I posted “‘Blue Wall’ Hype” in February of last year. I said, in part:

The right GOP candidate with the right message can win some or all of the States that Obama won narrowly in 2012. In the table below, they’re the States whose electoral votes are highlighted in pale blue in the Tossup column (Florida, Ohio, and Virginia) and the States in the Swing Blue column (Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). If the GOP candidate were to hold all of the States won by Romney and take the additional Tossup and Swing Blue States, he or she would garner 347 electoral votes — a resounding victory.

I won’t reproduce the table here. You can see it by following the link to the post.

As it turned out, Trump was the right candidate, just as Clinton was the wrong candidate (for the Democrat Party). Trump’s appeal to working-class voters behind the Blue Wall and Clinton’s disparagement of them combined into a perfect storm of electoral pyrotechnics.

When the dust settled, Trump had won 306 electoral votes (or the potential for that many, if there are no faithless electors). And Trump did it by holding onto the 206 electoral votes won by Romney and picking up another 100 electoral votes by winning Florida (29), Iowa (6), Michigan (16), Ohio (18) Pennsylvania (20),  Wisconsin (10), and, as a bonus, 1 of Maine’s 4 electoral votes (all of which went to Obama in 2012).

I’m not ready to say that the Blue Wall has crumbled, but Trump made a big hole in it.