richard Mellon Scaife, Sheldon Addelson, Rupert Murdoch, the Mercers (i.e., Cheato's main wealthy supporters), etc.

Juan Cole once wrote an essay about how after completing his PhD he watched his RW classmates get recruited for well paid jobs at right wing think tanks or on Republican politicians' staffs, while he struggled to find any sort of decently paid work.

We have most of the really popular entertainers, but they tend to be multimillionaires, not billionaires, and many of them can barely afford to maintain their own lavish lifestyles and entourages. They donate to some high profile candidates, mostly for national offices, but ignore the need to build party & political infrastructure. They lack the intense political understanding and involvement and the money
to play the long game the way the RW billionaires do.

Usually liberal movie stars or other entertainers, like athletes or musicians, will focus on raising awareness and funding for a pet cause, only turning their attention to elections every four years, and then almost exclusively to presidential elections. Think, for example, of George Clooney's focus on Darfur, except for his Hollywood fundraising parties for Democratic presidential candidates.

George Soros is the main politically savvy billionaire on our side willing to invest in infrastructure for long term goals, but his political attention (and money) is spread around the world, in efforts to promote democratic/liberal goals in many different countries.