Honestly the comparisons to the Radical Republicans are probably the most apt in the thread. If you sideline talk about race issues and look solely at economics, the party system is undergoing the same twists and turns it did during the Gilded Age.
Rapid changes in technology and science radically shift the distribution of wealth. Last time around it was the Industrial Revolution and the development of steam engines, fossil fuels, heavy industry, factories, and line assembly. This time around it's the Information Age and the development of computing, broadband, renewables, the tech sector, and automation. The Zuckerbergs, Bezoses, and Gateses replaced the Carnegies, Fords, and Edisons, just as they replaced the Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Jacksons.
The liberal, progressive, party embraces the new wealth and ideas, and turns corrupt. They turn elitist and start defaming and screwing the majority of people, and the majority looks elsewhere for people that will represent their interests. Last time around that started with the Populist party and ended with the New Deal Democrats, who knows where it'll go this time around but I'd bet inside three or four Presidential election cycles we'll start seeing major populist third-party candidates when more people clue in the Democrats no longer represent the people but the tech sector and mass media. Right now the duct tape and chewing gum holding the parties together is the constant stream of left/right "Nazis vs. Commies" propaganda from the media, keeping populists on the left and right hating each other's guts instead of talking to each other and realizing they have common enemies and goals.
That's where the Democrats live right now. Elitist, corporatist, authoritarian, and hopelessly corrupt. Social justice is the cute little wrapper around anti-worker corporate-friendly policies, which has a dual purpose in being a convenient purity test and bludgeon. It's no coincidence "diversity in tech" corresponds so neatly with outsourcing and tax breaks, visa and green card abuse, and wage suppression, by the tech and service sectors.
Bob's a right winger just like most mainstream/establishment Democrats nowadays. Identity politics and social justice are just tools they use to delude themselves and try to cash in on the shifting distribution of wealth. It's less common to see him overtly attacking people on the left but he does, look how he shits on Sanders supporters, and I'd bet cash deep down he hates them more than those on the right. He's more than happy to support Republicans, but only so long as they pander -- look who he supported in 2016 for fuck's sake.
