It being immediately post-Obama and Trump being the only candidate willing to be insanely overly racist basically sealed him in as the Republican candidate. There is a large portion of white America that could not cope with a black man being president, much less for two terms. They had basically a decade where they were getting more and more riled up by every right wing talk show can you can imagine. Satan himself would have been elected if he dropped a hard R n-bomb on TV.

As someone from and currently still living in middle America, Trump winning wasn't surprising in the least. Part of me still blames the Democrats and "coastal left" in general for not paying enough attention to what has been going on here over the last thirty years. There was a time when these states could have become a bulwark for leftism with the right campaigning and political tactics, but by ignoring and culturally minimizing them it guaranteed that Christo-fascism would take hold. Ultimately though, people's choices are their own, it's just not worth it anymore and my husband and I are moving to New England in August and never looking back.