We had a two party system for many, many years and the candidates were never this retarded until recently. Look up Barry Goldwater and William Buckley, people I certainly (vehemently) disagree with but were certainly the most intelligent voices of the conservative movement in their day.

It doesn't have much to do with education levels either. While the Donald's lead among high-school educated voters is the largest out of the Republican lineup and explains most of the variance, he leads in every other educational category as well and the entire makeup of his support isn't that divergent from the general US population, with 22% earning a bachelor's degree or higher. In short, the variance is because a disproportionately higher percentage of well-educated people than the general population support the other candidates.

I'm sorry to say that Trump is simply the result of years of corporate culture, pop culture, and frankly white privilege influencing the way the majority in this country see the world. He illustrates how increased access to information has thrown light onto stark differences between the educated elites who are privileged enough to be politically correct/criticize the capitalist system and those who have to negotiate bias and shallowness just to keep their jobs.

Everything Trump says, as horrifying and unpresidential it is, makes total sense from the standpoint of hierarchical liability reduction and self-reinforcing boardroom logic that makes up typical American work culture, where the most outsized and blunt solutions (and people) usually win and caution is looked down upon as weakness. For example, while places like Germany regard taking emails after hours as an inefficiency, in America if you aren't on call many companies will fire you and find someone who is. Trump has also been a household name for a very long time because he blended corporate culture and pop culture to build his ground over many years, and he always had a crippling advantage because of this, but the society itself allowed him to rise to the place he is now.