What do these two potential winning pathways yield for Democrats in 2028?

[Technocracy Timmy]

Riiiiiiight, LOL.

It's working quite well for them in places like GA-06 right now, actually.

Worked even better last election!  Even in this last election - again, a total failure for Democrats - Republican voters were more affluent on average, and this was the floor for the GOP.  I sincerely apologize for all of the Trumpists out there, but the Democratic Party will never not represent the interests of the poor.

Again, the election hasn't been held yet, but if Ossoff wins in GA-06 (a... you know... EDUCATED, WEALTHY and AFFLUENT district), it will be very telling.

I'd be very hesitant to make any conclusions on the results of GA-06; Ossoff win or not. We'll need to see how Romney-Clinton districts do in 2018 across the board before we can actually see a Democratic trend with these kind of voters.

Like RINO Tom, my circumstantial evidence having lived almost my whole life in a very similar district to GA-06 points to these voters being an Anti-Trump but pro-GOP cohort. It's definitely worth a try to flip them in 2018 just to see if Democrats can make inroads in these kind of areas, but I still have my doubts. The more and more influence Sanders and millennials exert on the Party's future means that the affluent vote will likely become harder and harder for the Democrats to reach these kind of voters.

Even the voters in this district knew Hillary wouldn't be able to govern as a progressive given the the House would be Republican. Let's say the Dems win the House in 2018 due to a recession but the economy is growing in 2020. Would these same voters feel comfortable voting for a progressive Democrat when there's no GOP congress to keep them in check the way there would've been in 2016? Again, I have my doubts.

We'll see in 2018. And even that might not quite be the full picture.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I don't see how it is so hard to see the Democratic Party making even temporary inroads with affluent white voters. The Republican Party is increasingly narrowing its appeal to these voters along economic lines, while Democrats appeal via social policy. It's perfectly reasonable for me to see the GOP continuing to erode among this group, at which point Democrats will do well until they actually start enacting policy that begins substantially impacting the finances of these voters. At that point, a slow erosion back to the GOP seems likely. Right now, there doesn't seem to be a penalty for these voters to vote for Democrats - at least in their eyes, while supporting Republicans is like a mine field.

That's the key though. It's likely to be only a temporary alliance insofar as Trump is the leader of the Party. Let's say we have a scenario where Pence is the nominee come 2020 and the Democrats put a progressive forward (both of these events are quite possible given that Booker and Cuomo will be the "moderates" in the Democratic race and Trump has a lot of reasons to resign and/or not run in 2020).

I don't see the traditional sunbelt D, rustbelt R trends holding steady in that kind of election. And if they do, it'll be much, much smaller than the ones we saw in 2016. These kind of voters could very well form a short term alliance with the Democrats, but keep in mind that Clinton-GOP representative districts still voted for their GOP representative. And in many cases, the results had very high disparities.

CA-48 had Hillary winning 48-46% while our GOP rep won by nearly 17 points. It is quite common in a lot of these districts as well to see these kind of disparities. That shows that while there's strong animosity towards Trump, these voters may not be keen on breaking their Party alliance in a hyper partisan environment. And if they do, there's a very strong chance that they'll come back home when Trump is out.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I guess that depends on how you'd define 'short term.' To me, I can see the leftwards drift continuing for even a decade more, at which point it may slowly start shifting back to the GOP if Democrats start raising taxes a lot and enacting a lot of new regulations, which would weaken the alliance enough for the GOP to win them back. How effectively the GOP can perform then I think would also depend on whether or not they have addressed their party's own issues that caused the defection in the first place.

I really do think that any shifts back and forth will be gradual, though. After all, it's not like affluent voters just randomly swung towards Democrats. This has been an ongoing trend over the past generation.

This was a result of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama adapting to the Reagan alignment we're still living in though. Clinton moved the Party strongly towards the center in the 90's and was able to form a coalition on the old Democratic bubba South combined with the emerging middle and upper class socially liberal but fiscally centrist wine class liberals in the northeast and west coast. Obama didn't hold onto the bubba South but did hold on strongly to those same wine class liberals while bringing into the fold more minorities, millennials, and a solid chunk of working class Midwestern whites.

By and large Obama governed as a President friendly to the wine class liberals along with white collar workers and we saw these trends manifest themselves most strongly in the sunbelt. Obama's most signature and left wing accomplishments was a healthcare bill that was a carryover in many respects from past GOP plans (Nixon, Gingrich, Grassley, Heritage Foundation, etc.) and kept the private healthcare system completely in tact. The other piece of liberal legislation, Dodd-Frank, really only affected a certain industry and subset of workers. Otherwise, he extended the bush tax cuts the first two years, raised taxes only to Clinton era levels, agreed on sequestration to pursue fiscal discipline in regards to the budget, tried ramming a free trade agreement through, etc. Most of which these voters were perfectly content with these policies and the trends in the sunbelt and among the more affluent white collar workers became more and more apparent.

This is not the direction the Democratic base wants the Party to continue moving toward. We're seeing a 1977 style situation but win the Parties switched. The Democratic Party has decided to veer further leftwards particularly on economic issues (as evidenced by their crop of likely candidates in 2020, Perez at the DNC, Sanders, etc.) in response to being shut out of all levels of government. Similarity the GOP post 1976 did just that by rallying around Reagan during a Democrstic trifecta. This entire re-nationalization of political parties we're seeing in the western industrialized world has been a backlash mostly to the macroeconomic trends dating all the way back to the late 70's/early 80's. This is something Trump picked up on (and how he won by siphoning off lower income Dem votes but losing upper income GOP votes) and I think the Democratic Party will follow in response to the same discontent Trump tapped into.

The wine class liberals will stay with them for at least two more decades as breaking to the GOP will be quite difficult to do until they actually moderate their messaging. But I suspect that this reconfiguration on the Democratic Party will cause those white collar workers and Clinton-GOP rep voters to take pause on switching sides. This is a big reason why I'm on board with TD's idea that the Democratic Party is unlikely to come back until the crisis hits. They need a reason to actually implement their revolutionary agenda (the kind in which not seen since Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt). And that crisis will be the catalyst for them to swoop in and realign the country.

CA-48 had Hillary winning 48-46% while our GOP rep won by nearly 17 points. It is quite common in a lot of these districts as well to see these kind of disparities. That shows that while there's strong animosity towards Trump, these voters may not be keen on breaking their Party alliance in a hyper partisan environment. And if they do, there's a very strong chance that they'll come back home when Trump is out.

I think it's like you said somewhere else (iirc), everyone thought Clinton would win and felt more comfortable voting for Republicans as a check. However, I'm a bit skeptical of the "check and balances" idea - not that it doesn't exist, but to what degree. The Democratic brand was weak after 8 hours of Obama, and Clinton wasn't helping, so I think incumbency + weak challengers (even just 'Some Dudes') + "check" argument + a weak brand made voters' downballot choices stick with their regular habits, this is on top of the fact that presidential results tends to take a while to trickle downballot. I think it's safe to say that there is a correlation though - 538 even did some stuff on this. I don't recall their figures, but there was a correlation to how a district would vote downballot compared to recent presidential results.

You very well could be right that presidential trends affect down ballot races down the line. Although I haven't heard of this before until now so I'd be very interested in seeing the data.

Sorry my formatting sucks. I'm still using my phone to post