Most of my blog posts recently have been reposts of recent articles. Part of it is because I’ve lost some regularity of the habit because of some recent circumstances.

Today is no exception and there’s another article that was sent to me recently I found pretty fascinating - FiveThirtyEight’s recent analysis of the changing dynamics of the Republican and Democratic parties:

Democrats have been considered the party of Asian, black, gay, Jewish and Latino people, along with atheists, teachers, union members, etc. — in short, a coalition organized around a bunch of different identity groups. Meanwhile, Republicans have been thought of as the party of small government, low taxes, a strong national defense and “traditional” moral values — in short, a coalition based around a few core ideological principles.

That has always been a fairly simplistic view of the parties. (And Grossmann and Hopkins’s book is much more nuanced.) But as an easy rubric to understand the two parties it worked. It still does, to some extent. But less and less so.

The two big stories happening right now in American politics — the 2020 Democratic primary and impeachment — show both parties being reshaped in ways that break with that asymmetry: The GOP is becoming increasingly organized around identity groups, and Democrats are becoming increasingly ideological.

This article very succintly points out and explains this recent change. Read more here.