Media misunderestimated Trump

[Updated, again, from 8/14,  6:34 p.m. ] Yes, I said "misunderestimated." I'll be filing for the copyright later today.

Misunderestimated, because pundits and scribes both underestimated Trump and misunderstood him as a mere showman with a fat wallet and even bigger ego.

Update - - Anyone who thinks Trump is not a serious candidate getting more polished ought to take a look at Trump's New Hampshire speech Friday. 

The lefty crew at MSNBC which aired a long segment live was blown away, fyi. Here is the network's online report:

HAMPTON, New Hampshire – When Donald Trump took his brash brand of conservatism to this summer beach town on Friday night, it wasn’t your typical New Hampshire political event. It felt a lot more like a rock concert – complete with passion, cheers, and adoring fans. When Trump took the stage, he met boisterous applause, hoots and hollers, and a crowd clamoring to their feet to give him standing ovations as he blasted “political correctness.” 

Trump’s rally at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton drew an international media following and more than 2,000 people who spilled into two separate large rooms.

Even after polls showed Trump surviving, and more, after what would have been fatal remarks by any regular pol, The Washington Post yet today has a long piece online which basically says, 'gee, in Iowa, he's in it to win it!'.

Look: people don't put their names on ballots, let alone for a spot on a Presidential ticket, just to make a point or satisfy their vanity or promote an agenda, no matter how virtuous.

Those elements might be there, probably/hopefully are there, but every candidate for every office sees a path to victory even if no one else agrees.

Every candidate wants to win, period.

And in Trump's case, he never gets involved in a project or a deal or an enterprise to do anything else but steer it to victory.

He wins. You lose. "You're fired."

Plus, he's got billions of dollars, and - - this is crucial, I believe - - Trump is at an age where people know they better do what they want to do because most of their years are behind them.

Trump is 69 years old -- - two years older than Hillary Clinton whom Walker already dissed as unacceptably old for the Presidency - - and Trump is the same age as was Ronald Reagan when he took office.

For Trump, it's all or nothing now, not in 2020, when people would say, 'hey, he's four years older than Reagan was at the beginning, and look what happened with his mind in term two.'

The Donald is living proof that in a media-driven celebrity culture, no thing and no one is really real unless it's on television - - also see: winning candidates Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwartznegger and Jessie Ventura, and conservative heroes Palin, the Duggars, the Duck Dynasty, etc.

Hell, conservative reality is fed back to the party's angry white guy base 24/7 by Fox News, and Trump brings its advertisers so many eyeballs that it more or less sided with Trump and his laughable claim of network bias during the debate than it did with Megyn Kelly, the Fox moderator and star whom Trump went out of his way to insult.

Trump understands media and knows how to manipulate it to get an audience's attention and support. He's being doing that through his reality show for years. Did you see any of the rest of those cardboard cut-outs on that debate stage with Trumps media awareness and technical expertise?

Bush was a mumbler, Walker played small ball, and I defy anyone to quote back - - no Googling -- anything that Ted Cruz or Rand Paul said.

Trump figured out that the GOP this year had a presidential field crowded with rookies and cookie-cutter weaklings and interchangeable parts - - Jindal, Huckabee, Walker, Paul, Graham, Rubio, Cruz, Perry, Jeb!, Carson, et al - - not a President-in-waiting or media-savvy rock star among them.

Yet its the same party that's been telling us for years that there is a silent majority out there looking for the right, red candidate, but wasn't offering its long-suffering and ignored disaffected and resentful base anyone with the right tools to finally and firmly put those minorities and moochers and women and foreigners and mullahs in their place.

Enter Trump now with his bankroll and 3,720,000 Twitter followers to Jeb's 265,000 and Walker's 190.000.

Trump may not be the kind of Mr. Smith you hoped would go to Washington, and I'm not saying he'll get there, but let's be done misunderestimating The Donald and furthering the meme of Trump the Surprise,  or Trump, The He Can't Last Candidate.

Donald Trump is straight from central casting for a natavist party that long equated money with authenticity, a party that runs on resentment and mastered the art (see Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes) of giving its followers The Word via calculated images on the Tee-Vee.