VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: What Was So Different This Time About Trump's Election?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

67% : Two, Trump personally remains transparent and energetic -- eager to talk and meet anyone, anytime, and just about anywhere.
64% : Sixth, and finally, Trump himself proved more experienced, and more measured and reflective than in 2016.
60% : Massive demonstrations met Trump on Inauguration Day.
57% : So why is newly elected Trump a veritable cultural hero in 2024 in a fashion unimaginable eight years ago when the media had rendered him a near demon? One, Trump is seen now as a welcome relief.
55% : But, for now, Trump already polls well over 50% approval.
53% : Yet Biden had inherited from Trump a secure border, an economy rebounding after the COVID quarantines, 1.23% inflation, no wars abroad, and cheap energy.
53% : His energy offers a sharp contrast with the non-compos-mentis Biden.
50% : Four, Trump has expanded his MAGA base and permanently branded it as an ecumenical movement that welcomes shared class interests rather than the tired old tribal racial and ethnic chauvinism.
48% : In the weeks before the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was polling between 35 and 40 percent.
46% : The Evaporation Of The Obama Mystique) In reaction, Trump promises not just to restore his first-term success, but to expand it.
41% : Three, Trump is grudgingly admired, now even by some of his enemies who once sought but failed to destroy him.
33% : The Left's cultural revolution championed fringe policies never quite seen before: destroying the border, welcoming in 12 million illegal aliens, nihilist critical race and legal theories, institutionalizing a third sex, and mandating woke/DEI quotas and indoctrination sessions.
32% : Yet all these unprecedented hostile efforts to end Trump may only have made him stronger -- and more empathetic when seen as a target of increasingly fanatical enemies.
28% : The past year has seen truly pivotal moments of Trump as an everyman -- posing for a mugshot after being railroaded by a weaponized lawfare indictment, serving McDonald's drive-up customers, riding in a garbage truck cab, raising his fist and yelling, "fight, fight, fight" -- and after nearly have his head blown off by a would-be assassin.
27% : Trump also brought in disaffected Democrats, independents, and minorities in a way the Democrats could not with the evaporating "Never Trump" dead enders.
20% : Trump's veritable campaign menagerie of RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Kid Rock made it impossible for the Left to demonize MAGA Republicans as right-wing aristocrats or laissez-fair capitalists.

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