The most remarkable thing about the last election was actually Bernie Sanders, not Trump. Bernie Sanders broke with a century of American political history. In American elections, for… back to the late 19th Century, elections are basically bought, literally. You can predict, with remarkable accuracy, electability, simply on the basis of campaign funding. Also policies. There’s very substantial political science research on this. Bernie Sanders came along, no support from the corporate sector, no support from the wealthy, the media simply dismissed him as ridiculous, he was basically unknown, he even used a scare word: “socialist”; and he would have won the Democratic nomination if it hadn’t been for the shenanigans of the ides of march party managers. If you take a look at popularity today, he is far and away the most popular figure in the American political system.
Noam Chomsky
