Since the 2000s economic crash its increasingly clear the only path forward is to shed load – to effectively default on the expectations of interest groups for material, reputational, and positional goods

And to do it so comprehensively on focused groups they are crushed, not piecewise spread evenly so that every group feels existentially threatened but still “in it”, using all their remaining force trying to claw back from each other

That’s a common dynamic when a prolonged golden age – so long that commitments are not just fulfilled but expanded – is followed by bottleneck. The Reagan 80s were largely about shedding load that accumulated in the 50s-60s.

That one shed sexual minorities, ethnic minorities, cities, AND family farms, and really started the collapse of the small bourgeoisie thru deregulation, consolidation, and policy favoring big-firm interests.

(The rise of middle-class Sunbelt suburbia/exurbia and evangelicalism was largely an inclusion of those lamented in the 30s and 60s as the excluded rural poor, though)

So basically the three candidates for shedding now are

• (white, conservative, non-college) “deplorables”
• (white-leaning, liberal, degreed) “professional middle class”
• non-white ethnic minority workers

Two things. First, the fact that 2 and 3 are both part of the Democratic coalition, normally a source of infighting, makes them harder to crush. They could defend each other and it’s hard to craft policy that weakens them simultaneously. They might be wedged apart via the tensions in big-city coalitions, tho.

Second you know what’s NOT on there is local gentry, another lynchpin of rightism. I hear occasional squeaks about car dealership regulation, or that the CARES act is about serving up small business to more governmentally legible big capital, and I’m sure the inheritance tax matters here.

But the real energy re: them on the left is the Matt Stoller-type “small is good” stuff. And not to validate “red-brown” freakouting too much, but that really seems better suited to a Tucker Carlson-ized Republican Party