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The thing is, what is your notion of "normal, productive people"? Is it the guy in a white collar job writing code for some big company? Is it a farmer? (and there's a huge difference between the notion of the 'Ma and Pa Kent' style farmstead and modern agribusiness). Is it the guy who would have worked on the old style union assembly line job, which is now pretty much outsourced where it's not union-busted (for good or ill depending on your view of the unions)? Is it the Rust Belt and flyover state small towns dying on their feet because all the young people move away?
Everybody is appealing to the 'squeezed middle', the middle-class vote. The people on the margins, who speaks up for them? The Democrats, or a section of them, have gone for the minorities, but who is taking the side (even in appearance only) of the blue collar lower class guys (and gals)? That's Trump. Not DeSantis, though that's who he was supposed to be. Maybe he'll pull it out yet. I sort of like Nikki Haley, but she does need to get a position on something and stick to it because right now she's looking like Hillary Part II with "just tell me what opinion you want me to have" and getting in a stupid slap-fight with Ramaswamy, who is not impressing me and is certainly not 'blue collar rubes' material (honestly, if he reminds me of anyone, it's Andrew Yang).
Trump, for all his crassness and vulgarity, indeed because of it, does seem to be the guy who's "hey, you in the back there, who would have been one of the normal, productive, people had the economy not moved on, yeah wanna make America great again?" more than any of the rest of them.
This a funny and true observation. Politicians are always suck in a certain time (e.g. 1930s or 2008) or track in which the majority of Americans are struggling, but most Americans have a rather good standard of living, for all SES-levels.
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