So Trump was right; almost everyone else was wrong

Donald Trump won because he was right and just about everybody else including me was wrong.

Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.

Trump saw this angry majority as his ticket to the White House. Pundits like me ignored the magnitude of the public dissatisfaction with the status quo.

{mosads}Trump was always confident that he could win in the Rust Belt by winning over the disaffected, white, blue-collar workers there who were soft Democrats.

These were the Americans who didn’t share the benefits of the economic gains under President Obama. Trump tapped the anger of these voters and Hillary Clinton failed to placate them with policy prescriptions.

Emotion is a better way to win support than reason.

Part of the problem was that Clinton didn’t make a credible economic populist. Trump’s clear-cut opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership made a difference. Clinton’s ambivalence on the trade deal hurt.

The GOP nominee also was firm in his belief that there was a hidden Brexit-type vote lying in the weeds (when polls showed the British leaning toward staying in the EU, but the referendum results proved otherwise).

The national polls clearly underestimated him. Trump was right about that.

Some voters may have been reluctant to admit to pollsters that they planned to vote for a man who was socially unacceptable to the nation’s elite.

And vote for Trump was a great way for angry, middle-class, white voters to go the middle finger to the nation’s social, economic and political elite.

Clinton’s ongoing email agony certainly contributed to her poor performance.

Clinton was cruising until FBI Director James Comey reopened that particular can of worms with his letter to Congress only 11 days before the election.

Clinton would have done better if she had been less evasive about the emails and had forthrightly admitted her guilt and profusely apologized very early in her campaign.

There are big changes on the horizon in the United States. There may be fundamental changes in healthcare and immigration.

Twenty million Americans may lose their health insurance.

Ten million people living here may be forced to leave.

The impact of these changes is uncertain. The only thing we know for sure is the transition will be even more interesting than the election.

Bannon is CEO of Bannon Communications Research, which works with progressive groups, labor unions and Democratic candidates. He contributes regularly to two nationally syndicated progressive talk radio shows, “The Leslie Marshall Show” and “The Jeff Santos Show.” Bannon is also political analyst for CLTV, the cable news station of the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV and a senior adviser to and contributing editor for MyTiller.com, the social media network for politics.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.