Behind the Curtain: America's tectonic shifts

• Traditional media power waned and fragmented profoundly.
• Immigration and energy debates shifted in a decidedly conservative direction.
• A loose bipartisan consensus on China and domestic industrial policy hardened.
• Unfathomably high deficits are largely irrelevant to both parties.
• Hispanic voters are the most potent, fastest-growing swing group in U.S. politics.

Why it matters: The future of politics and information will never be the same.

• It'll play out on new platforms — featuring new, powerful billionaires and info stars, fighting over a reordered political landscape in which misinformation thrives.
• Republicans will be as focused on the working class as Democrats. Democrats will be as focused on big business and the wealthy as Republicans.

The big picture: Neither party seems likely now, or anytime soon, to stake a dominant claim to a clear majority. So this era of volatility and razor-close elections will only raise emotions — and the stakes.

• It's easy to be fatigued by the nastiness, name-calling and numbing smallness of day-to-day politics. But don't lose sight of the durable changes that will reorder how you get informed, how you do business, where new jobs will be created, and how America will secure itself:

1. The new right. The information ecosystem — especially, but not exclusively, on the right — looks nothing like it did when the 2024 campaign began. Gone are the days of Fox dominance. Instead, Musk's X and personality-dominated podcasts, led by Joe Rogan, will be the new power centers. All of this is unfolding on X, where the stars of the right-wing constellation congregate. Dems are bemoaning the lack of a liberal equivalent.
2. The tech power surge. Not long ago, billionaire tech entrepreneurs wanted nothing to do with politics — and especially with Republicans. This changed radically and durably as Musk, David Sacks, Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreessen and many others went full Trump. They calculated that politics is downstream from information, and inserted themselves aggressively into the new media ecosystem. Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman did the same for Vice President Harris. But Silicon Valley is notoriously liberal, so that was less revolutionary.
3. Shards of glass. How you get news and information shattered into scores of pieces based on your age, politics, income and information dependency. This will make a common reality increasingly elusive — and change how consumers get informed, candidates campaign, and businesses grow or decline. The net result: Traditional media grows weaker and less relevant by the month.
4. Conservative shift. It was hard to distinguish the substantive difference between Trump and Harris on future immigration and energy policy.  (Harris, of course, didn't go as far as Trump's plans for a massive deportation push and ending birthright citizenship.) Harris and many Democrats shifted with the country's mood and needs. They now want to lock down borders, tighten asylum rules, and get tougher on illegal immigration. And many now understand that with rising energy needs — and lingering concerns about inflation — America will need more oil, gas, sun and probably nuclear power.
5. A shared enemy. Everyone seems to agree China represents our biggest threat, militarily and economically. A broad consensus formed to crank up export controls, outbound investment restrictions, technology transfer limits and tariffs, covering more sectors over time.
6. America first. Both parties also see domestic industrial policy as vital to combating China and winning the race for AI and energy dominance. Gone are conservative concerns about government picking winners and losers, or messing with markets. Watch for more U.S. spending to increase energy production, chips and AI-adjacent technologies, and any supply-chain weaknesses.
7. Deficits be damned. This might be the biggest sleeper risk both parties knowingly completely ignore. Soak this in: The U.S. spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined. This year, for the first time in history, interest payments on the federal debt, $870 billion, exceeded our $822 billion in military spending. The overall federal debt has more than doubled in the past 10 years, to nearly $36 trillion. Few in elected office care.
8. Hispanic surge. Hispanic people represent 46% of New Mexico's oil and gas workforce at a time when progressives are pushing a transition to renewables. Third-plus-generation Mexican Americans are getting more independent as the college-oriented Democratic message fails to resonate. Consider: Close to one-third of workers in construction are Latino, and only 20% of Latino men ages 25-29 have college degrees. Republicans are gaining ground by default. But Trump tariffs and mass deportations could hurt U.S.-born Latinos and create a backlash.

The bottom line: The past campaign often felt small on the surface. But make no mistake: The shifts underneath it were seismic.

• Axios' Russell Contreras contributed reporting.