RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Revolt of the Deplorables: A new correlation of forces.

The 2016 loss might have been accounted a lucky punch but 2020 was a set piece maximum effort by progressives backed by money, gangs, social censorship and deep state support on a massive scale; yet it didn’t move the needle. It should have impressed, rather it showed the limits to the power of the American elite.

It was the most anticipated, polled, forecasted and analyzed US presidential election in history and yet the expensive estimates proved to be worthless, a massive intelligence failure that paralleled Neil Ferguson’s ill-fated projections of the coronavirus pandemic. The limits of elite prescience of over complex phenomena were demonstrated for all to see. The embarrassing surprise cast doubt over ambitious progressive projects based on social, biological or climate engineering since the requisite degree of “scientific” certitude simply did not exist to predict even in a mundane election.

The populist uprising is now objectively too powerful for progressives to crush. The left must live with it, negotiate with it, coexist with it because they can no longer bulldoze it away. By the same token the populists must accept that progressives are similarly too powerful to ignore.

Indeed.