Why Trump Won (Victor Davis Hanson)

Throughout the course of the 2016 election, the conventional groupthink was that the renegade Donald Trump had irrevocably torn apart the Republican Party. His base populism supposedly sandbagged more experienced and electable Republican candidates, who were bewildered that a

There will be now endless articles and news items why what happened happened. I like to keep things simple and have said in years past here on FR that the most likeable candidate wins. Policies really don’t matter to the mushy middle who decide elections. My theory was sorely tested in the two 0 elections but maybe indeed for the US electorate he was more media likeable than McCain and Romney. In this one you had Trump and H who both had pluses and minuses although from our perspective here at FR H was close to the devil. Given those pluses and minuses for both the vote was close but Trump flipped enough states to win the EC.

One could say it was the tireless work Trump did or his talking about issues that mattered to the rust belt states which gave him victory but one could argue he was just a bit more likeable than H where it counted in those states he flipped. He also showed up at rallies in those states a lot more than H and maybe that made him more likeable on that factor.

I like to keep things simple and have said in years past here on FR that the most likeable candidate wins. Policies really don’t matter to the mushy middle who decide elections

They also vote their pocketbooks. With a national 4.9% unemployment rate one wouldn't think that would be an issue this time around. However, that 4.9% doesn't tell the full story..

Interesting essay. VDH is writing this under his Hoover Institute dateline, I notice, since a good part of it is highly critical of his colleagues at National Review. I took his initial distaste toward Trump as cultural: a California raisin farmer and academic's view of a brash, gung-ho New York entrepreneur. As personality polarity goes, that's pretty close to the extreme.

So yes, this was a fairly vigorous dig at NR as well as a fair articulation of what went into this very strange campaign.

The old blue-collar middle class was bewildered by the leftwing social agenda in which gay marriage, women in combat units, and transgendered restrooms went from possible to mandatory party positions in an eye blink. In a party in which “white privilege” was pro forma disparagement, those who were both white and without it grew furious that the elites with such privilege massaged the allegation to provide cover for their own entitlement.

Bingo. To have a spokeswoman as fantastically privileged as Hillary Clinton, lifelong apparatchik and multimillionaire on the public teat, shaking her finger at West Virginia coal miners as insufficiently appreciative of their privilege was probably the worst example of projection I've seen in a lifetime of political observation. And she was perfectly serious. 0bama's is a government of, by, and for wealthy social activists, and it didn't take all that long for the voting public to become sick of its pretensions. They're still out there, though, and they're furious.

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