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Left is right, and right is left

I run a wide variety of opinions and columns on this page, and it’s always interesting when columnists from opposite ends of the political spectrum come to an agreement.

I was struck by the opinion of conservative columnist Daniel McCarthy, which ran on this page in yesterday’s edition of The Express. Much of his writing echoed a much earlier column by liberal columnist Robert Reich, which ran way back on Nov. 14.

In that column, Reich noted that, early in the 2016 primary season, blue-collar workers on both sides of the fence preferred Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to the mainstream candidates at the time of Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

“When I asked why, they said Sanders or Trump would ‘shake things up,’ ‘make the system work again,’ ‘stop the corruption,’ or ‘end the rigging,'” Reich wrote.

Consider this quote, from Reich’s same column: “Had the Democratic National Committee not tipped the scales against him by deriding his campaign and rigging campaign financing in favor of Hillary Clinton, I believe Sanders would have been the party’s nominee in 2016.”

Much of this rhymes with McCarthy’s writings yesterday, in which he criticized the Democratic party’s comparative lack of democracy.

In 2016, both parties were confronted with deeply unpopular establishment candidates facing an anti-establishment wave. One party steered into the headwind, and the other — albeit begrudgingly — accepted it.

This path has led to an unusual — but not unheard of — situation where, in many ways, the political parties have once again flipped.

The history is far too complex for the limited space of newsprint, but if you’re curious, ample resources exist and are readily available online or at your local library. Originally, in the 1800s, many (not all) Democrats represented the rich, southern, pro-slavery aristocrats, while the Republicans were more egalitarian and anti-slavery. Democrats pushed the concept of states’ rights as a legal vehicle to maintain the institution of slavery.

During the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, flipped the script and the parties. His broad appeal, acumen and ability to effect quality of life improvements for the masses built the New Deal coalition, which shifted the Democrats to being a party of the many, while Republicans took up the mantle of the elite, industrialized opposition.

Another shift occured in the 1970s, when southern Democrats in particular flipped to Republican due to moral opposition to civil rights and LGBT acceptance as a result of the Southern Strategy. Again, this is a complicated, if fascinating, history, and we are only addressing it at a surface level.

The curious alignment of pundits reflecting on the 2016 election makes us wonder if another realignment event has occured.

Consider:

It is difficult to argue that the current configuration of Trump’s winning coalition is not a “big tent,” with voters from a wide spectrum aligning with at least some part of his agenda.

This broad appeal lends to the in-fighting which has more recently plagued the Democratic party. By comparison, the Republican lock-step unity which had been in effect for much of the previous decade or so has shifted to the Democratic opposition, who now must put aside their squabbles and act as one in order to exert any influence.

Perhaps most significantly, though, is to consider where the impetus of change is. Fundamentally, today’s Democratic party is possessed of a conservative — little c — ideology, while today’s Republicans lean much further towards the progressive — little p — side of the spectrum.

The Democrats have been seeking to preserve — to conserve — the current state of the country. Remember the crucial interview when Kamala Harris couldn’t point to anything she would do differently from President Biden? To the Democrat, everything was working fine, so why change?

By contrast, the Republicans are the ones with a vision of change. Many of those changes might be repealed various laws, regulations and civil rights for minorities, but that is a progression of their worldview.

I believe this is why you now see so many citizens and politicians realigning themselves: most old guard Republicans with capital-c Conservative ideals have been thrown out of the new GOP and deem themselves never-Trumpers, while disaffected Democrats — especially the working class which is tired of stagnation and inaction — have been flocking to the Republicans. Meanwhile, those on the left with capital-P Progressive values have found themselves on the outside with comparatively little power: Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have both experienced notable dips in relevancy.

What is the impact of this shift?

I think it’s still on-going, and we likely don’t know the final shape of it, but I do suspect that a notable effect will be a transformation of cultural values. In particular, the concepts of small government and personal independance seem to be particularly at risk.

Look at what the politicians are doing. Don’t follow the rhetoric — follow their actions.

The new form of the Republican party seems more interested in leveraging federal power than diminishing government overreach, and the new form of the Democratic party is questioning its support of minorities’ rights. Certainly Republicans won’t stop their assault on minorities, nor are Democrats likely to shrink the government.

But perhaps the greatest defeat of all lies at the feet of the socially-Progressive, fiscally-Conservative Libertarians, as the parties move in the opposite direction on both axes.

Arianna McKee is the Editorial Page editor at The Express.

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