Life, or at least public political life, is a reality tv show. The worst kind. The old joke about politics is that it's "Hollywood for ugly people".

It's not a coincidence that Obama spent an unusual amount of his time appearing on every late night comedy and talk show he could find. Obama had the same basic savviness for optics that Trump does. That any schmoozer does. They know that if you appeal to the right crowd, and seem personable and charismatic, you can get away with a lot. That's why the left loved Obama, despite him running on a platform that opposed to gay marriage. And why the right loved Trump, despite having a long history of not being a terribly conservative person, much less a Republican.

But where Obama could count on the unquestioning support of Hollywood, despite all the corruption and actual rape going on there, Trump had to gain support by painting the media and Hollywood as villians. Roles they gladly leapt into.

Of course, at the end of the day, even if a majority of the country liked Trump's policies, the majority of people running news outlets, and therefore telling people what to think about Trump, didn't like Trump. And that was the hurtle Trump couldn't overcome, even if he came close.

That's a burden any Republican has, and to Trump's credit, he did better than any Republican since Reagan. The first Bush was mediocre. The second Bush at least managed two terms, in part thanks to 9/11, but even he ended his term with a 20% approval rating, and was so hated by the media that the GOP lost all control of government. By contrast, Trump lost, yet did so still winning 12 million more votes than he did the first time. That's...unheard of.