IT HAS been a bad month for Donald Trump, by all measures of conventional wisdom, and the national media has told us this in a steady drumbeat — rhetorical missteps, campaign disarray, lack of organization in swing states, a party apparat that does not want him, and inadequate funding.

Yet his poll numbers have actually not moved much and Mr. Trump is still within striking distance in most key states, including this one. Trump partisans, and even Trump “leaners,” are not dissuaded by his troubles. They say they know he is not a politician. They are sticking.

Why is that?

Mr. Trump is addressing two great issues that are powerful and have long been ignored — one that Bernie Sanders also addressed and one that he could not fully address: deindustrialization — the loss of American manufacturing and of well paying factory jobs — and political corruption.

Mr. Trump came roaring back at the end of last week with a hard-hitting speech in which he talked “jobs, jobs, jobs” and said he would restore the United States as a manufacturing giant and insist upon fair trade. He hits these issues hard in every speech and his supporters hear that.

What the commentariate doesn’t get about the trade-jobs-manufacturing issue is that it connects because it should. Americans have been living with the decline of American industry for two generations now. It means more to them than what bathrooms people use.

And Mr. Trump couples this issue with the corruption issue: the game is rigged. He even went after Wall Street and lobbyists in last week’s address. When you are running against the Clintons, this has resonance.

I know lifelong Republicans, indeed officeholders, who say they will not vote for Mr. Trump. They say he is unpresidential, unqualified, unequipped, and mean.

But I know a Democratic member of Congress who says: “I will not vote for Hillary: I know too much about the Clintons.”

Look past the personalities to the issue that runs so deep in our part of the world. A leading Ohio Democrat told me last week: “Personally, I think NAFTA destroyed Toledo and destroyed the country.” He added that the Clintons — and the leadership of both parties — gave us NAFTA. Now they are telling the country that it’s OK to make cars in Vietnam and engage in “free trade” — no tariffs — to bring those products here. How can folks who have watched their fortunes plummet over the past 30 years not be skeptical?

When Mr. Trump says of Mrs. Clinton, “she gets rich making you poor,” the punch connects.

A friend told me: “The American public will, in the end say: We made our point. But Trump can’t be president.” His year; Hillary’s office.

But it is not hard to understand why it has been his year if you look at Youngstown, or Flint, Mich., or, though we were never hit quite as hard, Toledo.

As Bruce Baumhower, of the UAW Local 12, says: “A country has to make things to be great.”

I think Trump people know their man cannot “bring back” steel to what it was in 1960, or repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement. But they believe, he would take us in the direction of fair trade and manufacturing. People know politicians can’t wave magic wands and, in many cases, cannot keep their promises. Voters are more sophisticated about politicians than politicians are about them. But voters choose direction.

And more deindustrialization is not the directions voter want. They don’t want to hear that we have a post-industrial economy now.

It’s not just the “legacy cities” of the Midwest that were destroyed by the loss of manufacturing jobs, but the midsize and small towns of Ohio. Towns like Piqua, and Springfield, Chillicothe, and Lancaster, Defiance, Lima, Zanesville, Urbana, and Fostoria.

I grew up in Coshocton. My parents settled there after leaving Washington where they worked when I was born. My mother’s family had deep roots in Coshocton — her great grandparents came there from Ireland and soon began acquiring property.

Her father, my grandfather, could not drive a car or change a light bulb. He had people for that. He thought about his business, his country, his town, his children and his church — in that order. And of little else. The town was good to him. It made him modestly wealthy.

In the 1930s my grandfather loaned a friend some money, without interest, to start a small business in his garage — it eventually became Edmont, and Ed Montgomery became a very rich man manufacturing insulated, coated gloves. Edmont was, for a time, the world’s largest producer of these gloves. He then spent a part of his fortune establishing and underwriting Roscoe Village.

When I grew up, Coshocton was a prosperous town — exceedingly so. There were, by my count, eight factories in a town of 13,000 people. A huge GE plant made textilite and brought chemists and engineers with advanced degrees from the East. There was a steel processing plant. A plant that made pipes. A factory that made rubber mats for cars. And Edmont. There was very little poverty and even less crime. Since there was wealth and intellect, there was also a high quality of civic leadership. Cynics said five people ran the town. Maybe, but they were bright, able, public spirited, and gave of their fortunes. The leading lawyer in the community left his stately home to the town, to become an arts center.

Today, Coshocton is an Appalachian town of less than 10,000 people with a badly decayed housing stock. The factories are not only closed but mostly razed. Edmont closed in 2011. For a while, Coshocton County became a hotbed for crystal meth manufacturing and sales. Pick-up trucks are parked on front lawns. Streets are closed or impassable (like Youngstown). Leaders don’t know what to do except to tear things down, including the academically and physically best old elementary school, where my wife matriculated, and the gracious old country club where a president and most of the Tafts once dined, my grandfather taught me good manners, and my parents had their wedding reception.

Talking to a cousin about our blessed youth that grand old town, I asked, a few years ago: “Should we move back?” He said: “It’s not there any more. Not the town we knew.”

This is what the end of a manufacturing economy did, not only to the Youngstowns of the world, but the Fostorias. Coshocton represents the collapse of the American dream in microcosm. The other Ohio. The other America.

My brother lives in Zanesville. He is a life-long Democrat, like his parents. He is on the fence regarding Mr. Trump, but will absolutely not vote for Hillary. My sister-in-law lives in Athens County. She and her family were strongly for Bernie. My mother-in-law is still in Coshocton. My wife says that, happily, she does not see the full extent of the decline and decay. She sees enough. She is for Donald Trump.

The once well-lighted towns of Ohio that have been turned into Appalachian basket cases have no lobby. No Marshall Plan is proposed for them. Their plight is not covered on the evening news. But they have Trump.

Keith C. Burris is the editorial page editor of The Blade.

Contact him at: kburris@theblade.com or 419-724-6266.

First Published June 26, 2016, 4:00 a.m.