Could a "Ford Nation" style coalition ever take off in the US?

[pikachu]

Maybe? It's tough to see a heavily minority coalition supporting Republicans en masse on the national level anytime soon, and maybe in the past a state party could've differentiated itself enough to make Fordism its 'brand' but we're moving away from that direction.

Anyway, after reading about Rob Ford's views on bike lanes, affordable housing, cars, etc., he just sounds like my local West LA city councilman but significantly more abrasive. At least in LA that kind of thing has a comfortable home in the Democratic Party and has more or less guided the city's development policy outside of the last couple years.

[pikachu]

I'd argue the 2013 NJ election was the successful implementation of a "Ford Nation" strategy led by Chris Christie.

Most paid attention to Christie's huge margin, which was partly a product of weak opposition. But they also won the popular vote for the State Senate. Flip about 3,000 votes statewide and they retake the Senate, potentially establishing a new model for Republicans in suburban states. They ran on a solid platform that won back a lot of the Bush-Reagan coalition while adjusting for modern demographics, picking up a lot of Asian-American and Hispanic votes.

Yeah, Christie's coalition in 2009 and 2013 was interesting - I think he's the only Republican in recent memory to win Middlesex but not Bergen? That being said, we've seen Asians move significantly away from the GOP even since just 2009, and while he sort of had the Fordist coalition in 2013, he didn't have the Fordist substance.