The thing I would like to discuss about these presidential elections is that many people refuse to acknowledge the very real possibility that Trump can win the presidency.

EDIT: This became a longer wall of text than I imagined, oh well

At the beginning of the primaries, when people realised that Trump was polling very well, reddit was very dismissive of his chances to win the Republican primaries. Whenever I pointed out that Trump had boatloads of the kind of charisma that works so well for populist politics, touched on a lot of points that resonate with conversative voters in the US, and was getting more media coverage than any other Republican candidate, I kept getting rationalisations for why he'd never stand a chance: "The early polls don't say anything", "the GOP establishment doesn't like him", "people will end up voting for a moderate anyway", and so on.

Now we're at the point where it is almost certain that Trump will be the Republican candidate, and you see the same kind of sentiment about his chances for the presidency: "He doesn't have the minority vote", "he'll never attract the swing votes", "people will vote for the moderate candidate".

Many people just don't want to realise that populist politicians like Trump can and do in fact win elections. It's happened many times, but for a very comparable and recent example, just look at what happened in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi.. he didn't just win once, he achieved multiple electoral victories! And Trump has similar things going for him as Berlusconi did, the confident charisma, the entertainment value, the ability to be controversial and dismiss it as a joke.

Trump has a growing cult of personality, and his campaign has a fervour to it that I haven't seen from the Hillary Clinton campaign so far. People shouldn't underestimate that this kind of populism with a charismatic figure like him can in fact take a lot of the swing votes. Many people still kind of treat him as a joke, but I think it's come to the point where we have to admit that his chances are becoming quite serious indeed.