The always excellent Ron Brownstein has two important pieces about big picture politics: one about Obama solidifying the youth vote, and another about how business is cutting deals with the Obama administration on energy and health care. This post will be about the youth vote. Here’s some key points:
The enormous advantage among young people for Obama in particular and Democrats in general matters for two reasons. The more immediate is that this generation, which is generally defined as the 93 million people born between 1983 and 2002, will comprise a rapidly increasing share of voters through the next decade. Hais and his co-author, Morley Winograd, also an NDN fellow, have calculated that in 2008, 41% of Millennials were eligible to vote, and they constituted 17% of the electorate. They project that by 2012, 61% of the Millennials will be eligible, and they’ll comprise 24% of the electorate; by 2016, the numbers will reach 80% and 30%. By 2020, virtually all of them will be eligible and they could constitute as much as 36% of all voters. If Obama maintains anything near his current strength among Millennials, they will produce a substantially larger vote surplus for him in 2012 than they did in 2008-leaving Republicans a larger deficit to overcome with older voters.
Obama’s strength among young people has a second, even more significant, implication: if Republicans cannot reverse it reasonably soon, it could harden into a lasting preference for Democrats in this huge
[…..]
generation….Winograd and Hais believe Republicans can’t do much to detach young voters from Obama if the president is seen as succeeding. In Millennial Makeover, they argue that many of this generation’s formative experiences-their diversity, their tolerance of difference, and the patterns of parenting that inclined them to find collective “win-win” solutions-already inclined them toward Democratic beliefs.
As if on cue, a younger commenter writes:
As a member of the younger generation and a (former) Republican voter (now a registered Libertarian), I can give a few reasons why us younger folks don’t care much for Republicans:
1. We don’t care if people are gay. If my neighbors had been gay when I was growing up, it wouldn’t have had any impact on me, nor would it have been any of my business. The anti-gay rhetoric comes across as bigotry to our ears.
2. We chaffe at the ‘whiteness’ of the Republican party. Whether or not this is true in the hearts of Republicans, they simply don’t come across in public as caring for non-whites, nor do they seem to make an effor to reach out to non-whites. Reach out to minorities, and voters will reach out to you.
3. Kids my age don’t understand economics because it isn’t taught in schools, parents don’t teach it, and colleges only marginally teach it. Therefore, we don’t have a clue how trillion dollar deficits will impact us down the road.
4. They put up fossils as candidates.
More and more, I think that hating on gays, immigrants, and non-French’s mustard is a killer for Republicans. People under 30 just don’t want to be associated with that, for the most part, even if they agree with some of the Republican economic kookiness. Jon Hunstman is certainly smart to move to a more liberal position on gay marriage. But I think this may go even deeper than that.
In 2004, one Democratic candidate really energized younger voters: Howard Dean. The Democratic made him chair of the DNC. IN 2008, one Republican candidate really energized younger voters: Ron Paul. The Republican party treats him like a pariah. Yes, Paul is an anti-Semite whose economic ideas, if implemented, would lead to a second Great Depression or worse. But he’s certainly no crazier than most House Republicans. There’s got to be some way for the Republican party to tap into the energy and fundraising prowess of the Paultards.
Much has been made of the fact for the past week, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh dominated the air waves. This has been described (correctly) as a public relations fiasco for Republicans. Newt’s a relic from another era and the average Rush listener is in his 60s. What’s easy to forget is that when Rush first came on the scene, he was seen as a bit hip and edgy with his Pretenders’ theme song and what not. There was a whole rock n’ roll Republican thing going there for a while, with Bill Bennett’s supposed date with Janis Joplin and Lee Atwater’s blues stylings. It was a far cry from “Let the Eagle Soar.”
What I wonder is if there are a few sensible yet extreme (by current standards) positions Republicans could stake out to make themselves look less fossilized. The Democrats aren’t showing much interest in legalizing marijuana for example. Could Republicans support legalizing marijuana without pissing off social conservatives too much? There are probably hosts of other issues along these lines as well. I wonder if people like Haley Barbour are thinking about this sort of thing.
joe from Lowell
This is all great, but since when has the process of younger people becoming more conservative as they age ceased?
Is there any way to tell whether millennials’ support for Obama is related to their generation, or just their age?
