Exactly right, Rob. While having winner-take-all elections means that you get two parties, these parties tend to change priorities every generation. Republicans are the party of Abraham Lincoln -- that is, a coalition of northern business interests, equal rights activists, and big government. Now if this sounds more like the modern Democratic party, well, yeah. A lot can change in 150 years.
We've been a bit overdue for realignment in the U.S. The Tea Party movement was sort of the advance guard, but I don't think we've had the major shift until now. I'm not sure what the end result is going to be on the conservative side; populism and free-market brands seem to be the biggest contenders now. On the liberal side, I expect to see the Democrats shift to a more overly socialist stance; millennials simply don't care about the Cold War ideologies but like what they've seen in Europe.
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We've been a bit overdue for realignment in the U.S. The Tea Party movement was sort of the advance guard, but I don't think we've had the major shift until now. I'm not sure what the end result is going to be on the conservative side; populism and free-market brands seem to be the biggest contenders now. On the liberal side, I expect to see the Democrats shift to a more overly socialist stance; millennials simply don't care about the Cold War ideologies but like what they've seen in Europe.
-- ∇×V