Just as the hippies made peace with material prosperity, the Democratic party has increasingly reached out to corporate America. The potential alliance between progressivism and big business could have major implications for American politics. If Republicans fail to offer an optimistic alternative to crony corporatism, they could see further schism and more years in the political wilderness.

Currently, corporatism and identity politics stand as two pillars of the Democratic presidential coalition. Corporate titans in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and elsewhere—what demographer Joel Kotkin has termed the new “oligarch” caste—support the Democratic party in exchange for government subsidies and other privileges. The Affordable Care Act’s passage relied upon an alliance of Democratic lawmakers and major health-care interests, Dodd-Frank has often ended up strengthening the hands of the nation’s largest financial institutions, and many progressive “green” initiatives function as de facto corporate subsidies. When the Obama administration pursued financial penalties against major financial institutions in the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown, it gave them the option of lessening these penalties by donating to left-leaning activist groups such as La Raza. Moreover, many of those in big business are quite willing to promote left-wing social causes (on identity politics, sexual ethics, and so forth). As the past two elections have suggested, identity politics plus corporate cronyism can be a powerful coalition—at least on the presidential level.