Gaffes Are Irrelevant Or Why Trumpy’s Foot In Mouth Disease Can’t Kill Him — In One Great Graf

By Emily Thorson, Politico

“In reality, then, there’s nothing special about Donald Trump’s ability to shrug off his mistakes: Political scientists have seen this dynamic at play before. As John Sides and Lynn Vavreck demonstrate in their book on the 2012 election, The Gamble, the truth is that this immunity is the rule, not the exception. Romney’s “47%” comment and Obama’s “You didn’t build that” misstep produced no real movement in the polls, despite the attention they received in the media. Indeed, most so-called gaffes matter very little in the long term. Most of the people who are paying attention enough to notice them have already made up their minds, and those who could potentially be swayed by a slip-up simply don’t follow politics closely enough to have heard about them. This is not to say that some of Trump’s missteps won’t come back to haunt him in the form of Democratic-sponsored ads in the general election, but in the short term, the lesson is that Trump is special, not because his gaffes don’t matter, but because he realizes his gaffes don’t matter — and takes full advantage of that fact.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-2016-political-science-213755#ixzz44nsxhKwu