A party re-alignment is under way.
The Democratic Party defends the oppressed from the oppressor.
The Republican Party chooses order over disorder.
Not anymore.
Political parties are coalitions of people and interests. A coalition has contradictions, exceptions, and hypocrisies but some themes emerge. FDR shaped the Democratic Party by addressing the problems of working people driven into poverty by the Depression. Republicans defended businesses and the free market that created prosperity in the 1920s. Blacks, Jews, and Catholics were part of the Democratic coalition.
The U.S. economy evolved since FDR and that created the change and backlash that re-defined both parties There was less factory work, more office work. More people attended and finished college, and these people became members of the broad middle class. The majority culture became more cosmopolitan, more shaped by urban financial and cultural elites. The Democratic Party absorbed those people.
A new populist GOP arose among people who resented "urbane" Democrats in mainstream cultural institutions. Trump's pugnacious crudeness gave leadership and permission for these "forgotten Americans" to feel and speak what they had bottled up as forbidden, politically incorrect, thoughts. The former GOP of small government, self-reliance, pro-business, and tradition is gone.
Democrats stuck with the value of justice for the oppressed. However, the base of the FDR party -- White, middle-class men -- were no longer an oppressed class, beaten down by industrial and financial elites. Democrats looked to help the new oppressed -- women, Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, homosexuals, immigrants. The politics of that are harder, made doubly so because Democratic thought leaders argue that the oppressors are not solely financial elites on Wall Street. Instead, the oppressors are the people and culture of the White middle class, especially its men, its own people. Thought leaders told those men to "do the work" and recognize their error.
The Reagan formulation of the lazy scofflaw welfare queen circulates, and Democrats here it, too. Hard working Black and Hispanic voters see people in their own communities gaming the immigration, tax, or welfare system. Blue state governors, including Oregon's Tina Kotek, agree to end testing for high school graduation because minority students "don't test well." California schools decide to stop teaching advanced math sequences because minority students aren't keeping up. None of this registers as fairness to many working class people, struggling to enter the middle class.
Democrats are scrambling to re-unify their coalition. Biden and Democrats are talking about jobs and Biden joined a UAW picket line. Democrats are in a majority on abortion -- a good issue if they can avoid looking extreme. Gay marriage is popular, but trans athletes and trans bathrooms may be a bridge too far. Democrats don't know what to do about immigration. That unresolved issue undermines its brand identity as the Party that can govern.
Republicans appear to have firmly staked new ground. They are no longer a conservative party, seeking order. They are a populist party, openly seeking disorder to displace America's cultural elites. Trump's election denialism and attack on democracy does not offend Republicans. His attacks on the justice system, including yesterday's antics in court, appears to add to his support.
The leaders of the two parties represent the state of transition. Trump represents a party that has made a full transition to disruption. They are the change party now. Biden personally represents old-fashioned stability and values, but he is not the spokesperson for Democrats. Voicing a persuasive narrative is not what Biden is good at. In that void thought leaders on the cultural left tell the Democratic story and Republicans cherry-pick from it, exaggerate and distort it, and then try to make that the Democratic brand. Democrats do not need to exaggerate or distort Trump. Trump is who he is.