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This seems like a rather hysteric reaction to republicans committing a series of self-owns after electing the most incompetent maximalists they could find. If democrats stay in power, it will be because they've elected people who are less incompetent and less maximalist-- which is exactly what you should want. If, however, they make the exact same mistakes-- the pendulum will swing back, and republicans will have another chance.
"Implement popular, competent policy" shouldn't be rocket science, and yet politicians keep trying literally everyhing else and then reacting with surprise.
I agree. This hardly seems like a meaningful political realignment. I think there is a large contingent of low-information, vibes-based voters who are not particularly principled or partisan - I'd guess they're 20% of the electorate. They're attracted to perceived competence and short-term "we're not going to fuck you over like those other guys" rhetoric. They also tend to be working class. Trump was able to win this bloc in 2016 and 2024. Democrats were shrewd in that they shied away from most blue shibboleths in their campaigns (see: Talarico walking back his many past comments, el-Sayed emphasizing his masculine qualities when possible).
This election shows that Trump's messaging has grown stale and failed to reach them, not that this bloc had a dramatic shift in priorities.
IMO it's less a realignment and more a reflection of how very fragile the Trump '24 coalition was in the first place.
Running up the numbers with high school educated whites and (again, mostly non college) minority men (while still being stomped by minority women and thus minorities as a whole) is a terrible long term plan for coalition building. Said voters are fickle populists who don't show up for midterms in the best of times (See: Reagan Democrats and the 1986 midterm) and the sort of chud populism that wins their votes is repulsive to the college educated voters who actually matter.
Make no mistake, if high school educated minorities look like high school educated white Midwesterners and college educated minorities look like college educated whites but even more liberal the GOP as it currently exists are fucked.
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