We've had this whole thing backwards.
Trump wasn't put up by Clinton to be ridiculous enough to hand this thing to her on a silver platter. That isn't why he got fifty gazillion dollars' worth of free publicity.
Somebody looked at Trump's television ratings and decided he was just the Mussolini-jawed, pugnacious moron who was charismatic enough to lead us over the line from a republic to a dictatorship.
Has anyone ever read Sinclair Lewis'
It Can't Happen Here? He's following the blueprint exactly. Who he's appealing to, how he's appealing to them, the way he's stirring up that portion of the population most likely to fight to the death for something they don't begin to understand, it all follows Lewis' pattern perfectly.
The fascist arises, and the media machine put him there.
He's not the stooge handing it to the commie. Clinton is the stooge handing it to the fascist. It's the only explanation that makes sense. He would, of course, run as an outsider. Anyone who can read the polls could have enough sense to do that. But this theory is the only one which explains why the media would spend a hundred billion hours repeating the lie that this insider is an outsider. It's because they're using this anti-PC tribalist backlash to end representative democracy as we know it--which requires a charismatic strongman. In this case, an orange one.
We must somehow make this old, but very well-written book go viral this summer. If we can do that...
The tribalist morons who nominated this monster in a crowded field are not enough to put him over.
It Can't Happen Here is the one readily available vaccine that might cure the lesser evil voters of their myopia that makes them unable to see the world outside the two party system.