DougJ
In terms of party ID, Republicans do best with people around age 40, believe it or not.
(link)
jenniebee
Not to get carried away, but this is how realignments happen.
All of which is, of course, good news for John McCain.
Anton Sirius
The devil weed? Of course not.
They’re fucked, in every sense except the pleasant one.
Mediocre Lawyer
I don’t know if Ron Paul is or isn’t an anti-Semite, but if the government had adopted his positions over the past 15 years (a) we wouldn’t have fought the war in Iraq, and (b) we probably wouldn’t have had the financial meltdown.
aimai
joe from lowell,
(I love all your comments, btw). I’m not sure that the notion that people become “more conservative” as they age really cuts against this notion that the milllenials potentially will end up democrats for life. The thing is that “conservative” as in the way people see things as they age isn’t identical to capital C conservative at all. In real life terms maybe it means harking back to the customs and mores and politics and aesthetics of your early life and preferring that to the new new thing. But in the long run, when millenials settle down, try to raise families, or get old enough to try to retire the “old thing” for which they become nostalgic will be a caring democratic president and administration who fought to get them national health care (I hope). Conservative will mean wanting to hang on to that.
Nate over at 538 and everybody else has been writing a lot about how really studying voter ID reveals that its not so much that people start liberal and get conservative it is that they identify with and vote for the electoral “winners” when they were young and impressionable. Kind of an electoral theory of imprinting.
As for why the republicans exiled the paultards and the dems embraced dean. Well–the dems had to be dragged kicking and screaming embrace Dean. But more to the point Dean was, in fact, eminently sane and reasonable. If the Republicans tried to give a similar kind of power to Ron Paul he’d blow it. He’d still have his core followers. But I don’t think he can expand much past that.
aimai
JGabriel
DougJ:
Probably not. The Dems might not show much interest in legalizing marijuana, but it wouldn’t piss them off if the Republicans did.
That’s the point – taking stands contrary to, and pissing off, the libs. Anything that doesn’t do that will be seen as a waste of time, or, worse, a compromise (shudder).
And the base won’t stand for that shit.
Which doesn’t leave the Republicans room for taking any stands that are even remotely sensible.
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eponymous coward
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
(wipes tears of laughter)
No, I’m pretty sure hating hippies and their affectations pretty much goes along with social conservatism, even if Trey Parker wants his porn and his pot.
Basically, the Republicans are screwed until a) enough of the old farts die that their death grip on the throat of the Republican Party can be loosened, b) the Democrats screw up enough that some sane Republicans will seem like a reasonable alternative, and c) someone less talented than Obama is at the helm of the Democratic Party.
If you want a model for this, consider that the Progressive Conservatives in Canada imploded in the early 90’s (going from a majority in Parliament to a grand total of TWO, yes, TWO MPs), and thus the right spent about 15 years on the outs, with their major representation being the
LoonieReform Party, before the Liberals fucked things up so badly with corruption that Stephen Harper got the premiership. How the Conservatives are doing over in Great Britain in the aftermath of Blair is also similar.As such, Hunstman going over to China to wait this one out is brilliant- he’ll look nice and bipartisan by the time 2016 rolls around and people are thinking “let’s have a bit of a change”.
steve s
Joe, if you would bother to read Ron Brownstein’s article, you would see that it addresses your question.
gbear
There are none. Obama’s kind of run the table on ‘sensible’ positions right now.
Although I wouldn’t mind if the republicans started kicking Obama in the butt to get rid of DADT before any more soldiers get booted out of the services. He’s turned into a bit of a weasle about the repeal.
PS; not that I’m saying all of Obama’s ideas are great, but if nothing else, they look ‘sensible’.
Dusty
Re the Dean-Paul issue, Dean’s platform wasn’t as out of line with the standard Democratic platform as Paul’s was. More lefty in some ways, sure, but, on a policy level, Dean wasn’t a huge shift for the Democratic Party. So the party could co-opt the organizing vision that Dean demonstrated in his campaign without having to either ignore his policies or make a big move to adopt them, potentially alienating the mainstream of the party. Paul’s success wasn’t just due to his skills as a campaigner; it was also due to his platform appealing to voters who weren’t happy with the GOP and they’re still not happy with it, even if everybody is Twittering now.
