If/when depolarization happens, what will it look like?

[mileslunn]

Two ways:

1.  Social media companies go bankrupt so people get their political ideas from talking to others not echo chambers on social media.  Since many lopsided counties this would take time and wouldn't happen right away.

2.  Social media companies get taken over by someone who sees this as a problem and changes algorithms to direct people to those with alternative viewpoints, not more extreme but on same side like you see now. 

[Samof94]

Two ways:

1.  Social media companies go bankrupt so people get their political ideas from talking to others not echo chambers on social media.  Since many lopsided counties this would take time and wouldn't happen right away.

2.  Social media companies get taken over by someone who sees this as a problem and changes algorithms to direct people to those with alternative viewpoints, not more extreme but on same side like you see now. 

I mean, Elon Musk is driving Twitter to the ground and social media in Western countries is increasingly being seen negatively. The country promoting social media the most is China, which is using Tik-Tok to promote its agenda(even though most content on Tik Tok is apolitical), including pretending to care about Palestinians.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

The Democrats are, in fact, becoming the party of Americans with "high social trust" - the joiners, the optimists, the folks who are educated and doing at the least not bad. That runs the gamut from "Country Club" types like you mention, to young college-educated women who got a decent job out of school.

However, you also have a lot of minority voters, many of which very much are "low social trust" but don't feel they have other political options outside the Dems. And then you have the leftists who only vote in presidential primaries and elections - those are demographically similar to high social trust folks, but deeply distrusting of the establishment.

Long story short - I think at the Democratic Party changes, the chances of a true insurgent like Bernie winning the nom will go down, but the political and cultural divide in the party between these three factions (college educated liberals, minorities, and "the Left") will persist and make national primaries nasty.

Polarization along social trust doesn’t seem more likely than it was earlier in Biden’s 1st term, but it seems more likely than ongoing polarization along educational attainment or gender (I hope).

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

The Democrats are, in fact, becoming the party of Americans with "high social trust" - the joiners, the optimists, the folks who are educated and doing at the least not bad. That runs the gamut from "Country Club" types like you mention, to young college-educated women who got a decent job out of school.

However, you also have a lot of minority voters, many of which very much are "low social trust" but don't feel they have other political options outside the Dems. And then you have the leftists who only vote in presidential primaries and elections - those are demographically similar to high social trust folks, but deeply distrusting of the establishment.

Long story short - I think at the Democratic Party changes, the chances of a true insurgent like Bernie winning the nom will go down, but the political and cultural divide in the party between these three factions (college educated liberals, minorities, and "the Left") will persist and make national primaries nasty.

Polarization along social trust doesn’t seem more likely than it was earlier in Biden’s 1st term, but it seems more likely than ongoing polarization along educational attainment or gender (I hope).

Adding onto this, here's how I'd rank the 2021 Pew Political typology groups in order of decreasing social trust, within each party's broad coalition:

(D-leaning): Establishment Liberal > Progressive Left = Mainstay Dems > Outsider Left
(R-leaning): Committed Conservatives > Ambivalent Right > Faith and Flag Conservatives > Populist Right

Not sure how I'd rank all the groups on overall social trust, but I'm fairly certain that Stressed Sideliners would rank lower than the others.

Faith and Flag Conservatives are a real, and growing, category, both through persuasion (largely from low-SES groups like Populists/Sideliners/on the margins probably even Mainstays) but also, unlike the other groups, through natural growth. They're not the same as Populists; if anything this typology suggests (correctly IMO) that they are to the economic right of the above groups.

Another distinction which, while not quite fake, is probably pretty porous is between Populist Right and Stressed Sideliners; they seem to have really similar demographic makeups and the former are those who have been radicalized in a pro-Trump direction, which is fairly many as Trump had a message that seemed to appeal to this demographic, who might've been mostly weak Ds in the 2000s alignment.

(Purely spitballing, but Faith and Flag Conservatives feel like they share many characteristics with the contemporary Latin American far-right, while Populist Right/Stressed Sideliners feel like they share many characteristics with the contemporary western European far-right. Interesting that the US has both.)

I do think that Outsider Left is obviously a real group (young people, heavily minority, not very educated, low trust in society, low interest in politics but rabidly left-wing where it emerges) and they are probably the key to America's future political development. If the Progressive Left can actually get them to turnout at high rates and support Progressive candidates, they really could take over the Democratic party; if the Democratic establishment can show signs of understanding low-trust voters, then these guys might age into positions not too dissimilar from Democratic Mainstay.