Could the far left's influence lead to a Republican supermajority?

[Skill and Chance]

Hmmm... in the medium-long rung, I do think there's a very plausible scenario where the Dem base fractures like they did in the 1920's or 1890's with some strong protest-oriented left wing independent performances and then there's a Republican lock on federal politics for 10-20 years because of this.   

However, if you mean in 2024, that would be pretty darn hard.  First of all, Dems held together enough to nominate Biden for one more cycle without major controversy.  They would have to flip a senate seat in one of NM/VA and sweep everything that voted right of them in 2020 for a supermajority.  That includes places like Minnesota that are really Dem downballot.

TBH it also feels like a long term Republican senate supermajority has been "one election away" since like 2012 now.  Dems always find a way to do just well enough to shut it down.  Perhaps this is the nature of campaigning when you know which states are going to be decisive.  In any event, Dems not getting blown out in 2022 was potentially a historically big deal because it made a double digit Biden 2020 state R seat #60 going into 2024 when it could have easily been a Biden by 1ish/Trump 2016 state as seat #60 if D's lost a few seats in 2022. 

[Skill and Chance]

In theory there is the potential for a quick bounce back among Dems if Trump wins in 2026 but I am not so sure it happens. If Biden loses with inflation below 4% and a growing economy, it may be a sign that the Dems coalition is the problem.

I don't think it has anything to do with AOC or Warren types specifically; there are bigger structural issues at hand that affect the median voter more acutely. Right now there are legitimate issues with how the unemployment rate and job growth numbers are being reported. (Video is from April 2024)

If anything, the real issue with the D coalition has to do with how inherently unsustainable a liberaltarian coalition of disproportionately college(+)-educated PMC voters and lower-income urban voters is if literally everyone else realigns towards the opposite side.

The Democrats are going to come to crossroads and will have to make a decision on which way to go. Right now, their current coalition cannot stand because so many of their various voting blocks have interests diametrically opposed to each other. We are already seeing the fissures with these campus protests.

Put it bluntly, you cannot be a party that appeals to both upper class suburbanites and young leftists & minorities. It's basically the bourgeoise and the proletariate in the same party which is laughable and no one with common sense thinks that can possibly stand.

Hmmm... I actually think a pure suburban strategy could work, given they are like half the US population.  Like 40% of voters graduated college, so in theory, they put you in a good position just by themselves.  It's the continuation and possible recent enhancement of sectionalism that's really hurting Democrats here.  If they were winning The Woodlands and Wesley Chapel and Overland Park by the same margin as Westchester, Montgomery, MD and Concord, MA, it wouldn't matter what the rural vote did.  But they just can't quite close the deal in the Sunbelt to the point where they stop needing the WWC vote up North. 

[Skill and Chance]

Of course you can never be the problem, it is never because you and Dem staffers/donors are to the left of 96% of the country. The open border is completely a result of these people who have run roughshod over an 82 year old President. His staff is a major problem.

I agree with you on why D elites being ideologically further from the median voter than the D base than their R counterparts are is bad. But lower-engagement voters (and normies more broadly) don't really care exactly which D figure(s) right-wing cable news make(s) the subject of their Two Minute Hate.

These people are still going to be fairly meh on Whitmer and Shapiro types, so long as they feel that the entire Democratic party and media-industrial complex is gaslighting them on how low the unemployment rate is when white-collar PMC employees keep getting laid off, or how many new jobs are being added when a lot of people are working several part-time jobs or gig contracts to get by.

(I don't actually know how many potential voters fall into this category. But it's my psychology-based hot take on why many of the lowest-propensity post-1990 and/or POC voters are relatively R, beyond being more likely to live in Titanium D locales and feeling like their vote would be wasted.)

The Democrats are going to come to crossroads and will have to make a decision on which way to go. Right now, their current coalition cannot stand because so many of their various voting blocks have interests diametrically opposed to each other. We are already seeing the fissures with these campus protests.

Put it bluntly, you cannot be a party that appeals to both upper class suburbanites and young leftists & minorities. It's basically the bourgeoise and the proletariate in the same party which is laughable and no one with common sense thinks that can possibly stand.

Hmmm... I actually think a pure suburban strategy could work, given they are like half the US population.  Like 40% of voters graduated college, so in theory, they put you in a good position just by themselves.  It's the continuation and possible recent enhancement of sectionalism that's really hurting Democrats here.  If they were winning The Woodlands and Wesley Chapel and Overland Park by the same margin as Westchester, Montgomery, MD and Concord, MA, it wouldn't matter what the rural vote did.  But they just can't quite close the deal in the Sunbelt to the point where they stop needing the WWC vote up North. 

It is interesting to speculate what a realignment from ancestry + religion polarization to pure educational attainment polarization would look like across several cycles. Not that this is something Dems would (or should) want, even if non-college grad voters remain more evenly split than college grads.

First, you can't build a winning electoral coalition with only college educated voters. This coalition is an advantage in midterm and off-year elections, but not in a general election when most people are going to vote. They are still outnumbered 2 to 1, and the number of young Americans choosing to earn a college degree will decline in the coming decades as the value of a college education declines. Choosing to appeal to minority voters without a college education based just on racial fear tactics will be less effective as younger Americans have no connection to the civil rights movement and no memories of the Reagan presidency.

FWIW if elections were purely based on educational polarization, without regard for region or religion (and with Dem's being the party that wins college+), this would be the minimum Dem EC win map:



New Mexico is really low in % college degrees (looks like the industrial Midwest) but really high in % graduate degrees (looks like the Northeast, probably because of Los Alamos), so IDK which way it would go in this world, but I'm not including it in the Dem minimum.

Notably, this is a more senate/state government efficient coalition than Dems currently have!  Their minimum EC win currently involves carrying 24 states.  After the 2030 census, it's highly likely they would also need Georgia, currently the 25th most educated state, meaning there would be no senate disadvantage vs. presidential results at all.  TBH this looks like a reasonable way for Dems to go, especially if/when Republicans start winning Hispanic people outright.