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If we follow your logic at its word, the natural conclusion would be the total collapse of the Democratic Party.
Right now, the fringe elements of both parties are wildly unpopular. The question for most elections is who comes across as the most repulsive and who successfully tamps down on their extremists in public messaging. Since Democrats are better educated and hooked into their politicians, this has turned into a real advantage for the Republicans. The Democrat extremists are able to effectively pressure and primary politicians into following their worst ideas, which have a lot of salience right now.
So we have a civil war right now, between the Democrats from the Reagan days who want to relive that heady sense of resistance like they were young again and the young progressives who have been educated into mind-meltingly unpopular ideas. Out on the distant fringes are the swing-state Democrats like Fetterman who are effectively untouchable by the party mechanism but equally have no sway over it. Whoever wins is going to win based on their ability to signal #resistance to the equally extreme base, as voters on the edge increasingly disengage with the party. But the party does not compromise on its least popular tenets, and in fact broadcasts them as a matter of principle, and the way things are going, will stand absolutely no chance in upcoming elections (only exception being the presidency if Trump does something dumb like defy the law to run for term 3 and scare the normies way too much).
So we should expect to see evaporative cooling concentrating the heart of the overeducated party, keeping seats where urban Millennials and Xers dominate and hemorrhaging the rest. And then, probably, the Blue Dogs try to create their own party and recapture the many voters who really don’t like Trump but can’t find it in themselves to vote D.
There was a moment, after this election, where I wondered to myself: is this when the Dems will figure out what’s happening? Is this where they Sister Souljah the woke out and start trying to win elections again? But that moment passed in a heartbeat, and the old party mechanisms reasserted their dominance. I think this is a general pattern, not just for democracy but for every kind of human organization, where the mechanisms of power become too cleanly rationalized, too stable, and the possibility of an internal coup vanishes. The existing order loses the possibility of making mistakes and being replaced from within, as they control all the needed feedback mechanisms and are not vulnerable to it. It’s at this moment that the levers of power cease to be representations or formalizations of the real sources of power, and become sources of power in themselves. When that happens, the power structure itself is in dire jeopardy, as it’s lost all connection to reality and has become a sort of ouroborus, swallowing its own tail and growing smaller and smaller.
I suspect that part of this self-consuming behavior is related to class divides like the educational alignment of the parties, but that’s probably enough on this for now.
While I think there are real concerns about what happens to the GOP Post-Trump, yeah, the Dem's issues are structural and the alliances they've forged by being maximally divisive on sex, on race, on religion, on class, and on age too, I guess, mean there's no way to please each of these disparate groups.
In fact, the post-Trump era might be harder on the Dems because opposition to Trump was like the one thing that united them!
Dems can't run another stodgy White Guy for President. I mean, they can, Biden proved that the party can get everyone in line and on task if needed, but it is impossible to imagine the guy who has the political juice to win the primaries at this point.
Likewise, Dem leadership is ossified and they've hamstrung any new blood from acquiring much power. AOC is popular but she's also been ground down by the party machine. Pelosi et al. will grip the reins of power right up until their dying breath. Trump, by elevating Vance, is giving the 'new Generation' a generous toehold on power which they can use to climb up.
David Hogg was stupid about it, but he had the right idea that there needs to be enough of a shakeup that young upstarts can compete for influence in the party and identify talented candidates. Kinda how Obama got into power (which, ironically, was probably what prompted the party to lock down that issue so Hillary could win next time).
On top of that, I don't see any possible way the Dems can attract young male voters back. They've gone way too far out on the "men are inherently evil" limb. Can't reel that back in without pissing off the unmarried white female demographic that is their backbone. But any guy who looks and sees how they force any popular young Democrat male through a struggle session, like with Harry Sisson, will balk at anything they say. There's NOTHING to offer them.
Whomever they nominate, it'll either annoy their base, or it'll alienate the median voter.
And all this is before we talk about how the extreme progressive wings are demanding concessions constantly.
I could imagine it. Much of the Republican coalition would also like to put the average young male voter through a struggle session for such crimes as watching pornography, playing video games, engaging in "devil worshipping" activities like D&D, and not being married. Trump won because he wasn't identified with that faction of the party. If the 2028 candidate decides to wrap themselves in conservative Christianity, those young men could decide to take a hike. Remember, it won't be BASED Christianity developed by and for young men, it will be the Christianity of boomer-brained Gen-X-er preachers and middle-aged church ladies.
It seems to me that you have failed to understand the current state of discourse in Conservative Christian circles, and have instead proceeded with basing your reasoning off cached data from a quarter-century ago.
The fundamental difference that you appear to have missed is that Christians lost these arguments decisively around the turn of the century, and their opponents got their way. As a result, Conservative Christians no longer need to argue what might happen if the other side gets their way, but rather what has happened, and what results the other side is accountable for. Christians can now operate as a genuine counter-culture, offering a cogent critique of the conditions we are all living in every minute of every day. We can offer meaningful answers to the myriad discontents created by our present society, and through those answers coordinate the systematic withdrawal from and dismantling of that society. The powers of compulsion no longer rest within our hands, and so we can focus on persuasion instead. And the worse Progressivism makes things, the more persuasive our arguments get.
But by all means, if you believe Conservative Christianity is going to enshrine the rule of boomer-brained gen-x-er preachers and middle-aged church ladies, say so, and show some examples of how this happens. Meanwhile, I'm watching Atheist stalwarts openly reject liberalism and its works.
Online Politics Brain. Look at Pew data on religious identity instead of anecdotes.
They're the ones who will be running for office in 2028. They won't live forever, but 2028 is what we're talking about here.
The obvious GOP front-runners for 2028 and 2032 are Vance, Rubio, DeSantis, and Hegseth in roughly that order. All of them are currently under 55 and much closer culturally to what @FCfromSSC is describing than anything you have.
Talking about GOP front runners at this point is more snail brained than usual: the odds that more than one of Rubio, Hegseth, and Vance are still in Trump/MAGA's good graces in 2028 are lower than the odds that none of them are.
I'll take that bet.
Sure. Give me a working definition of in good graces and a stake.
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