I'm only observing from afar but I share the same explanation. The root problem is a widening income disparity in the US that most people can't overcome by "wor

I'm only observing from afar but I share the same explanation. The root problem is a widening income disparity in the US that most people can't overcome by "working harder". If you are born into a lower middle class family chances are you will be stuck there forever. The US is not known for high social mobility (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Comparisons_with_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...) - the "American Dream" is fiction. But lots of conservatives are held hostage by their own morals: Hard working people get rewarded. If those rewards never set in, most people resort to scapegoating: Immigration, an erosion of American values, elitist politicians, etc. - rather than admitting that what they really need is a redistribution of wealth, for example in the form of better schools, better/cheaper health care, etc. The left doesn't have this "moral ballast" and would be much more capable of pushing those reforms. This makes the current popularity of nationalistic conservatives so confounding.