How Donald Trump Surfed Public Anger to the Presidency
As evening fell on November 6, just two days before what is arguably the most stunning political upset in American history, construction worker Jonathan Langford patiently waited in a line that stretched for more than half a mile. The 32-year-old and nearly 10,000 other Pennsylvanians would wait in that line for four hours before they filed into a huge airline hanger in suburban Pittsburgh for a Donald Trump rally. Langford—and the rest of the crowd—would wait for nearly two more hours before Trump finally arrived, and would do so without complaint. “I’ve never been to a rally for someone who is going to be president. This is a little bit of history here. He’s going to win.”
The polls didn’t say so (though they were getting tighter). Most of the pundits didn’t believe it. And, truth be told, even some of the top people in the Trump campaign, just a few days before the election, doubted it would happen. “We may, and they surely didn’t capture the simmering anger in large swathes of the American electorate.
