Basically, we might be heading towards a post-civil rights version of the late Gilded Age/Progressive Era and New Deal Era where the main hot-button issues were Coach vs. First Class-type issues. There were about 30 years from about 1894 to 1930 where the First Class folks got their way and from 1932 to 1968, the folks in Coach got their way. Maybe with millennials and the decline of Evangelicals, we will see a return to that narrative. This happened before in the 19th century when religious thinking dominated politics only for them to eventually overreach with William Jennings Bryan's various crusades and prohibition.
Interesting take. The Republicans seem to be doing a very good job of setting themselves up as the new Coach party, much better than anyone thought they would in 2009, while the Democrats are coalescing First Class support in a way that would have been equally surprising 20 years ago. In retrospect, Obama's biggest mistake was trying to be too populist for his base in 2009-10. Think of modern politics as Massachusetts taking Arkansas out to dinner every other day and picking up the tab, but Arkansas actually resents the attention and just wants a chance to make its own way.
So was Bush's presidency equivalent to a Bryan win? There was also notable movement backward/stalling out on social issues in the Gilded Age. I'm not sure if that would carry over to the present, but America circa 1950 was arguably more socially conservative than America circa 1880 and things certainly got more socially conservative from 1880-1920. But this time around, business interests are firmly on the socially liberal side, so I'm not sure any of that would carry over.
