President Trump’s victory in Iowa — where he won an absolute majority in a four-person race — will certainly put a spring in his step. It might not be, history suggests, a reliable predictor of who will emerge as the party nominee. The landslide by which he trounced two strong Republicans, though, is remarkable. It goes a long way in putting paid to the notion that, as Conrad Black puts it, the 45th president is a spent political force.

The vote in Iowa confirms a realization that has been creeping into the national political conversation for months. This is evident in, say, the coverage of the race by the New York Times. In a dispatch from Iowa over the weekend, it reported that the surge for Mr. Trump is being fueled not just by blue-collar voters who delivered the GOP in 2016. “College educated conservatives” may be the story this year.

No doubt, in our mind, that much of this is owing to policy. There might be a lot of blame to go around in respect of, say, inflation (the biggest blunder on the most important issue, the economy). Inflation, though, happened on President Biden’s watch. It has eroded the lift from the jobs boom that the Democrats might have enjoyed. Mr. Biden still seeks growth through spending by the government.

A share of the support Mr. Trump is enjoying no doubt owes  to a sense of catastrophe in the Democrats’ foreign policy. This came into focus in Mr. Biden’s first months in the White House, when, in a historic blunder, he pulled the props out of the pro-American regime in Afghanistan and stood aside for the Taliban. Mr. Biden tries to blame Mr. Trump, but it happened well into Mr. Biden’s watch. Afghanistan might well have inspired our enemies elsewhere.

The biggest source of fuel for the Trump campaign, though, arises from the use by the Biden administration and other Democrats of criminal prosecutions at the federal and state levels as well as civil, and constitutional prosecutions. This pursuit, involving more than 90 alleged felonies, is being pursued by Democratic prosecutors against, in Mr. Trump, the front running candidate in the presidential campaign. 

This is an appalling spectacle and appears to be helping Mr. Trump’s campaign. This is being acknowledged even by the New York Times, which reports that the surge of college-educated Republicans toward Mr. Trump “appears to stem largely from a reaction to the current political climate rather than a sudden clamoring to join the red-capped citizenry of MAGA nation.” 

Many of the college-educated GOP voters the Times interviewed, it reported, “were incredulous over what they described as excessive and unfair legal investigations targeting the former president.” In our view, millions of Americans take seriously their obligation to consider a man innocent until proven guilty. So they see Mr. Trump’s race to defend himself as a sign of fortitude and a fortitude that is running at a premium.

The 45th president will have his day in court, and just looking at the number of charges, he’s in a devil of a spot. It’s not in the court that voters will have their say, though, but rather at the ballot box. If Iowa is any indication, they are not persuaded by the cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith; the Manhattan D.A., Alvin Bragg; the Fulton County D.A., Fani Willis; and, before them all, the House January 6 committee.

Having said all of that, we grasp that Iowa is but the first word in this race. New Hampshire will vote in a week, and Super Tuesday looms in March. Ambassador Nikki Haley has shown particular strength in the Granite State, where Governor Sununu has endorsed the Palmetto State pol. As long as she and Governor DeSantis stay in the race, though, it is difficult to envision either arresting Mr. Trump’s march to the nomination.