Tag: movement

For a manic stretch of 2012, we all believed seriatim that Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain were the likeliest Republican nominee. And if you were honest about it, you’d admit that the media itself drove much of this process. We got interested in a candidate and inflated their prominence; then challenged them more aggressively and dug hard into their record; then moved on to the next one. Those were the 10 presidential campaigns, give or take, dominated by what that era called the mainstream media. And one of the reasons the political press got Trump so wrong is that his campaign didn’t work like that. When we saw his early polls, we thought he was the flavor of the month. His support didn’t rise and fall. But it seems to be a defining feature of the new movement politics. This is a snowball, not a narrative. Well, it could mean that the theory motivating most of the 20-plus candidates — that they should make their cases and wait for their turns in the sun of public attention — is just wrong.