These are the surface-level shifts, the overt performance, but to see how the parties have really changed you have to go deeper.
Republicans and Democrats have changed propaganda strategies for this election because Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have both made big impacts on the coalitions which make up each party.
Bernie has brought an FDR New Deal strain of Democratic thought back to prominence: his platform is that today’s Great Depression needs a New Deal, one which will renew the compact between America’s government and the citizens under its rule by restoring the value of education and blue collar labour. Hillary has adopted some of these platforms in order to solidify her nomination with former Bernie supporters.
Donald Trump has made the big impact, however. He has revived the isolationist wing of the Republican party, a strain which has been in obscurity since World War II. His platform seems to be: withdraw from the world stage; let other counties sort their own problems out; and fall back on the plentiful resources of America’s vast ecology.
Isolationism has become anti-globalisation. He is appealing all of those left behind by the economic order both Republican and Democratic candidates have had a hand in creating.
If Trump’s appeal was solely to the isolationist strain of the Republican tendency, he would not be the nominee today. The coalition which supports him is an alloy of dispossessed anti-globalisation blue-collars and those who believe America’s melting pot isn’t wholly burning out the slag, if you get my meaning. These voters use states’ rights to exact revenge for Southern Reconstruction. The Democrats are fighting Confederates and anti-globalists.
The trends you identify are Hillary’s moves to capture the ground vacated by this coalition: that of the globalist Republican, the kind of classical liberal (or libertarian) who has done very well out of American global military, economic, and political hegemony. They stand the most to lose from Trump’s ascendancy.
Both parties have re-invented themselves multiple times over the centuries. I believe we are witnessing a new stage in the Fifth Party system.
Whereas the last shift split the parties on the basis of race but united them on the size of federal government (big enough to beat Hitler and the USSR), the divide today which pits Trump against Clinton is the same as the one which pit Alexander Hamilton against Aaron Burr: federalist and anti-federalist.
Your article caught my eye because only a few hours before you posted it, I published an article on a exactly this theme. I argue that these new divisions in the Fifth Party system are further evidence that America is in need of electoral reform. If you are interested, the article can be read here.
