Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. I think he's right on, at least where I live:

"Support for Democrats has shriveled in rural America to near nonexistence, such that it is now next to impossible to imagine Democrats being elected to public office at nearly any level in about two-thirds of the country.... Right-wing media took over in these places and convinced people who live in them that liberals are all God-hating superwoke snowflakes who are nevertheless also capable of destroying civilization.... If someone had formed a liberal Sinclair [a popular right-wing network] 20 years ago to gain reach into rural and small-town America, that story would be very different today."

Las Vegas odds-makers now pick Trump to win November:

More on MAGA:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-trumps-followers-still-love-103005015.html

The godfather of all this, if there was only one, was radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who started the radical-populist ball rolling around 1990 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by DJT thirty years later.