Now, it's true that Trump has often defied political history and conventional wisdom. And perhaps he will again here. But even his unconventional presidency has been built on a very conventional approach to economic empathy: promising steel workers he'll reopen plants, promising coal miners he'll restore their industry, promising "the forgotten people" that they have been remembered, and that, by dismantling NAFTA and throwing up tariffs and keeping out immigrants, he will bring them the economic prosperity that 40 years of deindustrialisation and globalisation have taken from them. Even though he will almost certainly never make good on these economic promises, the act of making them helped build his political base.
Nicole Hemmer
