Donald Trump has honed his message precisely to address the beleaguered citizens of Middle America, few of them ideological conservatives and many of them not even traditional Republicans. Though he praises Reagan as a great president, he doesn’t tout himself as a conservative or press social issues with particular zest or hew to traditional conservative causes. He’s going for a new coalition, beginning with the hard-pressed and angry Americans who have been left out of the politics of recent decades. As Trump said in addressing supporters and reporters on the night of Super Tuesday, “Look at South Carolina—the extra numbers coming in.” He painted a picture of “a finer party, a unified party, a much bigger party.”

Alone among presidential aspirants, Trump seems to understand that the traditional parties and their hardened ideological positions on issues have contributed mightily to the crisis of deadlock in American politics. The solution isn’t to work through the tired, old political structures to split the difference on issues, but to build new coalitions, based on new clusters of political thinking, that can break up the logjams and move the country in new directions.

Can he do it if he gets the nomination (assuming he manages to get the nomination)? That remains perhaps the most profound political question hovering over the country today. He may lack the political perceptiveness to see the opportunity in its full magnitude, or the wiles and force of temperament to go after it effectively, or the staying power to pull it off, or the character to unify the country. But the Super Tuesday numbers reveal a fundamental reality of our time: Whatever the fate of Donald Trump as presidential candidate, he has brought forth into our politics a new knot of political sentiment that will have to be reckoned with. It remains an ongoing threat to politics as usual within the Republican Party—and perhaps the Democratic Party too.

Robert W. Merry is a contributing editor at the National Interest and an author of books on American history and foreign policy.

Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore.