The Coalition That Wins the War Has Already Planted the Seeds of Its Own Collapse
The political alliance that defeats a great enemy — in war, in ideology, in culture — almost never survives the victory. The Civil War Republicans, the New Deal Democrats, the Cold War consensus: each fractured within a generation of its defining triumph. This is not bad luck. It is a structural feature of how Americans build political coalitions, and it has profound implications for whoever believes they are currently winning.