Dusty
I’m sure Obama would be thrilled to have Republicans kicking him in the butt to get rid of DADT. That’d give him political cover to do what he seems to want to do.
DougJ
That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.
jenniebee
OT, but in apology for last night’s link, here’s something which is also appalling, but with a few, ahem, redeeming qualities.
Dennis-SGMM
@joe from Lowell:
It would only be a problem for Democrats if people grew batshit-insane as they aged.
The Republicans have moved so far to the right that an old-school conservative like Richard Nixon or even one like Barry Goldwater would no longer be welcomed in the party.
tess
Does the percentage of Millennial voters come close to comparing to the percentage of Boomer voters in those years? I’m just curious, because one would think the number of Boomers voting would grow as they aged.
ed
The anti-gay rhetoric comes across as bigotry to our ears.
Quite possibly because it is bigotry, plain and simple. That could be it.
plasticgoat
The Republican party has already drawn their line in the sand. They are the social conservatives. They will abandon their base, never.
DougJ
Do you have much contact with the elderly?
MBunge
“What’s easy to forget is that when Rush first came on the scene, he was seen as a bit hip and edgy with his Pretenders’ theme song and what not.”
A big part of Rush’s success was his persona of being about 15% hipper and more “with it” than cloth coat, American Gothic conservatives. It made him seem fresh and young to right-wingers and it made him seem less threatening to everybody else. It’s impossible to maintain that shtick as you get older and begin to look and sound like Mr. Potter from “It’s A Wonderful Life”.
Mike
gbear
@DougJ:
Yeah, but I can’t imagine that they’d want to go there. The base would freak, and almost every republican left in the house and senate is part of the base. They’re incapable of going there.
DougJ
I think that’s probably true. But I wonder if the smarter ones are at least thinking about it.
magisterludi
Rush was on the air idly musing that maybe the GOP should support the legalization of pot in CA, as they had already lost the state. He rambled about how all the pot smokers are already there AND that all the pot smokers would flock there.
Those tokers can pull off quite the trick, can’t they?
jrosen
Whatever you want to call today’s Republican base, conservative it is NOT. And never has been…
The radical reactionary and paranoid-style themes (make Hofstader’s book required reading again!) of the last 40+ years have been present ever since the floor response to Barry Goldwater’s “extremism in defense of liberty” moment at the Republican convention in 1964 ( am old enough to have seen it on TV and will never forget the eruption of hatred that ensued). They were a constant underlying motif of the Nixon years (sometimes explicit, especially in reaction to the Kent State tragedy) and became louder under Reagan. Certainly they came to almost full fruit through the Bush-Cheney regime (full fruit would be the fascism carrying the cross and wrapped in the flag) and I hope showed enough of the Millenials what they really meant to scar their memories well past the time I am gone, for the sake of my almost 2 grand-daughter at the very least.
Somebody will have to keep a beady eye on the Democrats (that is, human) natural propensity toward the corruption inevitable in one-party domination, whatever the party. Still, the Democrats are the party of Will Rogers, so maybe that will be OK too.
Dennis-SGMM
@DougJ:
Only delivering for Meals on Wheels a couple of days a week. I wasn’t talking about the truly aged, I was talking about that part of the population who used to fall under Churchill’s “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
JGabriel
That’s horrifying. It’s like some bastard mix of disco, polka, Abba, and softcore.
And yet, somehow, I can’t tear my eyes away – I think it must be the breasts.
.
eponymous coward
I’m sure that would be lovely, but again, you have far too many Republican higher-ups who’ve spent their careers hating Teh Gay. This simply isn’t going to fly, having them do a 180 on the issue in too short a time.
The Republicans right now are captives of their crazy base, who are in part enraged by the fact that despite having de facto control of all three branches of the federal government from 2001-2007, all they got out of it was pandering to the banksters and bombing the Islamofascist hordes: no abortion bans, no drowning the government in a bathtub and rounding up the NEA into concentration camps. They expected the Republic of Gilead and ended up with Barack Hussein Bin-Laden palling around with abortionists and terrorists, as far as they are concerned. So they’re quite irrational at this point, and you can’t expect them to snap out of it for some time.
