JOEL KOTKIN: The three faces of the Democratic Party are coming to a head.

In deep blue “fortress cities” with large populations of educated global citizens, the causists views are widely accepted without question. But in much of the country — most importantly the Midwest — neither the oligarchs nor the zealots have much hold outside big city cores and college towns.

True Middle American populists — Bernie Sanders after all represents post-industrial retirement colony of Vermont — are increasingly marginalized in a party dominated by identity issue activists and the big money of the post-industrial hierarchy. The other factions’ agenda — free trade globalism, uncontrolled immigration, strident social liberalism and identity politics — are the very things that could help re-elect Trump.

To win and consolidate their gains, particularly amidst a now strong economy, Democrats need to find a way to recover their basic economic message — as they did under President Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. They should focus on how to build sustained economic growth that would provide better opportunities for upward mobility for middle and working class voters, and in particular millennials. If they choose however to listen primarily to causists and oligarchs, they may win in the short run, given the ineptitude of their opponents, but may prove unable to sustain their ascendency over the longer term.

The problem is that all the energy comes from the nuts, and all the money comes from creepy oligarchs.