In their very different ways, Bernie Sanders & Donald Trump both upended the 1990s uniparty consenus. Bernie lost primary battles but his heirs likely win the war. Trump is the President. Both took on a dead consensus on economic liberalism & dumb wars. Only social issues remain.
Much punditry & commentary does not know it is dead yet. When the Boomers and their subscriptions finish, legacy media collapses. No one under 50 knows who a George Will or Maureen Dowd is let alone cares what they think. Liberalism is a barren ideology & leaves no children.
The Right that emerges from this time will be more orientated to families & workers, not big business. Even in an age of mass suffrage, the Right has won most elections by addressing grievances whilst defending foundational structures. It loses when it leaves Bismarck for Hayek.
The Left that emerges will be, in some ways, more interesting. The political Left will be stuck with the liberal refuse the Right no longer wants or needs. Whether a more worker-focused Left will wants to be stuck with the "bikram yoga currency trader" bloc is yet to be seen.
No one should mourn the death of the liberal consensus. A world in which woke capital underpays workers struggling to pay for basics while observing all the pieties of 'pride month' or what have you hashtaggery deserves all that is coming to it.
Hopefully, whatever happens, there will be much more breaking of ranks. The work of Tucker Carlson on the Right, smashing, repeatedly the dead-hand of zombie Reaganism, needs a partner on the Left, which takes seriously family & moral breakdown as a danger to the most vulnerable
One of the worst aspects of social media is the inane herd following (esp by media that does it and is then surprised why it is dying) and the gauleiter-like policing of boundaries that should, in a free society, be crossed all the time by people who can think for themselves
There are many political ends on which trad conservatives and many on the esp old Left will agree: decent wages for workers, basic familial health care, schools that educate children with varying needs. We can argue about delivery but the 'protective' ends we actually agree on.
To finish where I began: Trump won only by winning many Bernie voters. When Trump was sworn in, his speech addressed in brutally honest terms the carnage that decades of economic liberalism had inflicted on workers. All the applause came from in front of Trump - none from behind.
