Oxygen: Sides and Vavreck also write about the cycle of discovery, scrutiny, and decline, whereby media discover candidates, scrutinize them, then bring about their decline if they don’t survive.

But Trump, rather expertly, kept sucking the oxygen out of the room for other Republicans and feeding the media frenzy. In other words, the media were so obsessed by his antics that they never discovered other candidates. More importantly, they never really moved on to some of the more substantive scrutiny of Trump – his business dealings, Trump University, his run for the Reform Party nomination, his use of eminent domain – that would probably have more impact on voters than the reality TV show of the past eight months. It’s all buried in the noise.

So we’re left with the situation we’re in now, and voters actually haven’t seen much in-depth press scrutiny of any of the candidates. This impressionistic take on the candidates has left people ill equipped to deal with where we stand today.