Coalitions change and adapt to developments, which are constantly ongoing. What was one party's coalition 50 years prior, likely won't be yhe identical coalition anymore. Personally, I don't object to the changes in the Democratic coalition, which had really begun to slowly shift starting in the late 1960s with the rise of liberals like McGovern. If anything, Democrats today are essentially a more liberal version of Rockfeller Republicans and their coalition (friendly to labor interests, allied with big business, focused on education, environmentalism, and efficiency, supportive of immigration and civil rights reforms, internationalist in foreign affairs, and centered in the Northeast and urban areas among college educated and minorities). Sound familiar? I would generally consider myself a supporter of the Rockefeller wing of the GOP (which has long been dead) and gladly welcome a coalition of white educated and minority voters. This shouldn't be a terribly surprising development either considering the white working class and minorities have typically been at odds politically.
Wait, is your username ironic then? It'd be pretty surprising for someone who reads The Jacobin to support Rockefeller Republicans.
That's not why I choose this username. It was more in reference to the radicals of the French Revolution for their ardent support of egalitarianism and early endorsement of radical liberalism (some could argue early Socialism, but I disagree). But also, I said I generally support that former wing of the GOP (which often had Senators and Congressmen more liberal than then liberal Democrats), which means there are certain aspects of it with which I disagree. Had I been alive 50 years ago with the views I hold today, I would definitely have supported Rockefeller Republicans. I'm very liberal, but I'm not hostile to big business. I just like efficiency and, like Prescott Bush, would support raising taxes if it meant cutting the deficit and assuring efficiency in social programs.
This is astonishingly false.
First of all, you could VERY coherently argue that support for business is INHERENTLY more conservative than opposition to it. That alone makes you not "very liberal."
Second, it would be news to these romanticized Rockefeller Republicans (if you seriously think Rockefeller Republicans were way to the left of someone like Susan Collins, well, you're wrong) that they had a coalition of minorities supporting them... LOL
Third, Democrats today are a less White version of, well, Democrats then. They share very few characteristics with the GOP of the mid-20th Century, in fact I challenge you to name any. Winning White college graduates? Uh, Romney destroyed Obama with this group, and I'll bet anything that these White college grads that are flocking to Clinton go solidly for the GOP in the national House exit poll. Support for big business?? Have you heard of Bernie Sanders, and are you aware that he won over 40% of the party's voters, causing the candidate who bested him to adopt a very liberal platform? There is all this talk about Trump turning off affluent and educated voters, yet is Hillary trying to capitalize on that? No. She's running ads about how Donald Trump outsourced all throughout his business career, accusing him of secretly being for free trade, LOL. The Democratic Party has always, does and will always rely on riling up disadvantaged voters and convincing them that Republicans do not care about them and only the Democrats can lift them up. Period. Who cares if those voters are Black, White or purple? The message is the same, and the Dems simply aren't going to become ANYWHERE near as conservative on economic or class issues as the Rockefeller Republicans were, simply because they'd be betraying their entire voting base. Even "upscale" (having a PhD does NOT mean you're affluent, and many PhD holders have very, very modest incomes) liberals are by and large fundamentally committed to the cause of economic redistributionism. Why do you red avatars think there is some type of "cool" dignity associated with having poor minorities vote for you rather than poor White people? The point is the same, your party gets millions and millions of votes (and did in the '30s, '60s and '90s, too) as a reward to being committed to liberal economic ideas, one of which is the reigning in of "big business."
