An Historic, Quite Possibly Revolutionary Victory!
This is an amazing victory. The stars were aligned. First, the very long shot of Trump being nominated. Then he gets to run against the most corrupt, least charismatic candidate in history (I think Joe Biden would have beaten Trump, and maybe even Bernie Sanders) at a time when Americans naturally want change after 8 years of Obama.
Fundamentally, it is a victory of White Americans over the oligarchic, hostile elites what have run this country for decades. Trump accomplished a hostile takeover of the Republican Party and won without the support or with only lukewarm and vacillating support from much of the GOP elite. In May of 2015 I was very despondent about our prospects. It just didn’t seem like we could break through the elite consensus dominating all the high ground—and all the moral high ground—of the U.S., including the media (print, television, and the Hollywood movie industry), the academic world, politics, Wall St., and the CEOs of major corporations. We were systematically shut out and it was obvious that the powers that be were not going to let the Alt Right get a seat at the table.hen Trump announced, it was hard to take it seriously, but his comments on immigration, American nationalism, political correctness and trade certainly struck a chord. My immediate reaction (July 10, 2015), however, was that he had two things going for him that were absolutely unique — he is a celebrity and he is very, very rich (“How it could happen“). Such a person is in a position to be heard; he can’t be shut out of the media, and he doesn’t need the money of the corrupt donor class. In fact, the media, eager for ratings, gave him countless opportunities to get his message out. Anyone on the Alt Right could have said the exact same things, but we would be speaking into our closets.
Even back in July of 2015, it was obvious Trump was not your usual GOP candidate:
[Trump] certainly did not fall in my estimation when he attacked two prominent operatives of the Republican Party/Israel Lobby nexus hostile to his candidacy, Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg. Then there’s the Twitter incident: “I promise you that I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz — I mean Jon Stewart @TheDailyShow,” tweeted Trump, adding, “Who, by the way, is totally overrated.” It is, of course, considered “anti-Semitic” to ever call attention to the fact that someone is Jewish because of the absolutely outrageous suggestion that the Jewish identity of someone like Stewart/Leibowitz might influence his opinions. As we all know, Jews are just like everybody else.
And it quickly turned out that he understood the anger in White America far better than anyone else and he was willing to say what they wanted to hear — most of all the White working class (72-23!), but also White women(53-43), and his deficit among White educated women was only 51-45 (CBS exit polls). Looks like quite a few college-educated women ignored what they heard in their gender studies courses and those mandatory credits in Black Studies.
While obviously a lot of work needs to be done, this is a glorious day.
