Yeah I agree, so much of news media is like "oh people are saying such and such, people feel this way about that" and it either shows no source, uses a random tweet with minimal interaction, or shows an edited clip of some rando off the street who was likely asked a leading question.

But then Media Watchers run with it so it becomes true. Purely manufactured superstructural narrative that then reinforces or obfuscates the base relations.

But then people do vote based on incoherent vibes, so like maybe these gaffs did influence the outcome of the election. But I don't think most of them would have had any impact at all if the idea of them influencing the election wasn't incepted into the public consciousness in the first place.

But I think the degree to which this works is only because both sides are merely fighting over representation of various bourgeois and petty bourgeois interests. Materially identical so the differentiation focus is on aesthetics.