Incertus
@joe from Lowell: Is it that people become more conservative or that the world becomes more progressive and they don’t adapt to it? Personally, I’m the opposite–I was hyper-conservative when I was young and am practically a commie now, but I’ve also made it a point to try to adapt and stay flexible in my thinking.
wasabi gasp
The youngins have the best weed connections, so I don’t see legalization making all that much difference in their lives. But, the realization that many may find themselves still smoking doobs behind their parent’s garage long after graduation, due to the republican-bogarted economy, is a total bummer, dude.
JGabriel
@joe from Lowell:
I don’t know when, but it has stopped, or maybe we’re in a temporary reverse cycle. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who tell me they find themselves growing surprisingly more lefty, or even radical, as they get older.
I suspect it’s due to a lot of boomers who voted for Reagan hitting retirement age and finally admitting to themselves that they’re never gonna be rich.
.
vishnu schizt
Well my theory of young people voting republican boils down to identity politics. Coming of age in the late 80’s and early 90’s I saw a lot of my friends vote republican, because frankly at that time two dynamics were working:
1. The republicans were seen as the rebels, Rush was on the scene. That appealed to young males cause it helped them get laid.
2. Republicans were seen as the party of money, that appealed to young males cause it helped them get laid.
3. For young females refer to items 1 and 2.
At 21 or 22 if a single male is doing anything that in some way is not related to helping him get laid that thing is:
1. Way fun and he and his buddies have a great time doing it.
2. Putting money in his pocket (so he can get laid).
3. He has no other choice.
So now, the republitards are so out that saying you are a republican to a young female is the equivalent of saying “hey baby, I’m an uptight schmuck, premature ejaculator, with acne and halitosis, wanna go out?” You get my drift.
I don’t see anyway for the republitards to make themselves “cool” in the near future so frankly they are dead.
I think that is what the young person was really saying in the original post. Shorter young person:
“Republicans are fuckin’ lame”
JGabriel
Given that most of the sixties were over 40 years ago, many of the younger people are now smoking doobs with their grandparents.
.
Dennis-SGMM
@vishnu schizt:
Michele Bachman could get a tramp stamp. That would be cool.
JGabriel
vishnu schizt:
Really? Chicks were turned on by Dittoheads?
Cause, you know, that’s not really the way I remember it. But most of the women I dated were commie pinkos like me, so I suppose my sample is skewed.
.
wasabi gasp
@JGabriel: I’m a little jealous and weirded out at the same time.
DougJ
Okay, I see.
DougJ
There you go. And maybe Eric Cantor could get a Tupac “Thug Life” tat on one of his guns.
Dennis-SGMM
@DougJ:
A really intense remix of the Rapping Rove video would probably put them in solid with the young folks.
Brick Oven Bill
The Democratic Party elected Nancy Pelosi to be their leader. Therefore, the Democratic Party is not cool. This is why the most intelligent and coolest young people are the ones at the tea parties. The ones there are the ones with the greatest spatial situational awareness.
The self-described member of the ‘younger generation’ in the article will surely turn to the wisdom of the Founding when he is presented the bill for all of this ‘economic stimulus’ which is going to fund Medicaid and school programs.
He will not turn to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or a teleprompter. He will turn to timeless principles of good and limited government.
JL
Dwight’s daughter campaigning for Obama was a sign that the party has moved to far to the right. The repubs are more interested in appealing to emotion rather than intelligence.
I still don’t understand how preaching tax cuts for rich and let the poor fend for themselves, is taking the moral high ground.
They are more interested in the unborn rather than the born.
DougJ
You can do better. That’s phoning-it-in style spoofery.
John Hamilton Farr
So too, as you may or may not know, depending on your age, are sex, drugs, and rock & roll. :-)
DougJ
You know I love you Brick Oven Bob, but something like this would be better:
Oh, and how does the esteemed Mr. Brownstein account for the fact that young people are more likely to be pro-life? Or the fact that the average age of a Tea Party goer was 23? Or Republican up-and-comer Marco Rubio?
To a man with a liberal bias — like Brownstein — everything is an advantage for Democrats. We’ll see who has the advantage when Mike Huckabee becomes president in 2012.
