It barely took 24 hours for liberals to start protesting Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday. In fact, students walked out of school Wednesday morning and riots began in earnest that evening. But if liberals wanted to protest someone for Trump’s success, they should be protesting themselves. In many ways, the Left brought Trump on the country, and it was completely avoidable if they had been just a little more reasonable.

Much has been written about the conservative media bubble, and not without reason. But a similar — and more pernicious — phenomenon is happening on the Left, and it is happening in the very seats of intellectual power. Liberals in the universities, the media, and the Democrat Party are largely responsible for Trump, and their echo chamber is so insulated they can barely see it.

Here are four ways American liberals brought Trump on themselves. If they want to protest someone, they should look in the mirror.

1. Enforcing political correctness.

Readers of PJ Media are likely familiar with the explosion of political correctness on college campuses. While the trend traces much further back, the recent fracas reached a fever pitch in the fall of last year: students complained that Halloween costumes constituted “cultural appropriation” and “microaggressions.” The very idea of a microaggression — where speech or actions not intended to be insulting can be interpreted that way anyway — is arguably anti-free speech. But students took the idea and ran with it, demanding censorship.

From then on, things just started getting worse. A state university had a “stop white people” event for RA training. Racially segregated housing is making a comeback — only now it’s black dorms ruled off limits to white people. Last month, University of California-Berkeley students formed a blockade to keep white people from using a bridge. Oh, and if you even disagree with “safe spaces,” you’re a white supremacist.

Students are being taught the ills of Western culture and history, but not its many positive contributions. Most college students now even think Americans invented slavery, an institution as old as history and universal in all developed cultures until Christians abolished it, twice, and starting in the West.

Given these recent events, is it any wonder that a group of young white males — constantly preached to about their “privilege” and the evils of their ancestors — are asserting themselves? The alt-right is racist and evil, but it is a backlash against the racial slant of today’s political correctness.

Donald Trump’s greatest strength — and his greatest sin in the eyes of liberals — was his much-vaunted ability to “tell it like it is.” He was not afraid to say the politically incorrect thing, launching his campaign by calling many Mexican illegal immigrants rapists. Following the death of Kate Steinle two weeks beforehand, his immigration declarations struck a nerve.

If the Republican electorate wanted an anti-establishment candidate, they had a few to choose from. They did not have to vote for a man who had donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2008 and who recently supported universal healthcare. They could have supported Ted Cruz, who was a true conservative, anti-establishment, and didn’t have Trump’s baggage. Of course, he didn’t have Trump’s name recognition either…

But the liberals were most scared of Donald Trump. Not only did he say unacceptable things, he was already a household name. Ted Cruz scared them, but Trump disgusted them, and Republicans loved that.

There was another reason political correctness helped Trump win. After Obergefell v. Hodges legalized gay marriage, conservatives became terrified that the Supreme Court would further enshrine liberal ideas into American law. The sudden emphasis on “transgender rights” further reminded conservatives that they had to fight back. Even those who would not have supported Trump normally voted for him to ensure a conservative Supreme Court, and political correctness convinced them it was now or never.

Next Page: Why the Left’s hyperbole against Trump didn’t work.

2. Crying wolf about Republican candidates.

Mitt Romney was “out of touch,” a heartless millionaire, and responsible for his employee’s death from cancer. Long before Trump attacked John McCain for being captured, liberals denigrated his military service in 2008. George W. Bush was a “fascist.”

This month, Bill Maher admitted it was “wrong” to cry wolf about previous Republican candidates. After Democrats and liberals had called Bush a “fascist” when he clearly wasn’t anything of the sort, it meant next to nothing when they said the same thing about Donald Trump, even though the label arguably fits him better.

Even President Obama was at a loss for words when attacking Trump. The president was forced to admit that he considered Trump in a different league than the other two Republicans he himself defeated. He argued that he “never thought” Romney and McCain couldn’t do the job, but he considered Trump unfit.

After crying wolf so many times in the past, however, liberals had no credibility when they used hyperbole to attack Trump. Indeed, these attacks seemed more likely to convince Republicans that Trump actually was one of them, a conservative who scared liberals because he would stand up for their values.

In the primary, conservative arguments against him fell on deaf ears, because liberals were so scared. Only a true conservative warrior could achieve that, and so many who might have been skeptical otherwise jumped on the Trump train.

As a conservative who firmly got on the Romney bandwagon in 2012, I found myself unable to trust Trump. Yes, he is better than Hillary Clinton would have been, but will a man whose political principles seem to change with the wind prove to be a conservative warrior in the White House? I can only hope so. But liberals can take the credit for convincing my fellow Republicans he was the savior they were looking for.

3. Planting operatives to cause chaos.

Last month, Project Veritas released a bombshell video about the violence at Trump rallies. The Clinton campaign and Democratic Party operatives planned to incite that violence, and it backfired.

The Democrats intended that violence to dissuade Trump supporters and convince most Americans that there was something very wrong with him. Instead, it merely convinced millions of Americans that Trump stands for something, in spite of strong opposition. Just as liberal attacks that Trump is a “fascist” convinced Republicans that he was their champion, so the violence at his rallies convinced Americans he was a real political force.

Once again, the Democrat attack backfired, and liberals themselves are responsible for Trump’s political success.

Next Page: Did Trump manipulate the media, or did they fawn over him?

4. Allowing the media to prostrate themselves.

In the Republican primary, Donald Trump received over $1.9 billion in media coverage. In any primary, a key feature is name recognition — voters won’t choose a candidate they’ve never heard of. Trump consistently led in this category, and the media coverage only helped his lead over other Republicans.

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver analyzed three kinds of news stories: reports of Trump’s high poll numbers, tales of Trump beating the Republican “establishment,” and astonished reports of Trump saying unbelievable things.

Reports of Trump’s inflammatory comments were presented as likely damning his candidacy, yet each poll showed Trump ahead of other candidates. These astonished poll reports left Republicans with the impression that he had beaten the “establishment,” and that “telling it like it is” made him an electable candidate. Many of these polling reports emphasized that people viewed Trump as “electable,” but did not focus on his negative favorable ratings.

The media coverage — not necessarily intended to prop up Trump, and even occasionally intended to destroy his candidacy — actually had the result of creating a hero in the minds of Republicans who distrusted the media and the “establishment.” $1.9 billion can make a sensation out of anyone, and Trump was already a household name.

Just like liberals crying wolf, the breathless media coverage of Trump convinced many Republicans that he was a heroic underdog, consistently winning despite everything thrown against him.

Why did the media cover Trump so much? One word: ratings. The media chases its audience, and Trump attracted attention. Higher ratings and Internet traffic enables outlets to charge more for advertising, and so it was in their interest to cover stories which attract attention.

TV news even went so far as to stream Trump’s speeches and rallies live — an unprecedented move which gave both Trump and news outlets more attention. It was a win-win, and while many feared they were “selling their souls” for ratings, they were also delivering people the stories which interested them most.

There are many, many reasons Trump defeated Clinton on Tuesday, and books will undoubtedly cover them in detail. But liberals and Democrats have themselves to blame for many of them.

Further protesting and rioting is likely to only make Trump stronger, and if he proves to be even a partially decent president, liberals will have to eat so much crow, Trump will likely become a true misunderstood American hero. But it’s not like liberals were silenced — they made him, and now they have to live with him.