As you might suppose, I no longer experience much of Brooks' writing as useful, but today's column is a partial exception. He writes of the chasms opening in the coalitions that make up the two major parties, and foresees a realignment along lines of trust. Those chasms are real enough.
We don’t normally think that politics is divided along trust lines. But this year we’re seeing huge chasms depending upon how much trust you feel toward your neighbors and your national institutions.Thus, Brooks' personal odyssey gets transformed into a national realignment ... could be something of a stretch. He trusts what the "elites" are doing, although it is difficult from my vantage point to see why, and the emerging GOP doesn't.
Unclear to me in Brooks' new alignment is the fate of downtrodden minorities who have little reason to join either of the emerging realigned coalitions of trusters and distrusters. I don't see them making common cause with the whites and hapless Millennials of the Distruster group or with the globalist Wall Street/Hollywood/Silicon Valley/academia elites who are the power center of the "new Dems."
Bottom line: his formulation is still a work in progress. He has correctly identified splits in each party but I am unconvinced by his organizing principles of the realigned groups or his view of their exact membership.
