Experts, pollsters and pundits cannot explain Trump’s rise because the reason for Trump’s success cannot be tallied up in a poll or explained on a spreadsheet.
Most people will never meet Donald Trump, but a large number of Americans feel as though Trump knows and understands them on a personal level. This is very similar to the way FDR connected with the American people.
The nation was grief stricken when FDR died just weeks into his fourth term in office.
A popular story is told of Roosevelt’s funeral procession as a train took his body across the U.S. for mourners to pay their respects. An old man was sobbing along the route, and a reporter asked him if he knew the president. The man responded, “I didn’t know him, but he knew me.”
People feel as though Trump knows and understands them even though he is a billionaire who lives a life that few of us can even imagine.
Most people in the modern era who ascended to the presidency had the “it factor.”
