Back when I was a card-carrying Democrat, I didn’t care for Donald Trump. Like many of the Anti-Trump people you see today, I often pronounced him a buffoon. I took his pronouncements about running for president, which he made often, as an act of self-promotion. I laughed when President Obama roasted him at the White House Correspondents dinner. I didn’t see any value that he could possibly bring to the table.

All that changed last summer when Mr. Trump actually decided to run. The way he’s put the media and the corrupt political class on their heels has been nothing short of brilliant. For many months, I’ve watched with amazement while cheering him on as a spectator. I know many of you who read this won’t be supporting him when it comes time to vote. The purpose of this editorial is too tell you that I will be. There’s a few reasons why, if you’ll be so kind as to allow me to explain.

For one, the politically correct culture that has chased so many good people from the public sphere for wrongthink and/or offensive speech is a blight on the nation. The one man who has repeatedly stood against this pernicious influence is Donald Trump. Even if you don’t end up voting for the guy, even if you think this editorial is garbage, I still feel like most of you will be able to see that he’s been invaluable in the fight against the moral scolds and censorious scumbags who have all sorts of rules for us, but are never held accountable for their own failures.

Every election cycle, they tell us little people what to think, how to act, and the Big Things we must agree to in order to get the ship of state righted. Illegal immigration is unavoidable, we were told. There’s no way we can stop these lawbreakers, so we have to legalize them. They should be rewarded for breaking the law…we’ve been told that again and again and again. It’s not just progressives and their milder liberal cousins who have repeated this ad nauseum. Co-conspirators in the business class have pushed this lie as well. They benefit from having these people come in and drive down the wages of hard-working American citizens. These globalists don’t give a shit about America or making things better. They’re only concerned with their stock portfolios and any illicit gains they can extract from the people and from the Treasury.

Trump is a rich man, there’s no doubt about that. He is a member of the class I just spoke of. Why then, does he hold so much appeal to the American public? Tucker Carlson, who I’m not particularly fond of, explained it quite well just the other day:

Trump is the ideal candidate to fight Washington corruption not simply because he opposes it, but because he has personally participated in it. He’s not just a reformer; like most effective populists, he’s a whistleblower, a traitor to his class. Before he became the most ferocious enemy American business had ever known, Teddy Roosevelt was a rich guy. His privilege wasn’t incidental; it was key to his appeal. Anyone can peer through the window in envy. It takes a real man to throw furniture through it from the inside.

I’m an independent and would never be mistaken for a hard-right sort of person. In fact, as I said at the top, before last summer I considered myself very liberal. What changed? It wasn’t me, I can tell you that. The thing that moved me away from that position was the way progressives have stamped out key liberal values like freedom of speech and expression. They even want to make the personal political, as we saw yesterday with the Marvel CEO’s donation to Trump’s veterans fund. Instead of valuing disagreement and debate, the leftist establishment now detests both. Get rid of comment sections, restrict Twitter, fire people for who they donate to on their own time, make college campuses safe from the wrong kinds of disagreement…all these things have been dominate themes over the last couple years. Guess where they’ve all originated from? That’s right, the progressives.

I do not believe that all people on the left think this way. Without question, they do not. I’ve written about old school liberals who have spoken out on these and many other similar topics. Those are just members of the establishment who are brave enough to speak up. When you look at rank and file Democrats, you see that there are a lot who feel the same way, as Mr. Carlson also discussed:

[H]e’s the only Republican who can meaningfully expand the pie. Polls show a surprisingly large number of Democrats open to Trump. In one January survey by the polling form Mercury Analytics, almost 20 percent said they’d consider crossing over to him from Hillary. Even if that’s double the actual number, it’s still stunning. Could Ted Cruz expect to draw that many Democrats? Could Jeb?

Consider these numbers as as well:

A SurveyUSA poll released in September showed that 25% of black respondents said they would vote for Trump over Clinton. According to The American Mirror Trump would more than double the best result for a Republican in modern American history.

Looking at the last 10 presidential election cycles, the highest black vote share for a Republican was 12% for Bob Dole in 1996.

Now there’s even better news for Trump. 40% of black voters and 45% of Hispanic voters support Donald Trump. If these numbers hold up Donald Trump would win the 2016 election in a landslide.

I tend to think Trump would be closer to 25% than 40% when we talk about black voters, but that’s still miles better than what any other Republican candidate could hope to offer. Why does he have this appeal, though? I’ll tell you why. At the end of the day, any idiot can see that the ruling class of our country is insanely corrupt. The politicians (who are nominally in charge) are almost entirely bought and paid for. Even the ones who want to act right are still held hostage by the constant fundraising required to stay in higher office. How do you get that money? You do what your benefactors tell you to do. No one with half a brain thinks a politician who takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, from special interests did so without strings attached. If you don’t vote the way they tell you to, they’ll find someone who will…and they’ll use their cronies in the media to help smear you on your way out.

Trump throws this entire paradigm on its ear. He doesn’t care what the media says about him. The man refuses to apologize for things that would have killed any other campaign. Mr. Trump says what he thinks, does what he wants, and lets the chips fall where they may. It has been an enormous breath of fresh air to see the media and consultant class get confounded by his moves time and time again. They can’t understand how their old tricks aren’t working on Trump. Over and over, they’ve pronounced his candidacy dead for whatever outrage of the week they had cooked up. What happened instead? Donald Trump surged in the face of every storm.

Mr. Trump isn’t a classic conservative, which is good, because neither am I. If he makes it to the White House, he’s not going to be shackled by whatever the Heritage Foundation or Chamber of Commerce has lobbied for. The establishment, on either side, isn’t going to be able to bend him to their will. I have little doubt that he would come in looking to cut deals that were good for the country while leaving the political dogma in the dust. Just imagine if we had this sort of leadership the last 8 years? The country might not be headed off a cliff, like it is now. Trump’s investments are mainly here in the United States. He’s a real estate mogul, after all. If we go down, he goes down. There’s great incentive for him to Make America Great again, not only for the good of the country, but also for the good of his pocketbook.

I live in Virginia. When the primary polls open on March 1st, assuming Trump is still in the race, I’m going to cast my vote for him. The people who run the Republican Party in this state are so scared of independent voters and Democrats putting Trump over the top, they’ve instituted a loyalty pledge that you have to sign in order to vote in the contest. Even though I don’t consider myself a Republican, I’m going to sign it. There’s no legal value in the document anyway. I might even consider wiping my ass with it before I put down my John Hancock. One thing is for sure, though: I won’t be stopped from supporting Donald Trump. The country needs a miracle, and as crazy as it might sound to some, I believe that Trump is the man who can deliver it.