> I'm partial to the strategy of selling voters on a set of policies that will improve their lives and address their problems.

It's a seductive idea, but it's the attitude of an authoritarian technocrat. However, the US is supposed to be a representative democracy, which requires being sensitive to the problems voters have, as voters see them. And that's probably a big part of Trump's actual appeal. My understanding is at his rallies and in his rhetoric, he gave the appearance of being responsive to many concerns that had been willfully ignored or denied for a long time (for instance: free trade dogma, which destroyed a lot of things and insisted people be satisfied with the easily-quantified cheap junk they were being given).

> People thought that once they were told to think that.

Don't pretend your thoughts are any more independent than those of the people you're othering.