General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why do Hillary haters almost invariably deny Russian influence in the election? [View all]Turbineguy
(37,206 posts)free will. They voted for trump because they analyzed the choices carefully, made a rational decision and did not do what the Russians or Fox News told them to do.
It could also be that the Democratic party was manipulated into running Hillary Clinton because she was an easy target. While she was obviously the best qualified for the job by any metric, she was also easy to target for the hate and gut response of the lizard brain right. None of the other candidates evoked such a strong negative response. Many years of anti-Clinton propaganda insured this. This was the problem with Sanders, sure, he was a socialist, but he did not have nearly three decades of manufactured right-wing hate to bring to the table.
The Russians are good at this. They are slow and patient. They kept a terrible system functioning for 70 years. In our case, they've been working on this since at least the late 70's. The slow degradation of the republican party, shifting to be in control of what used to be called "the lunatic fringe". Trump coming along was manna from heaven. Everything was already in place.
This election wasn't based on any rational thought. In fact the object was to avoid it. The Russians built the clock and they know how it ticks.