The Donald Trump phenomenon is amazing. I’ve never seen such enthusiasm for a politician—ever. His rallies are overflowing with emotion. This scares a lot of people because it conjures up images of populism, and even fascism. There’s something about crowds of cheering White people that terrifies America’s elites, especially when the speaker is criticizing their long-standing immigration policies.
We have become inured to an arrangement in which major party candidates are vetted by the media and the donor class before being put up for election. It’s a top-down system that more resembles an oligarchy than a democracy. Donald Trump has not been vetted.
Trump has said some incredible things—things I never thought I would hear from a politician with a real chance to win it all: birthright citizenship, Mexican criminality, a moratorium on admitting Muslims, an immigration policy that meets the needs of Americans, to name but a few. Without Trump in the GOP field, we’d be choosing between candidates’ methods of balancing the budget. ...