For some reason, the new launcher doesn't work for me.    It always says "oh no!  Something went wrong and we couldn't connect to minecraft services."  It then seems to not detect that I bought minecraft, and will only let me launch it as a demo or I have to buy it all over again.  The older launcher has no such problem, detects that I own it, etc.  As a result, I have to use the old launcher if I want to play the game because the new one doesn't work.

Update:  Thought reinstalling might help, but it made things worse.  The new minecraft launcher is just an empty dialog box now with no functionality.  Also, though the title bar of the dialog box has the minecraft picture, there is no text.