After months of media fussing about the competition within the GOP race, President Trump settled the matter once and for all by winning liberal-ish New Hampshire by a 20-point margin. All the talking heads claiming this was some kind of suspense race can eat their words now, and for the rest of us, there's no need to listen to them next time they want to make another pronouncement. 

Instead, as Dean Phillips, a little-known Democrat who is challenging Joe Biden on the Democrat side, observed:

"I went to a Donald Trump rally a couple nights ago. Never been to one. I had an event across the street. I saw the line of people waiting in the cold for hours and I thought, what the heck!"

"I met probably 50 Trump people waiting in line. Every single one of them, thoughtful, hospitable, friendly, all of them so frustrated that they feel nobody's listening to them but Donald Trump. A diverse crowd. People who had never been to a Trump event before. My party is completely delusional right now, and somebody had to wake us up. And if that's my job, so be it," he said.

Yeah, I recognize these people. Broken glass voters over the place, including the deep freeze. They're turning out anyway. It's Trump and it was always going to be Trump, who in the Biden era, is the candidate of 'normalcy.'

Which brings on more than a litttle schadenfreude to the pompous asses who thought otherwise and gummed up our airwaves with their prognostications.

Why did Trump win? I saw two excellent explanations that resonated with me on RealClearPolitics, the first from Fox News's Brit Hume, who said as soon as the politicized indictments were leveled at Trump, the other contenders didn't have a chance.

According to RealClearPolitics, which has the video:
 

BRET BAIER: The Earth shaking campaign news about Ron DeSantis getting out, Brit. Now you have three interesting endorsements of former President Trump one of them happening today. South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace endorsed the former president. You have Tim Scott, the Senator from South Carolina and then had you Marco Rubio at the beginning, all three of them were helped by Nikki Haley as South Carolina governor. In fact, Nancy Mayes she was endorsed by Haley while the opponent to Nancy Mace was endorsed by President Trump. So what about the implosion of DeSantis?

BRIT HUME: There is a lot of talk now about he did this wrong and that wrong in the campaign and didn't get off to a good start and the media strategy. I think all of that had very little to do with the outcome. The outcome came down to one thing and that is a reservoir of voters in the Republican party who are going to vote for Donald Trump if they had the chance.

It was obscured by polling for about a year ago that suggested that he could be beaten and that Ron DeSantis could beat him. But once he got indicted, sketchy indictment in New York, the sentiment for him woke up and I don't think that either he or DeSantis or really any other candidate had a chance against that. These Republicans want this man and they voting for him.

Why is that? Because the voters can see that those politicized and junk indictments are a threat to them. The other candidates said very little about these indictments and it's believed that they were running because they believed those indictments would succeed. It's nice to be the man or woman in the wings waiting once Trump is knocked out.

The voters, though, had another take: This crap needs to stop now or we're Venezuela or Russia. That kind of garbage goes on all the time in those places. Make that the standard here and we are history. Jailing your opposition is fourth-world politics, not American politics, a bottom dropping out and an open gateway for the normalization of this kind vile kangaroo-court injustice. Coming on top of the stolen election (which more than half the GOP voters believe was stolen), the sleazy one-sided partisan impeachments, the Steele dossier calumnies, and the machinations of the state and the goose was cooked. Stop that now. Deal with that now. Only Trump, who was in the middle of it, would understand and put a stop to it once elected, protecting us and protecting our democratic way of life, so he had to be elected no matter how much ice and snow was on the ground. The other candidates simply didn't recognize it, and indeed wanted to profit from it personally, so to hell with them. They should not have been running at all.

Of course they didn't have a chance. They had some nice policy proposals, and one of them, Ron DeSantis, had a fine record as governor, but they sure as heck didn't recognize the burning issue of the day, which was the deep state conniving and legal abuse going on in the judicial branch which affects Trump and affects us all. 

Which brings on the other item that was striking and resonant at RealClearPolitics, the powerful essay written by Lynn Friess (Foster Friess's widow) titled 'It's Almost Morning in America."

She argues that the nation, with its really wildly different interest groups, is actually coming together under Trump, writing that: 

These diverse groups are seeking an outsider, a problem solver. One candidate can cut through the noise and address these significant issues. President Trump remains untethered to special interests, unswayed by partisan press, and driven by the principle of “America First.” His unique position enables collaboration across party lines for the benefit of all Americans.

These unusual alliances offer the greatest opportunity for unity in our nation. Yet, some of my neighbors still say, “I liked what he did in his first term, but I don’t agree with his antics.”

President Trump’s unconventional methods, which yielded success in his first term, are why a diverse group of Americans believe he can once again deliver on the changes they so desperately desire.

My late husband, Foster, often said, “My success in building a billion-dollar business came from harnessing people’s strengths and ignoring their weaknesses.” President Trump is far from perfect (aren’t we all), but tens of millions of Americans feel that nobody is listening to them except Donald Trump. Where conventional politicians left broken promises, President Trump delivered.

Unlike Nikki Haley, or worse still, Joe Biden, he's nobody's puppet with big moneybag donors in the background quietly issuing orders. He's detached from special interests and uninterested in their money, so he can actually govern as a free agent in the voters' interests.

The last part of her statement is insightful, too -- the coming together seems to be despite Trump's mean tweets, voters are learning to ignore that and do things the Foster Freiss way, which is to harness Trump's strengths and ignore his weaknesses.

If that's the case, this race is going to be over pretty soon. Not only do Trump's GOP rivals not have a chance, Joe Biden doesn't have a chance, either. He sucks so bad as president even cheating might not save him. 

Trump's time is now because he's got his finger on what concerns voters and is in a perfect position to do something about it. After it's done, we can talk about gubernatorial records of his potential successors and the like, but the machinery needs to be fixed first or none of that matters.

That's why Trump is stomping them all and the pundits are flabbergasted.

They always say a lot can happen in politics between now and November, but this is what's happening.

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