Instead, Hagan suggests, the support for Trump is the latest in a depressingly familiar story; when voters who have lost a sense of security look for solace by finding others to blame or to scorn.

“You know,” Hagan says, “people who ‘don’t look like us, who don’t talk like us, who are just not like us’…” In other words, the immigrants whom Trump has vowed to build a wall to keep out—or in the case of Muslims, to ban outright.

Over dinner a few nights ago, one of Hagan’s lifelong friends—Vietnam vet, Democratic foot soldier—talks about the bar he frequents where “I don’t know anybody who isn’t voting for Trump.” And, he notes pointedly, Trump is triggering new forms of old resentments.

“You never heard anybody talk about ‘Mexicans’—nobody knew any. Now, I hear a guy talking about bringing an assault rifle down to the border to scare off illegal immigrants.” It’s another chapter in a history of polarization that Hagan and his friend trace all the back to the late 60s. “When Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of Cleveland in ’67, Hagan says, that’s when we saw a huge move of white working class voters away from the Democratic Party.” In that sense, the “America First” theme of Donald Trump is an old wine in a new bottle.