It's occurred to me that this might be the election that finally ends the Reagan coalition. That coalition brought together the real core constituency of the Republican Party (rich capitalists) with a smorgasbord of people who's only connecting link is that they have been voting primarily on social issues, to the right of center. This includes the religious right of course, but also so-called "Reagan Democrats," people who had tended to support the Democrats because of their stand on economic issues, but had a problem with where the Democrats went in the 1970s on abortion, gay rights, gun control, feminism, and so on. It built on the success of the racist-tinged "southern strategy" but added some other social-issue elements besides race to make an election-winning program.

The coalition could only work, though, because a person's political beliefs on social issues and on economic issues are not necessarily connected, and it's possible to be a cultural conservative while also being an economic liberal and/or an environmentalist. Or both. And when economics in the form of maldistribution of wealth, loss of jobs, high prices, and a faltering economy come to the fore, complicated by a miserable and unpopular war; when we find evangelical Christians discovering their inherent greenness as caretakers for God's creation; when we see people worried more about how to pay their bills and send their kids to college and whether their sons or cousins or brothers are going to come back whole from Iraq, than they do about whether women can get legal abortions or whether gay people can get married or whether they can get a concealed-carry permit or have to go through background checks to buy a gun, then the coalition begins to fail.

This could be the end of it. I will certainly hope and work for that end.