That is one group. It’s the working class, mostly white, folks who lost good union jobs, etcetera. Onshoring things like chip manufacturing will help, but will take time. Flint did not help either. That African-American community felt abandoned, they were…so people in the near by Detroit also staid home as well. I will never understand why Obama did not declare that a disaster zone, or why he pretended to drink the unsafe water. It was a spectacular own goal.

In 2016 we covered the election deeply, so there is another group. The one that usually stays home, thinks the system is broken…you heard this. But they come from the far, far, far right, like the same area you mentioned, and the white identity church. The white identity church is but one of the many groups that supported, still do, Trump. Richard Spencer made it not one iota of a secret as to why. And the last group are evangelicals, the far right type, which DeSantis is currently trying to pull to his side with things like don’t say gay laws.

Locally we covered both the Trump rally/riot and the Cruz rally. We have those in my backyard as well. And it was a pretty good component of the trump rally. Later on they went on to form groups like the Defend East County. No, most people don’t think militia in SoCal…we do have them. Hell, this is where Metzger started, and the headquarters for OANN is down the road.

The Cruz rally attracted the more normal type of traditional republicans. Gasp, but the vibe was very different, I had a few long conversations. My politics are different, but I heard the despair in the country club Republicans as they lost control of the party. The former group tried to break into the Cruz rally as well, and they were outside, in paramilitary clothes, signs and a whole threatening vibe.

Fun way inside baseball, the county chair, who had been the chair for close to a decade at that point, is a white supremacist. I knew it, they knew it, but they could not do a thing about it…or chose not to. Because he had a core group that acted like enforcers. He is now gone, and the party has somewhat locally moderated itself. Partly because it’s an endangered species.

We knew, and I wrote that in December of 2015 in an opinion piece long gone, that Trump had a very good chance of winning the primary…months before major media, because I talked to his base in the back country. I also did tell a few Democrats that HRC was a losing proposition, regardless. We used to run a very local paper. People say it matters, and it does, but they are not willing to pay for it.

Frustrating.

I wrote a book after that detailing how democrats went from FDR to a pro business party. Realignments are common in US history. But that is why Trump could effectively pretend to be pro-worker, when in reality he is not. 2016 is a very complicated election, because of how many people who usually do not vote were activated, who they were, etcetera. And how many groups who usually vote, were deactivated. Some have yet to come back.

It was funny to watch some major media send reporters to diners after the election. They still don’t get it. I will say this, figures in both national parties still don’t either. Ok, at least the country club republicans don’t get it.

Sorry for the long response c