Jon Chait makes an important point about how the media covered Trump. Trump was scrutinized, but not vetted in 2016. That is to say, he threw scandal after scandal, damaging statement after damaging statement into the wind and watched as the media tried to keep up. No particular story could land, because they just kept coming. Clinton, meanwhile, was subjected to a single, over-arching scandal: the damned emails.
So, the cable nets in particular kept covering every new outrageous utterance of Trump, which amounted to free coverage. Trump, however, had cemented himself in the public imagination via a fictionalized "reality show" as a successful billionaire. Those claims were briefly examined - mainly by David Farentholdt - but were dropped in favor of whatever outrage Trump visited upon civility. Those outrages served to burnish his "maverick" credibility and "owning the libs" persona, and his servile followers trusted in the "billionaire" businessman who never actually existed.
Trump was a celebrity, playing by celebrity rules. He never underwent the rigorous vetting that takes place over a long public career. Cory Booker will need to explain his closeness to Wall Street. It wasn't a liability running in NJ, but it will be in a national race. Elizabeth Warren already stepped in it with the DNA testing. John Kerry had to explain contradictory votes in ways that Trump never did. Trump was always Trump, and that required no explanation.
Trump will now be vetted in ways that he never has been before. But tearing down the persona he created over several decades will be difficult, if not impossible, for those who dearly want to believe that persona that they voted for was real.
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