Comments:On the campaign trail in the USA, October 2016

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We used to hope that the internet would bring us all together, everyone talking to everyone else, but instead it's made it easier for us to break up into large closed groups that only talk to others who have the same opinions we do. Here, the one prognosticator who got the winner right, Darcy Richardson, said that only the pundits would be surprised — but on that he was quite wrong. A large fraction of the population of the country was surprised, not to mention horrified, that Trump won. A bit before the election I heard, second-hand, a remark from someone in Texas along the lines of 'Trump has to win by a landslide; I don't know anyone who isn't voting for him'. That's the problem. I can't help suspecting Richardson may have been in that bubble too, isolated away from the large fraction of the country's population who see Trump's election as one of the three or four most disastrous things to happen to the country since its founding. Remember some of the Republican pundits being flabbergasted when Romney didn't win by a landslide? Seemingly, the same problem.