In a recent essay in The New Republic, Chris Caldwell predicts the coming crackup of the Blue coalition. Since I argued something very similar in my recent book, The Stakes, I naturally agree with the thrust of his thesis.
Except, I think, with the conclusion. Caldwell notes in the last paragraph that
in the 1860s, three major Western countries—Germany, Italy, and the United States—each fought similar wars of national unification, in which the more dynamic part of the country subjugated the more bucolic (or backward) part. In our time, Democrats are the party of relatively greater technological and demographic dynamism, Republicans the party of relatively less. This is not the same type of relationship as the one that obtained until half a century ago, when Republicans were (roughly speaking) the party of capital, and Democrats the party of labor. Capital and labor need each other in a way that dynamism and tradition do not. One fears the present conflict will differ accordingly.
The point about the three great examples of the advanced part of a nation subjugating the backward part is insightful and chilling. I do believe that is what Blue America intends for Red.
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