Will 2020 Be a Realigning Election?

In a two-party system, political parties are not really coherent ideologies. There are simply too many ideological positions in a large republic for two parties to represent. Parties are ideological coalitions that come together out of the electoral necessity of narrowing the choices down to two, ensuring that someone will win something resembling a majority.

There is no inherent reason that abortion opponents and gun enthusiasts should belong to the same party. Or that labor unions and environmentalists should back the same candidates. These are alliances of political necessity, as are the larger, defining ideological partnerships that make up our current party coalitions — social traditionalists and business conservatives on one side; progressive leftists and classical liberals on the other. This is how the sausage is cut up right now, but it could all change. Ideological coalitions always seem solid and inevitable in the moment, but they have always shifted and changed over time.

Since 1856, the words “Republican” and “Democrat” have functioned as brand names for our two political parties. But a brand name is not the same as a brand. The dozens of actual ideological positions available to Americans have been divided up in a number of different ways. Take, for example, the economic and political ideology of populism, which emerged as a political force in…