NCReggie
@ Brick oven Bill- As a 24 year old, I can reasonably say that the percentage of young folks at the tea parties were minimal or they were dragged by there by that hot chick in the college republicans who kinda reminds you of ann coulter only with the shape of a real woman. And spatial situational awareness? Are we all fuckin pilots now? “I’m so fly that my spatial situational awareness is off the chain bro!” To say that my gen is gonna to the values of the founding (whatever creepy religous associative overtones that smacks of) is kinda plausible, but it won’t be the republicans lead by oompa loompa lookin mofos like John Boehner, Eric “oops i did it again” Cantor or “Pull and Pray abstinence barbie” Bristol Palin is not gonna get ya there. BTW kicking the moderates out and goin’ full on libertarian ain’t gonna cut it either.
JGabriel
@Brick Oven Bill:
Don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, BOB, but the Dems have this new leader, a kinda president-like guy called “Obama”. Anyway, the kidz seem to think he’s pretty cool.
You might wanna look into it, yo’.
.
FormerSwingVoter
In all these discussions about the fall of the Republican Party, I’m a bit surprised no one mentions their refusal to argue against actual Democratic positions. They keep saying things like:
“Any law or spending ever is socialism!”
“Gay marriage would force your church to condone it and your schools to teach it!”
“Global warming is a hoax! All the scientists are wrong for… reasons!”
“Governments hiring people won’t create jobs!”
It’s crazy. In order for a strawman argument to catch on, it needs to at least sound reasonable, doesn’t it? Instead, they literally make things up that even a cursory Google search would prove wrong (or even basic logic… hiring people doesn’t create jobs? wtf?).
I think this was most apparent during the debates. The knock on McCain was that he was ill-tempered and unpredictable, and this seemed to at least somewhat match his actual behavior. The knock on Obama was that he was a socialist muslim nazi terrorist antichrist who wanted to destroy America for no reason, and instead he came off as a normal and reasonable human being.
Until Republicans can bring themselves to argue against an actual caricature of the Democratic position, instead of an outright hallucination, they will remain in the wilderness.
NCReggie
Oh and I guarantee a soft form of democratic socialism in the next 30 to 40 years. It always amuses me when conservatives think that just because young people have no faith in social security we don’t want it. We want it for ourselves and think that its increasingly unlikely we’ll ever see the money we pay into it because of ‘gasp’ excessive government raiding of the social security fund. Personally I blame my mom.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
“Whoa, dude, I think I took the brown acid by mistake …”
.
Dennis-SGMM
@DougJ:
Not every post can rise to the artistic heights of nude-lesbian-oil-shale wrestling.
Mark S.
@eponymous coward:
Great handle!
@Incertus:
I also had a conservative phase when I was younger that ended with the Iraq War. While I’ve certainly become more progressive, the other dynamic is that our country is having debates that should have been resolved decades ago. Actually, in the case of torture, it should have been resolved in 18th century.
Every other industrialized nation has a national health care system, but this is a radical idea here. Progressive taxation and spending on social services are not equated with Marxism in sane countries. These are issues that have been largely resolved in other countries, but not here.
Brick Oven Bill
Harry Reid is a better Democratic leader, and he is the elected leader of the Senate. It is not like Harry’s kids openly operate as a bunch of lobbyists, after all. Harry Reid is much cooler than Nancy Pelosi, and a better face for the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party’s policy is to flood the labor market and lower domestic wages. They also have reduced tariffs to next to nothing, sending America’s industrial base, and the jobs that it represents, overseas. Lowering the cost of labor concentrates wealth. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Diane Feinstein, The Clintons, Barbara Boxer, and that Senator from West Virginia are rich people.
You can tell the power of political movements by the quality of the women who attend the events. This is why I am convinced that this whole fundamentalist Constitutional push has legs.
Dennis-SGMM
Serial sidereal spiritual spatial awareness, man.
Waingro
Yep. They’re going to be the generation to find out that 401k’s are basically bullshit and not nearly enough to retire on.
The Horatio Alger myth is what enables the ruling class to enact plutocratic policies without much protest, since too many Americans foolishly think they’ll be the rich ones. I’m curious to see if the myth survives this recession. I’m guessing ‘yes’, since even the Great Depression wasn’t enough to strangle that fucker.
Brick Oven Bill
Spatial awareness alludes to the ability of some to anticipate future events, based on current trends and facts, not illegal drugs.
