The data the liberals ignored while focusing on 'fake news'

Richard Fernandez:
...
It is as if the actual contents on the Obama box didn't match the packaging. However it is domestic decline that appears most linked to voter frustration. Hope turned out to be dope. The Washington Post noted that that support for Donald Trump was highest in counties with "the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates". It was the revenge of the despairing.

Hillary lost because people who weren't supposed to be dying registered their defiance at the polls. Yet the Narrative could not accept the possibility they had miscalculated and continued to talk about "fake news". The Washington Post, Hillary Clinton and even Britain's MI6 blamed rumors from little known Internet sources not only for the Democratic defeat but as posing a serious threat to Western Democracy and public order.
...
"Lives are at risk," she intoned.

Indeed they might be, but not for the reason she thinks. The most dangerous fake news may not be the stuff churned out by Macedonian teenagers but that promulgated by official sources. "China’s statistics chief admits some economic data are false," according to the Financial Times. "Foreign economists and investors have long expressed doubts about China’s economic data. Most prominent are concerns about gross domestic product figures." The Chinese economic miracle, like Obamacare, the recovery of the last 8 years and "smart foreign policy" may be less impressive than it's cracked up to be.
...
There is more.

In preparing this blog, I am a huge consumer of news.  I have been wary of improbable news all along, be it fake or not.  Somethings I would mentally tick off a "check this" approach and seek confirmation elsewhere.

There was a lot of crap on Twitter that some Trump supporters embraced.  I do not think it persuaded them but it appealed to their confirmation bias.  They were going to vote for Trump whether it was true or not.  That is why I do not think it swung the election.

That the Clinton camp and their liberal supporters in the media did not understand this aspect of the dynamic is just more evidence of how out of touch they were.

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