Political Observations

* Extremist judges on the highest courts together with a modest share of judges in federal trial courts who can be preferentially selected, can greatly undermine legal and institutional checks and balances, and more generally, the rule of law.

* Sustained campaigns of disinformation can be very effective, especially when combined with efforts to undermine accurate sources of information.

* While the connection between political leanings and geographic are generally very stable, they aren't immune to change on a time scale of multiple election cycles and decades. 

In my lifetime, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia have all swung significantly left. But Florida and Ohio have swung decisively to the right. In between Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia have swung moderately to the right, while Arizona has swung moderately to the left. In most of these cases, swings to the left have been associated with healthy economies not driven mostly by fossil fuels leading to migration in and prosperity, while swings to the right have mostly been driven by sustained outmigration of promising young people, the ongoing effects of deindustrialization, and the decline of rural economies not driven by tourism. 

Probably the most puzzling of these has been Florida, which has seen population growth and was never a big fossil fuel economy or a manufacturing economy. Arizona has perhaps swung less left that it would have otherwise, and Florida has perhaps swung far right, due to migration of snowbirds to these places.

* Political coalitions can change, although again, this can take multiple election cycles.

The first wave of change, when I was younger, was the end stages of realignment that started in the 1960s, with the Democratic party going from being the Southern party that defended slavery to a liberal northern-urban-nonwhite-nonChristian-union-working class party, and the Republican party going from affluent urban moderates party of the north to a conservative, Southern-rural-white-Christian party. Moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats disappeared with the parties becomes much more strictly a liberal leaning Democratic party and a strictly conservative, and almost white Christian nationalist party.

The second wave, associated mostly with Trump and MAGA, has been the shift of the white working class to the GOP and the college educated upper middle class to the Democratic Party. In 2020, and even more in 2024, however, Trumpism has started to win over significant minorities of Hispanic working class and black working class voters, notwithstanding the movements rather extreme xenophobia and widespread racism.

* There are two, mostly disjoint, groups we perceive themselves to be in dire straits that call for major political change.

On one hand is the white nominally Christian or Evangelical, Gen X and older, non-college educated population, especially working class men and petite bourgeois men who aren't particularly educated but have gained wealth from small and medium sized non-professional business like car dealerships, construction contractors, farmers, ranchers, and skilled tradesmen. They have seen their status, in relative terms decline, their cultural norms marginalized, and their economic prospects and health stagnate and decline. They tend to live in suburbs or rural areas or a handful of conservative leaning cities.

On the other hand there are secular leaning, demographically diverse Millennial and Gen Z members who are have at least some college and often have college degrees and even post-graduate degrees or certifications, who are professional and administrative profession leaning, mostly white collar or pink collar, who making decent enough money oftentimes, but face high higher education costs, student loans, unaffordable housing costs, high health care costs, and high child care costs that impede their ability to accumulate wealth and attain the American dream.