There are a number of people who feel they're doing pretty shittily right now, no matter what people's metrics say, and "no you're not" is not a particularly constructive response.
I'm not an economist, I have no detailed explanation to offer for this disconnect, but I personally know a number of people outside of tech who are not fiscally irresponsible, but are struggling to reliably keep food on the table without consuming their savings - most frequently because they have some health condition that necessitates costly things, and their pay at work has not kept pace as cost of living increases have happened.
So I have little trouble believing people in similar straits could vote for someone who made bigger swings about "I know you're hurting".
Well, it's also the effect of Fox News, right wing radio, and right wing leaning podcasts which convince people to focus on issues which can be leveraged for political gain. There are lots of problems, but right wing voters are convinced to stew about a relatively small subset of the totality. And regarding those problems they also are only ever presented with a subset of available rationales and solutions.
This also simplifies things for them. Instead of the myriad of real problems in the world, conservatives can concentrate on only a few, all of which have simple rationales and simple solutions.
There are a number of people who feel they're doing pretty shittily right now, no matter what people's metrics say, and "no you're not" is not a particularly constructive response.
I'm not an economist, I have no detailed explanation to offer for this disconnect, but I personally know a number of people outside of tech who are not fiscally irresponsible, but are struggling to reliably keep food on the table without consuming their savings - most frequently because they have some health condition that necessitates costly things, and their pay at work has not kept pace as cost of living increases have happened.
So I have little trouble believing people in similar straits could vote for someone who made bigger swings about "I know you're hurting".