https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/miracle-must-be-renewed-bruce-bawer/
In the presidential election of 2016, everything worked – miraculously, but just barely. The most unlikely of candidates, with no political experience, with no massive team of consultants, pollsters, and speechwriters, and with modest funding, won out in the Republican primaries over a chorus line of high-profile senators and governors, including the party establishment’s own favorite, a politician from Central Casting whose father and brother were both ex-presidents and who had a massive war chest. After slaying these dragons, that unlikeliest of candidates, thanks to the power of middle America in the Electoral College, triumphed over his Democratic opponent, whose husband had been president and who enjoyed the support of virtually everyone in America’s cultural, political, academic, and media elites – all of whom took it for granted that she would glide smoothly into office, becoming the first woman president. And what, after eight years of its first black president, could America possibly want or need, other than its first woman president?
This plan by America’s self-regarding elites to defeat the most unlikely of candidates was foiled by the most unexpected of factors: namely, the wisdom of the so-called ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding voter. Trump emerged victorious from the maze, the obstacle course, the Minotaurian labyrinth of presidential politics solely because enough of the right people in enough of the right states sensed that he really was the right man for the job. They respected his résumé. They liked the cut of his jib. They responded to what he said. They somehow sensed that this one might actually keep his promises. And they were proved right, and then some: after he won, he worked harder than any president before him, kept more promises than any president before him, and demonstrated over and over again that his vaunted genius for running a business and making a deal was no hype. His success on so many fronts underscored the incompetence of all these career politicians with blue-chip reputations. He blew them out of the water, proving that a first-class businessman who really cares about the well-being of Americans can outdo any number of self-seeking Washington hacks.
