The Messenger reports:

wo months before the 2016 presidential election, I predicted that New York City businessman Donald Trump would win the election, win Pennsylvania, and get 306 electoral votes. Trump did win, of course, he took Pennsylvania, and he ended up with 304 electoral votes. 

Years before that prediction, I worked on three winning presidential campaigns — although that experience had little to do with the accuracy of my prediction in 2016. Instead, it came down to taking off partisan blinders, studying the 2012 election results, factoring in the positive or negative effects of viral statements the two major candidates had made, and, most especially, assessing the needs and fears of working-class Americans.

Much of the political intelligentsia comes from money — and good for them. I did not, however. I grew up in abject poverty. My mother and I often lived in cars when I was a child. One plus resulting from those years is that my ears became attuned to not only the issues that plague working-class and disenfranchised voters but also the populist messages that might resonate with such Americans.

So, for a few months before that 2016 election, I spoke with hundreds of people from across the political and socioeconomic spectrum. Those conversations told me there was a growing resentment against the entrenched elites controlling both major political parties — resentment that, at least to me, seemed to open up a lane for the outsider Trump. He found that lane because tens of millions of Americans were desperately searching for an outsider, a populist who would finally champion their concerns.

You can read the full opinion piece here.