RIP Social Conservatism: Why It's Dying - and the Coming Realignment
Does this mean the end of the current Democratic Party coalition?
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23718-rip-social-conservatism-why-its-dying-and-the-coming-realignment
If social liberal attitudes become nearly universal, then today’s conservatism and today’s populism vanish or become marginalized. A four-fold division of the American electorate would be replaced by a simpler binary opposition. In an America which, a generation or two hence, practically everyone is a social liberal, there would be two socially liberal factions that disagree chiefly about economics, even as they share current liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and censorship.
This realignment of attitudes will not happen by 2020, perhaps not even by 2030. But it has already occurred in Britain and most of Europe, where the local conservatives are social liberals, by American standards. By the mid-21st century, a similar situation is likely to obtain on this side of the Atlantic.
One of the consequences I predict is the crack-up of today’s Democratic coalition — paradoxically, as a direct consequence of the decline of social conservatism.
At the moment the Democrats are a tenuous coalition of economic progressives and “neoliberals” or moderate economic conservatives. In their policy views many of the neoliberals, including arguably Barack Obama and the Clintons, are what used to be called “Rockefeller Republicans.” Many neoliberals favor smaller government, free trade, deregulation and lower taxes and side with the Democrats chiefly because of the religiosity and social conservatism of today’s Republicans.
If the threat of religious fundamentalism and social conservatism declines, there is really no reason for the allies of neoliberals like Robert Rubin and the allies of economic progressives like Elizabeth Warren to remain in the same party. This is why, in “The Coming Realignment,” I predict that the two wings of today’s Democrats may evolve into the nuclei of the two national parties of tomorrow, once social conservatism goes the way of segregationism and agrarianism.
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Black Protestants, Jew, Mormons and other have stayed pretty constant over generations. White Catholics and both mainline and evangelical Protestants have suffered huge losses, as unaffiliation has increased to 31% of Millennials. Does anyone see this trend reversing itself?
