He writes,

1. My vision of the future is indeed that the political parties will divide up the middle class into two groups of ‘beggars’ fighting each other for a bigger slice of the pie. And I agree that government interventions in the big three sectors have made things worse than they would otherwise be, but that the trend of prices increasing faster than wages would still be happening had those policies remained static, or even without them. And it’s the policy-indifferent trend, and the forces behind it, that matters.

Remember, prices of real estate are reaching for the sky in the central economic or political hubs of almost every country in the world, regardless of the huge variety of local zoning and development rules. . .

2. I think that those ‘cultural reasons’ will fade in importance, and, if anything, become mere badges and ways to signal tribal membership but without any genuine political significance. The culture war is over and the progressives won a decisive victory against traditionalist social conservatives, and we are presently observing the mopping-up operations. You may be pleased or saddened by that result depending on your perspective – and might does not make right – but it’s a fact. A lot of people are in denial about this. The once mighty force of religion in American politics was reduced to impotence and must now try to survive an era of increasingly overt persecution.

…progressivism is unique and has a special competitive advantage because of its emphasis on equality of results and willingness to use the government to intervene to achieve it.

It can claim to be a transcendent ideology and at the same time tell its ethnic and identity-group clients that disparities in life outcomes are caused by oppression and that correcting these unfair evils requires leveling which just so happens to take the form of government payments and preferences that disproportionately benefit these groups. That is, it can rationalize treating citizens differently in order to achieve social justice. The other ideologies can’t do that, they claim neutrality and prize uniform treatment and non-intervention.

Unfortunately that probably means a much more racially-conscious politics in our future on all sides.

It would be interesting to see a dialogue between these views and those of Yuval Levin in his forthcoming The Fractured Republic.

My take on the Barry Goldwater debacle is derived from a book I read 50 years ago by Robert Novak, called The Agony of the GOP, 1964. The book was to tap the market that Theodore White found with “The Making of President, 1960” and subsequent works. I don’t think that Novak’s book did nearly as well. I read it only because my father was sent a review copy, and he was not interested.

What I remember from the book was all of the idiosyncratic factors that went into the 1964 election. For example, George Romney (Mitt’s father) gaffed himself out of the race by saying that a briefing he had received on Vietnam consisted of “brainwashing.” In hindsight, that remark seems like a nugget of insight, but it offended Republicans who were staunchly anti-Communist and saw Romney as giving aid and comfort to the enemy by accusing our side of brainwashing. [UPDATE: that gaffe came after 1964. I was a bit worried about my memory when I put up this post. I should have checked. By the way, I don’t still have a copy of Novak’s book. I with I could have remembered more of the idiosyncratic factors that were actually in it.]

Another random event that effected 1964 was Nelson Rockefeller’s remarriage. Having survived politically after a divorce, he figured that getting remarried would not be a problem. But he married the woman who had broken up his first marriage, an in those days that offended people, particularly married women. Down went Rockefeller.

Think of the events that are conspiring to make Donald Trump a possible (likely?) nominee. The primary schedule, with the largest early voice going to small states and southern states. The large field, which allows a candidate to appear to be a big winner with less than 50 percent of the vote. The strange “debates” in which the issues take a back seat to the dynamic between the media personalities and the candidates.

Unless Hillary Clinton is indicted I (and perhaps even if she is), I think that a Trump nomination will lead to a Republican debacle comparable to 1964. In a sense it will be worse, because the best the Republicans could have hoped for in 1964 was a respectable defeat. This year, they would be throwing away a reasonable chance of winning.