President Obama cannot articulate thoughts without a teleprompter, JGabriel. I judge the President to be largely image, and the beneficiary of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
The first thing he did was raise federal taxes on cigarettes, a violation of his campaign promise. Nobody called him on this, or a large number of other violations of trust.
In time, people will catch on. For now, there are some very good looking women attending these Constitution events.
JGabriel
@Brick Oven Bill:
Shit, my irony meter just exploded.
.
Mark S.
@Brick Oven Bill:
Wow, Bill, even by your standards, that made no fucking sense.
vishnu schizt
@Brick Oven Bill: Brick, you’re not on your game today dude, ride this one out. We all saw the pictures from the tea parties. Ugly trailer housewives, marginal dairy queen clerks, 19 year old rural home schoolers and fat old women would send Ron Jeremy running for cover. Here’s your challenge: Show us the pictures of all these hot women at tea parties dude. I’d love to see them (Ms. California doesn’t count).
JGabriel
Waingro:
True, but it did put it in a coma for about 50 years, 1929-1979. Or maybe people still thought they’d become rich, but had enough sense to vote for more progessive policies, just in case.
.
JGabriel
Brick Oven Bill:
Are you really so stupid that you don’t realize how loaded that paragraph is with racist code rhetoric?
.
Brick Oven Bill
DougJ not that long ago posted a graph tracking wealth concentration in America. This wealth concentration graph is a mirror image of the reduction of tariffs graph. It all started shortly after World War 2 and culminated with NAFTA. The net result has been a concentration of power among the political class.
Where the political class would like to go, the Constitution cannot follow. This class of people is addicted to power and control. This is why Citizens are organizing around Constitution-based groups. They cherish and want to pass along the gift of self-government.
I will now begin my search for attractive 912 girls.
Svensker
@JGabriel:
You got that right.
Started out as an anarchist, became a radical libertarian, then a libertarian, then a Repuke. The Iraq War woke me up (Cinderella is OLD) and I became a lib. Now I’m practically a commie, thanks to George Bush and His Merry Band of Idiots.
DougJ
Someone call the authorities.
bago
Shorter BoB: Positions of Seniorty are filled with olde! Spatial, man.
bago
That should read olds. Damn autocorrect needs more leet.
Brick Oven Bill
Exhibit ‘A’: ‘Lexi’. Do your own searching for more.
JC
Calling Ron Paul an anti-Semite is defamation. You have no proof to back that up other than the fact that he doesn’t kowtow to radical Israeli lobbies like AIPAC. You need to retract the BS or back it up with a source. Coward.
Andy K
@Brick Oven Bill:
If I were you, I’d shoot for Bonita or Sherri. Something tells me they’d be more open to men whose wardrobes are heavy on Zubaz. And you’d have back-up when you run out of inhaler cartridges at the next Tea Party.
ksec
Obama is fast proving Hillary was the correct pick.
His descent into insanity will continue unless we set him straight
bago
They have a word to describe the space in which things happen over time. Can you think of this adjective?
Christine
You said Ron Paul is an anti-Semite. I’ve never seen or heard any remarks to that effect – is there a quote from him or position he’s taken that I’m not aware of?
Mike in NC
You’re joking, correct? Much more likely that they’d try to bring back Prohibition. That’s how they tick.
LeaningTowardUndecided
BoB:
Predicting, prognosticating, forecasting, modeling, divining, astrological charting and plain old guessing fit your definition. Spatial awareness does not fit your definition. It is simply an awareness of your location in relationship to other objects in three dimensions. Spatial situational awareness is gobbledygook that has no definition.
Credibility, BoB, credibility. Only in conservative circles is making shit up considered a convincing argument.
Anton Sirius
@Dennis-SGMM:
Palin/Bachmann 2012: Revenge of the Cougars
Napoleon
@joe from Lowell:
There is no factual support for that proposition, which is nothing more then an old wife’s tale. Whatever voting pattern someone establishes in their early 20’s will almost certainly stick with them there entire life. There is a lot of evidence for this proposition.
freelancer
Just now, via Sully, from urban-suburban Michael “Wiza-wam-wam-WOZZLE” Steele:
Gay marriage makes small-business owners cry.
