Heather Cox Richardson: The GOP No Longer Exists and It Looks Like the 1850s

Heather Cox Richardson argues that the midterms are less about a routine partisan swing than about a possible party-system realignment, with the Republican Party having effectively become a MAGA movement tied to Donald Trump. She says the historical closest match is the 1850s, when the old parties broke apart and a new coalition formed around opposition to concentrated elite power. In her view, today’s fissures are being driven from the ground up by anger at inequality, billionaire influence, and institutions that seem to serve only a few people.

She says Democrats, if they win Congress, would need to move quickly on popular measures like the child tax credit and Affordable Care Act subsidies, and then use that early momentum to build a broader coalition that includes workers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and younger voters. She sees the politics of the moment as similar to earlier reform eras, including the Progressive Era and the New Deal, when new coalitions formed around regulating concentrated economic power rather than destroying capitalism.

Richardson also argues that a new era of trust busting is overdue, with concentrated power in big tech, AI, and other industries becoming a political problem as much as an economic one. She draws a direct line from robber barons to today’s billionaires, says Citizens United should be a first target, and calls Elon Musk’s role in foreign-policy disputes unprecedented and dangerous. On Trump, she thinks biology and politics are both working against him, while JD Vance looks like the figure most likely to try to consolidate power after the midterms.