>This also tangentially ties into a hypothesis I have on US presidential elections, which is that once it's down to two candidates, name recognition is all that matters. Every time (I'm aware of) that a president dominated the mass media of the time, he won the election. From FDR on radio to Kennedy on TV to Obama on social media and now Trump who rode on the public obsession with gossiping about every stupid thing he did or said.
Makes more sense than blaming Russia and Facebook.
Why would you think the two thesis cannot work together as force-multipliers? If name recognition matters, then why can't Russian troll farms influence an election by hacking what names you recognize most using Facebook?
Because occam's razor says that the mundane reasons (terrible Democratic candidate, poor economy, Trump's name brand value) are more plausible than sinister conspiracy theories involving unimpressive ad budgets pushed by media orgs who just happen to be large DNC donors.
>Terrible democratic candidate translates to "she's a woman"
No, it translates to:
* Obvious corporate shill and corrupt beltway insider - made even more obvious in light of the content of the leaked emails.
* A candidate who had a chequered political career that included dog whistling racists - an event that Trump made massive political capital out of and used to get large portions of a base she was relying upon - black voters - to stay at home.
* A candidate whose approach was to present herself of defender of the status quo at a time of obvious economic distress for most Americans which has never worked, ever.
* And yes, warmonger (that much was obvious from her term as secretary of state)
* A candidate whose strategy to get people to vote for her was to hypocritically either imply or outright state that you were sexist or racist if you considered voting for the other guy. Funnily enough that backfired massively but people (like you) are still flogging that dead horse in what I can only assume is an errant attempt to ensure that Trump wins a second term in office.
The really puzzling part of this whole thing is the number of people on Hacker News who will argue out of one side of their mouth that Facebook ads area a scam that simply don't work and on the other hand that spending what is essentially political pocket change on them will buy you a presidency. Crazy.
Defender of the status quo? Her voting record shows otherwise(1). She defended those who needed it most, going back far longer than her Senate tenure. My daughter's life was saved by a clinic that would not have existed but for the rural health program in Arkansas she championed.
Makes more sense than blaming Russia and Facebook.