The old left-right coalitions have long been under strain as America has moved away from materialist politics to the politics of cultural grievance. The clearest manifestation of this has been intense polarization based on educational attainment (the more years of schooling, the more likely you are to vote Democrat). If, however, higher educational institutions and the ideas associated with them continue to become more and more unpopular, I’m not sure what happens next.

In the short run, this may be excellent news for conservatives — most voters aren’t college graduates to begin with, and even college-educated liberals are increasingly coming to see SJL [Social Justice Leftism] ideas as cringey and unappealing. In the long run, as anger over October 7 and the pandemic era fades, conservatives will have to offer a more appealing alternative, as the current version of the GOP espouses lots of highly unpopular ideas of its own and only the most polarizing, MAGA-iest Republicans can reliably win Republican primaries. The past 20 years of American politics have mostly been characterized by stability: the 2020 electoral map didn’t look much different than the 2000 one. If the progressive coalition is breaking up, the next 20 could be much more fluid.

[This is a conclusion to a very interesting essay that I’d recommend for everyone. I’d excerpt more of this, but it would be pointless, as Silver’s argument needs pretty much every inch he uses. Silver adopts the Hayekian triangle to explain the political poles of the moment, in a way that I’m not sure I’d adopt but is defensible. The crack-up on the Left seems rational by this explanation, and perhaps even as predictable as Silver claims it to be. But at some point there will be a reckoning on the other pole between “MAGA Conservatism” and traditional European-style liberalism that Silver posits on his Hayekian triangle. My skepticism comes from my assessment that American “liberalism” isn’t at all analogous and is more in fact a kind of SJL Lite. Anyway, it’s all well worth pondering. — Ed]