Political realignments are no new thing in the U.S. A major one occurred during the Nixon-to-Reagan era, another is underway now.
This recent realignment of various voting blocs between the two major parties, begun in 2016 with the Trump election, continues this cycle. This is no small trend.
We see for example in today’s RealClearPolitics morning list of articles, the following two titles: Why I Left the Democratic Party, and Why 70 Former U.S. Security Officials Support Biden. We see former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake supporting Biden, and former Democrats the McCloskeys of St. Louis supporting Trump.
More dramatically, large blocks of blue collar voters, once stalwarts of the Democrat coalition, reliably having swung to the Republican camp. And substantial blocks of the wealthy, once the backbone of the GOP, now reliably vote Democrat. I even see hints that the monolithic vote of minorities for Democrats may be somewhat less so this cycle.
Who would have believed in 1960 that the one and only enclave of wealthy folk in otherwise rural/blue collar Wyoming - namely Jackson Hole - would 60 years later also be the one and only county out of 23 to reliably vote Democrat?
The DrsC have seen it in our own families. My father, a lifelong Southern Democrat who died in 1971, would have undoubtedly become a Republican had he lived long enough. The other DrC’s father, an FDR Democrat, did exactly that during the last great realignment in the Reagan era because he did live long enough.
If one were to characterize the current alignment, it would be the Democrats representing the top and bottom strata of society against the Republicans representing the middle classes of society. In a country that prides itself on being middle class, which would you rather represent?
