Trump carried every county in Iowa except one. What accounts for the Trump juggernaut?

Our take is that all his rivals, Biden included, promise to be better leaders of the established order. Trump embodies rejection, even disdain, for the establishment.
 
For years now, Americans have seen that nothing much works as it should. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens explains that Trump is riding “a wave of pessimism.” Referring to Alana Newhouse’s writing, Stephens notes that “brokenness has become the defining feature of much of American life.”

Do you feel comfortable about our society, or the state of the world? Most Americans don’t. Nor do they trust the institutions of society, and especially not government. What’s most unsettling is that people in charge don’t actually seem to be in charge. Bad schools stay bad; transmission lines languish on the drawing boards; public agencies are run by the unions, for the unions.
 
An overwhelming sense of futility helps explain the popularity of populist candidates. You can practically feel the ground shaking, but Washington insiders stare wide-eyed at the failures and stay the course.

On the eve of a presidential election year, it feels like American democracy is a ship without a keel. Nothing much works as it should, and people in charge don’t seem able to steer towards solutions—in schools, universities, healthcare, at the border, and, worst, Washington itself. A sense of powerlessness is pervasive, pushing alienated Americans towards populist candidates.
 
Good leaders alone cannot fix this condition, because the powerlessness is caused by system failure.

Politics is a contest about leadership and general values. Is government good or bad? Policy debate engages a much smaller group of experts and interest groups, and is usually incremental.
 
Almost no one talks about system failure. That’s too hard to fix, at least within the confines of the Washington establishment. But history shows that meaningful change is usually the result of system failure and dramatic overhaul. “Punctuated equilibrium” is the name political scientists give these tectonic shifts.

Common Good Chair Philip Howard spent last week in Washington, and was impressed by the staffers and experts who saw clearly the need to 1) give permits to rebuild decrepit infrastructure and 2) remove managerial shackles that make it impossible to fix broken schools, fire rogue cops, and point government in the direction of what society needs. But they acknowledge none of that can happen. The status quo is defended by armies of special interests—public employee unions control government operations, environmental groups command a veto over all infrastructure, rich investors keep their tax breaks, and so forth.

The American experiment is built on the powerful engine of individual initiative. Let people follow their star, and let other people make judgments about how they do. As Tocqueville observed: “No sooner do you set foot upon the American soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side; and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the immediate satisfaction of their social wants.”
 
The July 4th holiday is an opportunity to reflect on how we’re doing.

Voters don’t seem excited by the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. There’s talk of a third party, but the initiative furthest along, No Labels, hasn’t put forth a candidate or a platform. Most chatter focuses on Republicans who might challenge Trump, but none poll anywhere close to him.

What would happen if candidates presented concrete visions of how to change how Washington works? Two-thirds of Americans support major overhaul. Candidates who present competing visions for remaking Washington might dislodge voter cynicism and stir up excitement.