Why trump is popular, and why his major demographic is "working adults without a degree"
1) This demographic gets paid the least, because the jobs are shit, or deal with shit. (literal shit. The kind you flush.) They come home exhausted, and the last thing they really want to do is go "self-educate" about some pontificating politician who claims to have their back, when really, nothing really changes for them, because shit jobs are essential to the functioning of society. SOMEBODY has to make sure grandma's ass is clean at the nursing home. SOMEBODY has to assure that the trash is taken from the dumpster every week. Etc. For some perverse reason, these people, who's jobs are the most essential to the functioning of society, are always the least paid, assuring that people in this demographic are not able to rise above it without gargantuan efforts. No matter how much Clinton, or Sanders, or any other champion of the left claims to have their backs, these people cannot stop doing their jobs, because the well educated will never take those jobs. Never. One day they might be replaced with robots, but on that day, these people will just be out of work permanently, and society will ignore them.
2) Since these people are drained by their jobs every day, they lack the energy needed to self-educate about the shyster falsehoods of Trump and Co. Keeping up on the endless lies, the lies about lies, the almost truths, and the past histories and voting records of just more people who are so distant from the kind of life that these people lead that they might as well be living in ivory towers by comparison, is just too much energy for very little gain.
3) Trump and Co offers a simple, easy to accept, superficial message that is appealing, given the above preconditions.
Nevermind that Sander's Euro-socialist platform would have provided far more security for this demographic than any of the other candidates this cycle, (given that he would have tried to get lasting social support networks to transition such working classes out of those essential but highly intensive and undesirable vocations as automation eventually replaces them, rather than throwing them to the wolves), or that of the candidates, he was among the least disingenuous with his statements. His policies were complicated (because policy and politics are complicated), so his message was complicated. That made him undesirable.
When people have just enough mental or physical energy to barely pop the top of a can of beer, and pass out in the recliner, maybe change the channel a few times before hitting a state of unconciousness-- they dont have the energy to be properly political.
If you dont like the consequences of this kind of society, then those that have the time and energy to properly think about it, should take the time to properly think about and consider why people are this way, and endeavor to make it so such people can actually have the needed resources to also be properly political.
The problem, is that these essential services would become vastly more expensive if that happened, because if you reduce those people's hours, you have to increase their pay, because they are already the bare bottom earners (and barely survive financially), AND are overworked. If you cut hours, you have to hire more of them to cover the workload-- Together, they handily increase the base operating costs of supplying those services. That is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what the industry wants to do, and what society wants from those services. (Industry does not want to pay ANYONE, ANYTHING-- and society wants the services for as close to free as is possible.) That is why automation is so desirable in these industries. Currently, it takes veritable armies of these people to keep society running. People that society wants to pretend do not exist. People that the top tiers treat as disposable and non-people. Those people have a good chunk of the vote.
A dangerous populist got their attention.
Will he keep it? Probably not. He's exactly the opposite of what they need. However, he regurgitates rhetoric that is simplistic enough for their overtaxed abilities to comfortably ingest and react to.
Overall, these people have a very negative view of the world (wouldnt you, if your day was spent cleaning up other people's filth and being paid slave wages-- day in, and day out?) and so, negative rhetoric resonates with them more than progressive promises, which they view as just more pablum and lies, again, because society cannot actually afford to change their plight.
It has very little to do with "hate", or "misogyny" or any of those topics that are convenient for the middle to attribute it to, and for the top tiers to distract with. It has everything to do with the fact that these people are ignorant, lack the resources to stop being ignorant, they are angry, they are tired, and they have had it up to "here" with promises that society has no interest in upholding. More than anything, they voted for trump because 1) it was convenient, 2) it as something other than the status quo we have had for the past 20 years that has seen this demographic go from near-middle-class to severe poverty by failure to regulate industry, and being whores to international commerce, and 3) they are at the breaking point, and are desperate. Even a shyster with a fake spray on tan, and a horrible hairpiece, that is an obvious shyster, seems better to them than very capable, intelligent, and conniving foxes that have been running the henhouse.
If society wants to replace them with robots, fucking do it already. Stop stringing them along. -- That's about the mindset they have now.
You can add to that, the presence of aloof millennials who felt comfortable, and thus did not leave home to vote, and the slobbering morons that will vote for anything that supports more guns, and a rose-colored version of the 50s (complete with racism), and then you get things like trump as president.