No politician can win without a coalition of voters. Do Democrats know who theirs are?In September 1981, 10 months after Ronald Reagan’s sweeping 44-state victory over Jimmy Carter, 100 leading elected Democratic officials privately convened to formulate a response to Reaganism. Alan Cranston of California, the Senate minority whip, began the meeting with a fundamental question: “If our party is a coalition, unlike the Republicans, who tend to represent a single group, what are the common denominators, transcending regional differences and local interests, which make us a national party?”In the four decades since the fracturing of the New Deal order, an answer to this question has largely eluded the Democratic party. Of the United States’ 20 highest-median-income states, Kamala Harris won 18; of the 20 lowest, Harris won just three. Democrats reliably win the counties that produce the majority of American economic output; Harris’s losing base consisted of counties collectively representing 60% of the GDP. Yet the Democrats continue to depend upon some portion – smaller and smaller each election – of the less-affluent denizens of metropolitan America. The result is a deeply bifurcated coalition with little by way of a unifying “common denominator”.Alex Bronzini-Vender is a writer living in New York Continue reading...