A sea change towards policies of growth and prosperity rather than division and failure?

I have seen a bit of fragmentary coverage on this topic, but not a lot.  From The Emergent Urban Anti-progressivism by Ryan Streeter.  

President Biden’s appeal for unity in his inaugural address was a welcome invitation to end “this uncivil war that pits red versus blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.” The challenge for Biden, of course, is to show that his administration can lead by example in pursuit of this goal.

Nowhere will this challenge play out more than in America’s cities. His campaign’s urban policies — from affordable housing to education to worker pay — together with his recent flurry of “racial equity” executive orders on January 26, were all drafted according to the familiar Democratic playbook. But urban voters seem to be reading off a different script.

This is the election outcome which I have noticed a.nd which seems to be getting limited attention

In fact, one of the most interesting and underreported outcomes of the 2020 presidential election was an emergent urban anti-progressivism — or at least, that’s the best way to interpret what happened. After a season of protests and urban unrest against the backdrop of a pandemic, a sizeable percentage of city dwellers, ranging from small-business owners to working-class public-school parents, seemed to have had enough of the urban status quo.

Democrats have puzzled over why Biden did not perform as well in cities as expected, and conversely, why Trump seemed to overperform in them. Overall, Biden won major metro areas, but his slippage compared with Trump’s gains was notable.

And we aren't talking about small shifts.

Trump gained in every borough of New York City except Staten Island (where he was already a favorite) compared with 2016, recording a gain of 12 percentage points in his share of the total vote in the Bronx and 9 points in Queens. He improved his margin by more than 18 points in largely immigrant and working-class assembly districts encompassing Elmhurst, Corona, and Jackson Heights. New York City as a whole swung toward Trump by 7.6 points between 2016 and 2020, more than any single state swung in the election, as Trump picked up support in 58 of the city’s 65 assembly districts. Compared with 2016, he gained votes in cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit, the latter of which gave Trump 5,000 more votes than in 2016 and Biden 1,000 fewer than Hillary Clinton won. As pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson has noted, even though Joe Biden won major metros as expected, closer scrutiny of a number of blue cities reveals blue doughnuts: As Democrats increased their command of the suburbs, their hold on inner cities weakened.

Lots of way to parse this and I am not firmly committed to one or another.  But it is an interesting event.

My general sense is that the US has long exhibited a rural, small town and suburbs cultural conservatism (cultural, not partisan) and that Cities have demonstrated much greater heterogeneity and willingness to embrace fads, policies and practices which don't particularly square well with the overall national culture or our Constitutional premises and history.

For the advantages of Luxury Beliefs and other status related dynamics, the administrative state, academia, media, and the self-centered Mandarin Class, all generally centered on the ethos of cities, have long been able to diverge in their beliefs and practices from the norms of most Americans while receiving strong local support.

The Trump phenomenon has not been mere populism.  It has been a function of a significant part of the electorate rejecting the policies and beliefs of the the administrative state, academia, media, and the self-centered Mandarin Class.  Now, for a variety of reasons, the various factions and sections of many cities seem also to embracing normalcy and rejecting the destructive policies of critical theory and social justice theory.  Trump did not win cities but there seems intriguing canary-in-the-coal mine evidence that his appeal expanded there significantly.

From a party perspective, I am not confident that will continue without a leader like Trump.  Possibly.

But as I read the tea leaves, I am speculating that there is an increasing hunger across class and race and region and ethnicity for a focus on growth rather than authoritarian equality.  If true, whichever party chooses to focus on the growth and prosperity aspirations of most Americans will be the party of the furture.  It is not clear yet which party is smart enough to do that.