I think there are a couple of different things at play here. First and foremost - and i'm having a hard time accepting this one but i'm not sure how else to square it -- i think that a large percentage of our population are just the necessary amount of racist/homophobic/xenophobic/whateverophobic that it actually has become a plurality of what is important to them when they go to vote.
and right about here would be the part where someone like _33 is going to come in and say "oh so voting R makes me a homophobe? got it." so I'm going to explain what i mean.
I think there are a large amount of perfectly decent, polite, upstanding people who think homosexuality, or being transexual, is icky and they would just prefer to not have to deal with it in any way shape or form. Does finding something icky automatically make you a transphobe? No, of course not. Just because I don't like onions doesn't make me anti-vegetable or mean i want to ban all onions. But its not socially acceptable to say that part out loud. So then its like huh well in terms of policy most of it really isn't going to affect me one way or the other whether its an R or a D in power (it actually probably will but i'm too sure of myself to bother checking), but the R will actively fight to make sure that <the thing i find scary or icky> is outlawed or at the very least not welcomed or encouraged and its okay to be discouraging of it. And then at that point its just a matter of finding An Incident to justify this incredibly valid stance. An undocumented migrant kills a US citizen. A girl doesn't make the swim team because a trans person amab made the team and took their spot. Does it matter than the number of instances this happens is statistically irrelevant? Does it make any kind of sense to base your voting on something that (directly) affects like 0.0075% of the population? No. because i don't like things that i find scary or don't understand and i want it to be okay for me to say it without fear of being ostricized.
If there is a better explanation I would love to know what it is, because i don't like the thought of the general public being juuuuuust X-phobic enough that they are going to vote for policy making that scary thing go away, even if it means 99% of every other policy is going to be very demonstrably against their own interests. But if that is indeed the case here, then like well folks...a facist dictator is apparently what we want. I am in the minority apparently, but if the majority of We The People want a facist then it would be very ironic for me to get upset when we make policy that reflects the will of the many over the will of the few.
You're pretty close to what I think about it but looking at it a from a different angle, which is good to see. I think the play is less specifically trying to do the ban on certain people, but more using the 'ick" feeling to drive that engagement to a fever pitch. As you said in general most of these people aren't really bad, nor most these people even want a ban or whatever or could again care less when brought down from a frenzy, I think it's bacon bits to a foundation of using people's fear they can't make ends meet, and the small whateverophobic part is a focus of that unease, and then casting that unease to be the dems are the ones progressing this unease, they are making you feel this way, and we will make you feel comfortable again by removing that problem, amongst others.
It's definitely can take a fascist slant, and I no doubt many would be ok with that. But it's like they already know this group is hurting financially, and people who are usually in distress are families cause kids are expensive AF, and many families are traditional so why not say it's destroying them, or that it could be their daughter not making the team. You already got their attention with a bad economy and an alternative to that, why not throw in other things that you already are uneasy or could be made uneasy about.
To me still, if you had a healthy, thriving middle class and strong economy and no inflation, and trump came along talking about border walls and banning transgender people, you'd get some support, but it would not move the needle, cause now he's trying to cobble together a small group of people who are passionate yes, but ultimately unaffected by it.
