American Greatness: How Conservatism Inc. Missed the 2016 Election and What the D.C. Establishment Needs to Learn

How is it possible that the conservative elite, Washington insiders, and mainstream media were so completely out of touch with reality during the 2016 US presidential election cycle?We were all wrong! The greatest political upset in our lifetime. None of us saw this coming are just a few of the confessions pundits, experts, and anchors expressed when it emerged that Donald J. Trump was the winner. Yet, while most of the political establishment and pundits missed the boat, there were many who recognized the growing Trump phenomenon in early spring 2016. And there were some who recognized, even during every seeming Trumpcreated meltdown or mistake, that Donald Trump not only could win, but would win. What did they see that others didnt? More importantly, how could so many experts and smart people get the election so totally wrong? And why are they still considered experts?American Greatness is an analysis and indictment of the mainstream media, liberal commentariat, and conservative establishment that implicitly undermined, if not insulted, some 60 million fellow Americans when they treated Donald Trumps candidacy as a sideshow. With so little humility or selfreflectionand no apology!how can these socalled experts continue reporting on and analyzing a country and polity they have essentially admitted they do not understand? After all, what they got wrong in 2016 was not just an election. What they got wrong was America.One writer pegged it when he compared the election to the fateful Flight 93, which was thwarted by brave Americans who sacrificed their lives to stop the terrorists. The profound essay exposed the hypocrisy of the checklist conservatives and deflated the NeverTrump movement. He recognized that Trump represented something newthe spirit of Americans. The 2016 election was the Flight 93 election. It was a take charge or die situation. For most Americans choosing Hillary Clinton would have been like playing Russian Roulette with a semiautomatic. With Trump at least we had better odds.What the media and Democrats see as Trumps outrageous extremism, said historian Victor Davis Hanson, now looks, to more than half the country, like a tardy return to normalcy: employing the words radical Islamic terror, or asking cities to follow federal law.American Greatness includes the entire Flight 93 article that started the political wave that took over Washington and it explains in great detail:What went wrong for the pundits and what they missedHow America first is simply common senseHow checklist conservatism failed AmericaWho the media should be listening toHow its time to relearn the basicsAnd much moreAmerican Greatness is not just another analysis of the mainstream medias liberal biases. It focuses equally on the many conservative writers, thinkers, and pundits who profoundly missed the mark as well. American Greatness explains how the timing was perfect for a populist takeover, why both the Left and the Right missed the pulse of the nation, and, most important, how we can move forward to truly make America great again.