I can agree he appeals to a portion, but my question is why? What proportion of those would be able to tell you how he helped them?
He appealed to half the country, so why indeed?
This is where the value of listening to Eric Weinstein or Steve Bannon comes in, as opposed to dismissing them. One can't honestly disagree with them until they've been heard.
Both talk about about big money in cahoots with politics and media. They exported jobs to China and other 3rd world countries, because profit. See: Bannon's "Party of Davos" hypothesis and Eric Weinstein's "Embedded Growth Obligation" and "Kleptocracy". Trump is a global real estate billionaire. He surely knows how the system works, and mingled in those circles. He called it out, he told the average American they were getting screwed, how, and that he would fight for them. What other choice did they have? Hillary (more of the status quo / kleptocracy)?
Middle America saw job growth, lower cost of living, booming economy, 401k investments doing well, cheap gas prices etc... All the things Trump promised them. The left rarely talks policies other than labeling them, because their policies are what we're experiencing now.
Trump empowered the average Joe. He literally made their lives better. Trump "stuck it" to everything the middle American hated about the system. He turned the tables on the in-group/out-group culture war, and the "in-group" (i.e.: the "elitists" in politics, academia and the media) got steam rolled. It's not just the white middle-American that benefited either. His polling numbers with African Americans, Latinos and Asians are astounding - for a reason.
He's still an asshole, but he (from their perspective) was an asshole fighting for
them. That's why they didn't care that he was a billionaire with a supermodel wife. That's why they didn't care about his crazy hair and orange skin. The same "mean tweets" the cultured classes abhorred, endeared him to his supporters. They hate the people Trump was "mean-tweeting" to, too.
Bookmarks