Last week, Peggy Noonan argued in the Wall Street Journal that an outsider like Donald Trump could’ve won handily this year, touting skepticism of free trade and immigration, if only he was more sane, or less erratic and prone to nasty insults:

Sane Donald Trump would have looked at a dubious, anxious and therefore standoffish Republican establishment and not insulted them, diminished them, done tweetstorms against them. Instead he would have said, “Come into my tent. It’s a new one, I admit, but it’s yuge and has gold faucets and there’s a place just for you. What do you need? That I be less excitable and dramatic? Done. That I not act, toward women, like a pig? Done, and I accept your critique. That I explain the moral and practical underpinnings of my stand on refugees from terror nations? I’d be happy to. My well-hidden secret is that I love everyone and hear the common rhythm of their beating hearts.” Sane Donald Trump would have given an anxious country more ease, not more anxiety. He would have demonstrated that he can govern himself. He would have suggested through his actions, while still being entertaining, funny and outsize, that yes, he understands the stakes and yes, since America is always claiming to be the leader of the world—We are No. 1!—a certain attendant gravity is required of one who’d be its leader.

A figure like that would probably be polling better right now. But I don’t think “Sane Trump” could have won the Republican Party’s primary election. Only “Nasty Trump” could’ve managed to beat the huge field of more experienced rivals.

“Trump's nastiness is one of the reasons he will lose the election,” Josh Barro writes at Business Insider. “But it's also a key reason he got the Republican nomination in the first place.” Barro argues that it helped Trump appeal to a particular faction:

Over the last few decades, as racism and sexism have become impolite, a substantial number of voters on the right have decided politeness itself is a problem. Trump's absolute commitment to nastiness — often taking the form of crude sexual insults of women or claims about the criminality of minorities, but expansive enough to include many put-downs of white men as well — signaled to his voters that he was one of them, a committed opponent of the forces of politeness that seek to make "regular Americans" feel guilty about "speaking their minds." Trump, of course, prefers to frame his nastiness as a rejection of "political correctness," as do many of his supporters. There are cases of real excesses in sensitivity norms, as you may learn if you try to wear a Halloween costume or make sushi on a college campus. But the problem with the term "political correctness" is that it does not mean anything — or rather, that it can be used to impugn whatever norms governing social discourse from which the speaker would like to be liberated. As it turns out, most of the norms around social discourse are good ones. For example, they include "don't call women 'fat pigs,'" and "don't categorize large chunks of nationalities as rapists and criminals," and "don't brag about how big your penis is on the stage at a presidential debate." But if you violate any of these norms and say you're just being "politically incorrect," tens of millions of boorish idiots will cheer you on.

Trump has undeniably run a campaign of unusually naked animus against Hispanics, Muslims, and women. A minority faction of his supporters do delight in his bigotry. And Barro is right that “political correctness” is a vague term that can collapse important distinctions between offenses against oversensitivity and deplorable behavior. But I don’t think Trump’s animus against Hispanics or women was the x-factor in his victory. Put another way, I think he could’ve won over the GOP base without racism or sexism... but could not have won without nastiness.