It must be noted that not all members of the Democratic coalition are "winners" under the globalization formula nor are all Republicans "losers." Many Democrats are overworked, underpaid service industry grunt laborers whose economic benefits are reduced from those offered under the unionized industrial job market of mid-20th century America. Meanwhile, a fair number of Republicans reside in fields that have been buoyed by global trade, like farmers and fossil fuel workers (now that America is a net energy exporter thanks to the fracking boom).
Thus, "globalization winners" and "globalization losers" are not particularly accurate labels for parsing the partisan divide over globalism, a better set of categories for framing the axis people are sorting under would be "globalization adherents" and "globalization detractors", for support of and opposition to the globalized political/economic regime seamlessly spans between those whom have been its beneficiaries and its disposables.
Yeah, the future is a conflict between metropolitan elites in finance and the heights of industry (democrats) who profit off globalization, and minor elites in the hinterland (republicans) whose profits are threatened by international competition.
I'm not sure this is entirely accurate either. For starters while much of the financial elite have reoriented towards the Democrats, the very top crust still contains multitudes of conservative megadonors, and not all of the "hinterland" elite have actually been harmed by globalized trade; certainly not the likes of agribusiness and the oil and gas industry. Purely pecuniary rationales aren't singularly driving elite polarization over globalization anymore than the general populace. Perhaps over time, this will become a more strictly economics-sorted issues among the upper echelons faster than the broader electorate, since profits tends to be a more front-and-center motivator for them, but it's not quite there yet.
Narrowing in on only the elite side of the conflict also misses out on a key dynamic of partisan sorting over the issue: globalization adherents among Democrats and globalization detractors among Republicans are crystallized and their loyalties maintained through different mechanisms. Both parties have an underclass whose support is cultivated through different means. For Democrats, service industry laborers and other economically precarious workers agree to support the globalist infrastructure under the condition of ceaselessly agitating for better protections and benefits than currently provided. The "left behind" in the Republican coalition aim to overthrow the current regime to keep profits, products, and labor closer to home, and lend their votes to Republican elites as their vehicle for achieving this goal. Democratic politicians promise to meet worker demands for economic security and debt relief, Republican politicians promise to reinvigorate local community assets that act as a support network and to eliminate labor competitors. Democratic voters want bigger slices of the pie's wealth to be more broadly dispersed, Republican voters want a different pie entirely.
But this is just focusing on the economic angle of globalization, which for all its importance, is really just incidental as far as polarization over the matter is concerned under contemporary political alignments. An individual's attachment to or repulsion against globalization as expressed through the partisan divide is not dependent on economic conditions, but sociocultural ones. Democrats of all stripes are in favor of the institutional byproducts of globalization (widespread education, liberal proclivities, ethnic and cultural diversity, access to trendy amenities, etc.) and their cultural concerns are highly salient and attended to within the current framework. The small-town and rural heartlanders, Christian traditionalists, and nationalists, on the other hand, feel like their cultural outlooks and identities have been wholly decentered and marginalized by the global elites and liberalizing institutions, and this alienation too spans across class divisions. These sentiments are what drive polarization over globalization and sort voters into their respective camps more so than how their economic incentives fit into the current reigning mould.
One last note, the "hinterland" is a bit of a tricky concept, because while stagnant areas discarded by global economic trends do tend to be geographically contiguous regions, they can also form in a more scattered fashion, and pockets of economic connectedness to the globalist paradigm can form in the middle of "left-behind" America. As an example, the Des Moines metro, where I've been living for the past two years, has been thriving recently, with one of the fastest growth rates for a metropolitan area outside of the sunbelt this past decade. As an insurance hub, its economy has been expanding and drawing in lots of new college-educated white-collar workers with job opportunities and low costs of living. It's got many of the trendy assets and amenities you'd come to expect from an economically vibrant and financially well-established city. Head out into most of the rest of Iowa, though, and you'll witness a landscape dotted by the traits of a globalization "loser": shrinking small towns with derelict main streets and struggling post-industrial centers that never regained their footing after the farm crisis and the withdrawal of local manufacturers. Two very different portraits painted in just one state, mostly dominated by the picture of the vicissitudes of economic dislocation, but pockets of prosperity thriving here and there.
