Trump's essential demographic is lower-income, less-educated, older white men.
They had been abandoned by Dem leadership & were looking for a saviour. They were gullible enough to believe a narcissistic psychopath when he said "I am your retribution".
They voted for him because he hated who they hated.
They didn't twig he hated them as well.
https://www.juancole.com/2024/11/retribution-psychoanalysts-inequality.html .
They didn't choose the cruel & broken system they were born into. They were desperate and not clever enough to see through him. Broken people need empathy and education.
Icoi
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/sociopaths-and-why-we-elect-them,15201 .
Re "Nobody abandoned them though".
Sorry to have to say that your statement runs contrary to all scholarly analysis of the issue.
Of course racism. That's a given in the analyses.
@DrALJONES
All the scholarly material I have read says that they feel, or report, or argue that the democratic party abandoned them, but that's all about their beliefs, rather than reality.
They were, and are still now, the beneficiaries of myriad advantages. It seems to my reading that this is more about the world passing them by because they stood still, than being abandoned by anyone.
Also, they lurched rightwards, not leftwards
Not sure if you read the article?
DrALJONES
Queen 1066
Airis Damon
Humphrey Archer