When I first got involved in politics in the 1970s, we had 24-hour news cycles. Today they’re more like 24 minutes, if that. Cable television and news alerts now on our phones have transformed what was a steady trickle of headlines into a fire hose of news and, increasingly, opinion. That has only intensified in this era of President Trump. With this acceleration, people have come to expect every event to affect the trajectory of campaigns, to seek the immediate gratification of real-time political analysis.
The fact is, there is so much going on now that in the big scheme of things, individual events seem to mean less and less. Think of the thousands of data points that people have related to Trump, positive or negative. Events that in the past would likely have had a major effect on a president or other political figure seem to have little perceptible influence. CONT.
Charlie Cook