I think Aspenglow said it really well in this recent answer given to a question posed by @EddyTeddyFreddy in the ‘Schadenfreude’ thread; not that this hasn’t been said before, but it’s a great distillation of why trump is still viable: he’s created a cult of perpetual grievance. It gives the many people who blame everybody and everything but themselves for their problems a powerful feeling of belonging.
There was another poster who I think really got to the heart of why trump is still viable as well, either in this or another trump thread; I apologize to that poster because I don’t remember who said it or where, and I don’t have the time or inclination to try to find it now, but it went something like “the pernicious genius of the trumpist approach is that trumpists don’t bother to promise anything to their followers that will make their lives better; only that they will hurt the people who their followers hate”.