Why current trends won’t last past 2028

[RINO Tom]

In general (as far as I can tell, looking at it historically), the only *trends* that seem to last past 3-4 cycles are due to demographic change (e.g., an area where the dominant coalition slowly has their numbers eroded to the point where they can't outvote a more monolithic minority coalition and themselves become the minority ... this could be generational displacement or a county diversifying, but it doesn't involve a majority of the "original Democrats" or "original Republicans" fleeing the party but rather slowly becoming outnumbered or dying off).  The major exceptions seem to be:

1) Black voters slowly opening up to the idea of Democrats after the Civil War until the Great Depression flipped them and the Great Society era cemented them as solid Democrats.

2) Southern White voters opening up the idea of the GOP during the 1940s and 1950s and the political instability of the 1960s and 1970s giving a majority of them a clear home in the Republican Party.

3) "Minority" groups' children and grandchildren starting to assimilate and no longer feel a communal desire to *vote as a minority*, making the party that represents the more "entrenched" classes of society (historically, the GOP) become an option.  This can first be seen with European immigrants and then Catholics and then arguably with your "Whiter" Hispanic voters, like Cubans and those of mostly only European/Iberian ancestry.  In effect, the voters just start to feel "White" or the past equivalent (i.e., Anglo-Saxon --> just "White" or Protestant --> just "Christian").

The first two seem incredibly unique to me, and I maintain it would be foolish to assume current or future realignments follow that slow, top-down pattern over prolonged periods of times.  Both of these groups have such antagonistic and unique political histories that involve one party starting out as a complete non-starter (i.e., voting against who you are) and a very, very slow transformation to the point where both parties seemed okay picks and then eventually a complete and total flip in preferences.  Given the, uhm, emotional nature of the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement, I do not believe these "swaps" should serve as a model.

"Groups" like the "college educated" or "suburbanites" are just not monolithic enough to have voting cohesion over decades.  There is nothing intrinsic tying these people together, nothing emotionally stirring that they are all striving for that will bind them together through thick and thin.  Trump's Presidency and the GOP's ensuing double-down on anti-intellectualism is the linchpin of the current Democratic margins among these voters, and the margins still aren't even that good! - certainly nothing approaching "Black voters."  I'm extremely skeptical that this coalition can hang together for 20+ years past Trump.  I mean, Reagan's unifying message of halting crime and lowering taxes couldn't even hold up, and those are much more motivating coalition formulas than "the GOP is unsavory," if you ask me.

I predict we will likely see more of the same throughout the 2020s, but (what I assume to be) inevitable Democratic control of all three branches of government will create the uncomfortable situation of the Democratic Party's vision being put on display, and they will be forced to brand themselves in a more polarizing way than "the adult in the room party."  They'll have to DO something.  I think this provides the GOP with a much needed reset and allows them to return to their historical ideological "home" that gives them the best electoral success - the "check on the Democrats" platform.  I actually think it's hard for Republicans to look like a serious party when they've not been in the minority long enough.  Given that I imagine this will involve a rather inoffensive "let's scale back all of these programs a bit!!" message, the natural low hanging fruit will be affluent voters, many of whom are in suburbs.  I'm not saying Romney-Clinton voters are coming streaming back!  Most of them are likely gone.  However, some of them will, and I believe the next generation of "college educated professionals" will not have the baked-in negative stereotype of the GOP that their parents did ... just as Millennials didn't view Democrats as that weird, non-Reagan party.