Trump does not hide his contempt for Obama. “There is something going on with him that we don’t know about,” Trump said at a recent campaign rally. He doesn’t think Obama’s smart: “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Unlike himself: “When you’re really, really smart like I am . . . ” Trump said. Trump spent his first two college years at Fordham University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School. The two men exhibit two different kinds of intelligence — book smarts versus money smarts. Guess which one Americans admire more.

Obama is thoughtful, knowledgeable and progressive: the professor-in-chief. He’s always had trouble connecting with white working-class voters. He lost them to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Given the anger and fear that has seized the country, a lot of voters are looking for an altogether different kind of leader than Obama. “The nation needs a wartime president,” Senator Ted Cruz said. Someone who can be trusted to keep them safe. Trump pledges to keep out immigrants who might be recruited to the terrorist cause. Obama calls for gun control. “As if somehow terrorists care about what our gun laws are,” presidential aspirant Senator Marco Rubio said.

Resentment of education has always been stronger than resentment of wealth in the United States. Especially since the educated elite has come to embrace liberal cultural values — values that conservatives denounce as “political correctness.”