Pre-2016 liberal confidence assumed multicultural culture would yield permanent political dominance.

Evidence

Despite such rising tensions, liberals in 2016 remained confident that the country was trending toward a “permanent Democratic majority”—especially as the ascendant upper-middle class embraced the optimistic, pro-business outlook that had once fueled Republican victories. The booming tech industry also seemed firmly in their corner. Throughout 2016, Clinton held steady leads in the polls, and there appeared to be no widely accepted ideological challenge to a multicultural America. Conservatives were uncool, backward, and strange. With pop culture grounded in ideas of maximal inclusivity, how could a provincial-minded political coalition ever expect to win again? — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 413

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Conservatives were uncool, backward, strange’ is the status-flipping dynamic central to Marx’s mechanism account — the reader will want this as setup for how Trump’s ascendancy inverted the perceived status hierarchy.
• QUESTION: The passage ends on the unanswered question that the following period must resolve: the mechanism by which a provincial coalition defeats a culturally dominant coast — worth tracking Marx’s causal account.