Unfortunately the author has a few paragraphs that miss the mark and strike me as coming from more of a centrist or right-wing “kids these days are too soft” which feels very off-base and disconnected from the issue.
Welcome to The Atlantic. It’s telling they think all these issues are because of phones and not other aspects of society or something like the looming, ever present threat of climate change.
It’s basically The Economist lite at this point.
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Yes, it can.
The conditions that allow someone like Trump to come to power are manifested by the neoliberal policies extolled by the Democrat and Republican establishment, alike. Your party leaders are Reaganites/Thatcherites. The biggest policy win for Democrats in recent history was a Heritage Foundation plan that acts as a de facto subsidy to private health insurance.
And most people do not live in swing states so most “protest votes” do nothing to tip the scales.
creating more division within the left
Liberalism isn’t the left.
create more Republicans in the process
Create more leftists, actually.
ivory tower orthodoxy
It’s the Democratic establishment that abhors populism and typically walks in ivory tower circles. Liberalism and neoliberalism are the dominant ideologies in the Ivy League schools, not socialism.
Only in swing states.
Most states you know exactly what the outcome is going to be, no matter how hard you or they campaign.
We understand FPTP and the electoral college.