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Comment by blfr | Hacker News Reader

The US seems to be in the middle of another realignment, like in the 60s. The Democratic party is consolidating its support from the big corporations, while the Republican party is making inroads with the working class.

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Not just that, but the Republican party is openly populist right now. I think the Democrats are about to experience a significant amount of turmoil as the progressives try to take full control of the party. Maybe the conservatives in the Democratic party will join with the conservatives from the Republican party. Not sure how it will play out, but both parties seem to be evolving rapidly and both have big internal divides.

> Maybe the conservatives in the Democratic party will join with the conservatives from the Republican party

And go where? As you've said, the Republican party is openly populist. If anything the Republican conservatives will look to the Democratic party, which seems to have become the conservative option. I consider myself a Libertarian and I'm considering voting straight national ticket Democrat for the next decade due to what the Republican party has become. Putting party above country is simply unforgivable.

a solid 35-40% of the Democratic Party is explicitly anti-corporate, remember occupy wall-street and the success of Bernie Sanders? Remember Warren calling for breaking up big tech? Even Biden and Obama frequently deployed (light) anti-corporate rhetoric in their campaigns and presidency.

Trump is a billionaire and a defender of the corporate class. His entire administration consists of ex-corporate wall-street types folks and/or zealot yes-men. You may be right that the "inroads with the working class" are being made, but only in the form of the working class being convinced that their interests are the same as the corporate classes interests... though even that analysis may be wrong considering that Biden won by convincing voters in the rust and sun belt to vote for him.

That's the portion of the Democratic party that lost the fight for control, has nowhere to go in a two party system and can be completely ignored.

See: the makeup of Bidens cabinet, which is a republicans-from-10-years-ago's dream.

Remember what DNC did to Bernie?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-sa...

And Gabbard [0, 1], and Yang [2] (the cited individual incidents do not necessarily constitute proof of candidate suppression in and of themselves, but are indicative of broader patterns throughout the primary process).

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dnc-raises-debate-requirements-...

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/hillary-clinton-tuls...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/28/politics/andrew-yang-claims-n...

Sure do. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was fired over it. They also dismantled the superdelegate system. Changes were made. The media was still heavily biased against Bernie before the pandemic; probably due to half of their commercials being for drug and insurance companies.

I'm just looking forward to a period of relative stability the next four years. #MakePoliticsBoringAgain

The relative stability you want in the next four year, if it comes, will come at the cost of something even worse after.

If you want not to have Trumps anymore, you need to get rid of the factors that lead to Trump happening, and that's not going to be done calmly given the opposition of the DNC and other established interests.

As a non-american, the best shot you had of establishing long-term stability was Bernie Sanders. The way things are going, the Democrats will continue alienating themselves from more and more of their base and the Republicans will continue ramping up fear and instability.

Bernie's numbers were huge and dominating with people under 40. It will take a decade or two, but, i think Gen Z and Millenials will finally usher in more progressive change in the Democratic party.

I share your hope. That being said, my cynicism says that a decade or two might be too late, and that the Democratic party might try to exploit the ratchet effect to neuter any left wing candidate, as is the interest of their donors.

I don't think politics will reset just like that. Schultz was sacrificed at the altar to calm the public. The superdelegate system, too. The political establishments (Dem and Rep) have been given a taste of how much their constituencies resent them. If they want to maintain power, primaries can only become less democratic going forward.

I'm worried that insurgent candidate like those in 'the squad' were only allowed to succeed as an olive branch to the left-populists for the purposes of maintaining a coherent anti-trump coalition.

The Republicans ran a reasonably clean primary in 2016, and got Trump, a demagogue completely dismissive of the party's interests, who catered to his base, and only helped the Republicans in circumstances of mutual interests. I don't think the party's leadership will be willing to risk something like that again, if the behavior of the Bush-era cabinet appointees he had is any indicator.

>I'm worried that insurgent candidate like those in 'the squad' were only allowed to succeed as an olive branch to the left-populists for the purposes of maintaining a coherent anti-trump coalition.

I don't buy that but happy to be proven wrong. I was following AOC's race closely before she won her election (any before anyone had heard of her). They went out of their way to work with and endorse her competitor. It was AOC's hustle and innovative techniques that made up for her huge money disadvantage (~300k at the end of the election vs ~3mil) as well as the fact that her rival was appointed the seat through a loophole (and so never really learned how to run a campaign) that resulted in her win.

The opposition spent 10+ million trying to unseat her since then.

I really do hope you're right about that. My understanding is that the squad came up with without the consent of the party establishment by running an exceptional ground game during their primaries, in districts that were safe blue, and had politicians who'd become too comfortable where they were at.

They were an unknown threat before.

Caruso-Cabrera did raise quite a bit of money to unseat AOC, but most of the endorsements I can find seem to be from conservative organizations looking to score some kind of moral victory against the Justice Dems. My estimate is that a political novice with (some) name recognition tried to take her down of her own accord, and AOC's pissed off enough corporations and conservatives that she incidentally (or deliberately) walked into a money pit in doing so.

I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that the DNC has spun up its machinery to truly run a full-throated opposition opp against her.

I'd have to do more research on the rest of them, but I don't believe the squad's faced the kind of push-back that the party's capable of yet.

The DNC doesn't have full throated machinery to win. They are specialized in losing and conceding ground. Their "machinery" is a huge number of corporations grifting a profit. They have lots of funds, but they also have lots of pockets to grease just to get some ads out or promote a few tweets or pay an army of strategic consultants that are paid massive salaries despite only having lost races.

Trump's pivotal point was Super Tuesday where the Republican moderate vote was split between 8 choices: he was able to build an insurmountable lead.

Much like marijuana legislation finally passing now, i think it will take the previous generation to die off before we start seeing more democratic progressive candidates like AOC. Bernie's numbers were Yuge and dominating with people under 40. Give it another decade or so: if gen Z shares values with gen X and Millenials, which is yet to be seen, i think the AOC type candidates will make inroads in many places in the Democratic party.

As someone in Gen Z in the western world, the left in Gen Z seems to be more dominant and a lot more to the left - as in, I have many friends that saw Bernie as a "harm reduction" candidate.

That being said, this is only one datapoint, and I also know other people that are far to the right.

You mean the white working class. And no one in their right mind thinks that the Republican party is less corporatist than the Democratic party. With the CARES Act, the Trump administration fought to keep secret which businesses received money. Come to find out, multinational and conglomerate entities like Ruth Chris' Steakhouse received funds.

According to polls, Trump had been making inroads into black and Latino communities as well, with approval rising from 2016 to 2020 from 5% to 9% in black communities and rising from 28% to 44% in Latino communities.

That is still considered a landslide in the world of politics. Despite the attempts by conservatives to see some light at the tunnel, the conservative ideology will always be a rump party in communities of color.

I made no comments regarding whether it is a landslide or not. I am pointing out that your correction of the GP comment that "the Republican party is making inroads into the working class" should be "to the white working class". I feel that increases of 80% and 57% are significant enough to count as making inroads. Other data includes Vietnamese support increasing from 32% to 48%, handily beating the 36% Biden support. Approval from 44%~48% of a community may not be the majority, but complacent attitudes such as yours is the way that such percentages continue to increase.

We are seeing the end of the nation state or at least its prominence.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's a big part of the cognitive dissonance felt by much of America, I think.

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