Is a Party Realignment Happening?

I want to commend to your attention an article at The American Interest by Frank DiStefano on the history of party realignments in the United States. Here’s a snippet:

America throughout its history has had five distinct sets of parties, which scholars call party systems. Each underwent a similar cycle of birth and collapse. During each party-system era, America had two major parties competing on fairly equal terms for about half the national vote. Those parties ruled for decades, attracting consistent coalitions around stable ideologies that were nothing like the Democrats and the Republicans we know today. After decades of battles, however, America slowly changed. When the issues America designed those parties to debate were resolved or faded away, the parties turned into weak institutions coasting on old ideas. Eventually, they crumbled in what the scholars call a realignment. Realignments are the moments in which we tear an entire old order down and build a fresh new era with new coalitions, new ideologies, and new ideas. In the rubble of the old system’s collapse, the American people then create two new coalitions designed to debate new solutions to the nation’s new problems. Sometimes new people or ideas take over the husk of an old party. Sometimes a party simply dissolves and a new one takes its place. Either way, a new era begins with two new coalitions trumpeting new ideas ready to engage in the next era’s great debate.

I disagree with his interpretation of events to some degree. I don’t think that political developments in the United States have been so driven by charismatic individuals as he seems to or completely immune to exogenous factors. So, for example, I think that many party realignments through our history have been produced by people who hadn’t been here a generation before or their children trying to make sure that their voices were heard. That explains, specifically, the realignments at the turn of the 19th century and that during the Great Depression. I also think it’s a factor in the resurgence of support for socialism we’re seeing today.