This is a funny joke, but empirically not true as of this last election. Hillary massively out spent Trump.
There are some counter-arguments to make, of course.
One of them is that this model is true in general, but not in every single case. Rather, it may be more useful to say that media attention for your story wins elections, and typically money is a good proxy in terms of the purchasing power to get your story out there. Whether that's via pure advertising, or financing community organisers, or the best PR, money is a solid proxy. And Trump was exceptional in that he had celebrity status and an incendiary message that didn't need much money to get attention, combined with an exceptional time of social media that magnifies incendiary messages very cheaply and buries nuance as nuance doesn't go viral.
It'll remain to be seen if this will become the new model, or whether money will continue to be the best predictor of election outcomes. I think the model will change, but the latter statement will remain true.
Of course, by vote-outcomes indeed her campaign (and you may say, her money) did win her more votes. So even this election could be viewed as business-as-usual, the Democrats and its leader got the most votes.
Finally, there's lots of speculation about spending that aren't part of the official figures. We now have evidence that this is the case, with Russia spending in the order of millions on a divisive campaign, mostly against Hillary and in favour of her opponents (both Republican and Democrat. A bit like how Bush at one point ran a campaign for independents/greens, as they were most likely to steal away Democratic votes). With the level of support by Trump for cutting taxes for multinationals and the richest individuals in the country, as well as support from Russia, it wouldn't be surprising if they supported him outside of the official spending figures, either. There is evidence it happened, we're just unsure of the magnitude.
The biggest problem, I think, is that the media still think that people find them objective, when they are trusted at rates comparable to Congress' approval ratings. Trump tapped into this distrust and played the media like a fiddle, and in doing so, he was not only able to win a Republican primary that few people expected, but a general election that even fewer people expected.
They aren't persuading anyone who is informed, unless they already agree with them.
But I'm by no means an expert, I'm not even American. And people who know more have been speculating about the exact extents of the two factors for a while.
Before that August. He started spending after that.
what it really shows that it takes an incredible level of personal wealth and fame to beat the two party system and even then he had to usurp one of parties to do it.
I have no problem with his wealth and fame, I have a problem of it being an example of how much it takes to break the stranglehold those two parties have on our system. worse they use people and wealth like his as the means to implement rules to prevent outsiders from rising
After the fact you can always think of a reason that the counterexample is a special exception, and doesn't really invalidate a claim.
Someone who likes Trump could just as easily call his campaign grassroots from an outsider who didn't try to use his vast wealth to buy the presidency, but instead made a strong message for the voters.
I can say personally that the media's breathless spittle-flecked coverage of Trump did nothing to turn me off to him, and only improved my opinion of him. I did not vote for him in the primary and was angry when he ran, but by the time the general election came along, the idea inflicting schadenfreude on the media and left became incredibly appealing to me, and along with the fact that I would no sooner vote for Clinton than for Chairman Mao, and the fact that I wasn't going to throw away my vote, I pulled the lever for Trump.
But you, the protagonist, defy wisdom and reassert your free will by choosing the horrible option.
Though your chance at heroism does place you in real risk of becoming a villian, in this case. I hope that doesn't happen.
I also know that I would face a lot of criticism, ridicule, and yes, hatred for expressing that truth (and I can already hear the chorus of, "But you deserve it!"... I'm not impressed ). Well, here it is. I voted for Trump and I'm glad I did.