Donald Trump’s stated views on most political questions, unlike his opponent’s, have remained largely unchanged since his first presidential campaign began in 2015. This is especially true of immigration and trade, his signature issues. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to conclude that his campaign is no longer targeted at the sorts of voters—white, rural, working-class—who are most commonly associated with him. Nor does he appear to be courting the social conservatives who once regarded him as a semi-reliable champion.
Instead, Trump now aspires to be the candidate of moderate middle-class white suburbanites, the most civically engaged and outrage-prone constituency in America. Contrary to the widespread assumption that his incendiary rhetoric aims to stoke “white rural rage,” it is precisely when he is courting these upscale voters that we find him at his most incoherent and demagogic.