How can we explain Donald Trump’s rise?

Certainly a number of contingent factors helped propel him to the top of the Republican ticket: the GOP establishment failed to correctly grasp the mood of the party’s most fervent supporters; the party leadership refused to consolidate behind a candidate; Trump mostly self-funded his campaign; and presidential hopefuls like Marco Rubio and Scott Walker proved they weren’t ready for prime time.

But the confluence of these events shouldn’t obscure the fact that the emergence of a nominee like Trump — who runs on a “populist” or “antiestablishment” platform that openly advocates nationalist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant sentiments — was always a possibility for the GOP.