When Donald J. Trump first announced he was going to run for president, absolutely no one took him seriously. A famous real estate mogul, showman, and bully with a comb-over and little moral restraint? It was as if Darth Vader or the Wizard of Oz had announced he was going to run for president: the idea of it happening was just so ridiculously impossible people wouldn’t even need to think about it.

Yet just days ago during the March 8 Primary, or “Super Tuesday”, a very important day in the nomination process, Trump garnered the more delegates than any other candidate did from Hawaii, Michigan, and Mississippi, bringing his total number of delegates to four hundred fifty-eight. Rubio and Kasich did not win a single state, while Cruz trailed closely behind, winning Idaho and bringing his total number of delegates to three hundred fifty-nine. To win the nomination, a candidate needs one thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven delegates by the end to win; Trump is almost halfway there and ahead of all the other Republican candidates.

None of this says that Trump will actually win the presidency; while he may be in the lead for now, he’s not completely invincible, and even if he becomes nominated, there’s still the general election. However, the fact that he has actually attracted votes, let alone become the primary leader, is already a seemingly gigantic unfeasibility in itself. Who supports Trump, and why?One of the main reasons for his recent success is that the people who do support him seem not to care about his vulgarities or even the fact that he’s not actually a conservative Republican. Countless times has he been shown to be a ostentatious, flamboyant bully who publicly insults others, and many have probed his past to show that he actually leaned towards Democrats and liberalism before announcing that he was going to run for the Republican Party. Yet with their votes, his supporters have shown that they simply don’t care about these kinds of things. Trump himself has joked that his supporters are so convicted, that he could be connected with a murder and not lose any votes.

Trump has been tapping into a national frustration with the political system, with the political parties. Many Republicans in this era of political deadlock feel that their needs and voices aren’t being heard, that the politicians who represent the Republican Party care more about filibustering Obama in some political game of chess, or lobbying for the interests of big donors rather than doing their real job: making sure the interests of their constituents are upheld. Enter Trump; a proficient demagogue who can tell people exactly what they want to hear. The majority of Trump’s supporters say that the main reason they like him is because he “says it the way it is”; he isn’t afraid to say things that they also say, even if they are normally condemned as racist, bigoted, or otherwise politically incorrect. They feel that he is that man who may not be perfect, but at least he tells the darn truth. One of the main ways he does this is he capitalizes on the widespread feeling that America used to be great, that life was good, until immigrants came in and ruined everything. He tells them that if he becomes president, he’s going to kick out all that rabble and “make America great again.” An ironic statement to make in a country of immigrants, founded by immigrants, but Trump is full of contradictions.

<Michael Linde, La Canada High School, 11th Grade>