The Trump Triumph: Why He Won

On February 23rd, 2016, Donald Trump won the Nevada caucuses. In his victory speech that night, he said,

                      "We won the evangelicals, we won with the young, we won with the old, we won

                         with the highly educated, we won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly 

                         educated." 

When Mr. Trump spoke to the Detroit Economic Club last August, he told Ford motor executives,

                       "If you close these factories, as you're planning to do in Detroit, and build

                         them in Mexico, I'm going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you

                         send them back, and nobody's going to buy them."  

At a huge rally in Tampa, Florida, three days before the election, Trump stopped his campaign

speech in mid-sentence, lifted a baby out of the crowd and declared "future construction

worker" before handing the baby back to the beaming parents and congratulating them.

Those three campaign snapshots explain why Donald Trump is now President-elect Donald

J. Trump. The bombastic billionaire connected with and fought for working-class Americans

at every turn. He was, as leftist filmmaker Michael Moore said, "the human molotov cocktail they've

been waiting for. The human hand grenade they can legally throw into the system that

stole their lives from them."

Moore predicted the electoral outcome even when Trump was five to ten points behind. In a speech he gave in Ohio on October 25th, he said,

                            "...On November 8th -- election day -- although they have lost their jobs,

                              although they've been foreclosed on by the bank. Next came the divorce,

                              and now the wife and kids are gone. The car's been repossessed. They

                              haven't had a real vacation in years. They're stuck with the shitty Obama-

                              care bronze plan. They can't even get a fucking percocet.

                             They might be penniless. They might be homeless. But there is more of

                             the former middle-class than there are in the millionaire class. So on

                             November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be

                             handed a ballot, close the curtain,  and put a big fucking X in the box by

                             the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very

                             system that has ruined their lives: Donald J. Trump."

Bill Clinton feared the same result. The former president saw a tone-deaf attitude in his wife's

campaign toward the millions and millions of working class voters whose lives had been

destroyed by the globalization and technological revolutions, as well as by misguided economic

policy. He also observed an erosion of African-American support, and urged them to

visit inner city neighborhoods.

When Mrs. Clinton dismissed his advice, he reportedly became so upset he threw his phone

off the roof of his penthouse apartment in Little Rock, and toward the Arkansas River.

Despite his poorly chosen words, topsy-turvy campaign, willful neglect of policy detail, and

personal attacks against even the mildest critics, Donald Trump emerged victorious. He

won because he cared about the forgotten ones -- the long-suffering steelworkers, coal miners, auto workers, welders, tool and dye makers,machinists, secretaries, janitors and the underemployed. He gave them hope,and the chance to make America and their moribund lives great again. They gave him their vote, and triggered one of the biggest upsets in American political history.