Anton Sirius
@Brick Oven Bill:
I can only assume that by ‘quality’ you’re referring to the width of their hips.
Napoleon
@DougJ:
The way you phrase this is technically inaccurate. The voting pattern is dependent on when they were born, not what age they happen to be at the time you are determining how that cohort votes. I am 48 and my entire life my cohort has voted more for Republicans then Democrats, starting with giving Reagan a strong majority. Over my voting life my cohort has not noticeably voted more conservative or liberal then it did in 1980. So today when 48 year olds vote Republican, it is not because they are 48, but because they were born in 1961. In 2029 when 68 year olds likey vote for more Republicans then Dems it is not because they are 68, but because they were born in 1961.
That is why the Republicans are in such a hole. The demographic cohort born in the late 70’s and 80’s will move though the demographic body politic like a rat through a snake, and at every step of the way its the Republicans that will get indigestion from it.
SGEW
Yes, which is why the anti-meat and fur movement (“We Have Hot Naked Activists!”) is such a powerful player in government.
Anton Sirius
@Brick Oven Bill:
Actually, BOB, Lexi would be Exhibit I, since she’s the ninth of 10 women on that page. I can’t help but notice you didn’t see fit to mention Exhibit C, ‘Lisa’, or Exhibit H, ‘Bonita’.
Napoleon
@tess:
If you mean do they vote in the same percentage, no, but they vote at a higher percentage then past young cohorts. But the Millennials in just raw numbers of people are as numerous as the baby boomers, with demographic cohorts in between having a lot less people, so that as the Mellennials get older and vote at higher percentages they will represent a voting block juggernaut.
Anton Sirius
@Christine:
The editors of his newsletter trafficked in some nasty shit for a while. Nothing under his byline, so the question is how “hands off” he was in running it.
Personally I don’t think he’s anti-Semitic, just naive when it comes to trusting people.
DougJ
In terms of party ID, the gap between Democrats and Republicans is smallest among those currently aged 40 or so.
Christine
@Anton Sirius
Gotcha. I think the anti-Semite label gets thrown around a lot when someone opposes Israel’s policies and hoped that wasn’t why he was called (unfairly, IMHO) by that very electric label.
Napoleon
@DougJ:
Around 25 – 29 years ago the strongest Republican voting cohort was those around 20. Guess what, its the same group of people that show the most affinity to the Republican party.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/10/14/weekinreview/15kirk_graphic.ready.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_01/012847.php#more
Barry Goldwater's Neighbor's Ghost
My advice to Republicans on how they could update their positions by about a hundred years:
1) Don’t describe gay bashing activities (e.g. criminalizing of homosexuality, prohibiting equality in marriage) as religion-based initiatives; characterize it as rules against “people who exhibit insufficient gender diversity in the choice of sex partners”. The young people like diversity, so they will like that.
2) Instead of talking about all the wars you want to start, refer to it as “partying down” or “rocking out,” e.g. “let’s party down in Baghdad with the military next summer” or “let’s rock out with some carpet bombing in Afghanistan.” Young kids these days love “rocking out” and “partying down” according to my nephew, Chad. He’s only 53, so he’s definitely in touch with how the young people think.
3) Never, ever, be caught alone in a room naked with your underage page (or in an airport bathroom with a hot young dude). And if you are, tell the press you were just discussing teabag parties because nothing is more innocent than teabags. In fact, make teabagging a central point of your communications strategy because it sounds innocent.
4) Stop referring to black people as n******. They prefer to be called “colored.” And while you’re at it, Mexican people prefer to be called “Spanish” or “Latin.” I know the second term has Catholic undertones and sounds really intellectual, but trust me, as long as you aren’t throwing the term around loosely on the 17th at the Country Club, it’ll be a big hit.
5) Use only rope made of sustainable natural fibers, such as hemp, at lynchings. No more ropes based on petroleum by-products, and I don’t care how badly this pisses off the oil industry.
Wile E. Quixote
@FormerSwingVoter
I think with the Republicans it’s more like.
Maus
Yeah, republicans sure have a better grasp on economics and deficit spending. There’s a lot of specious reasoning involved here.
BC
The thing to remember about those “Reagan Democrats” – this was identity politics at its finest. The Reagan Democrats were people nominally Democratic but enraged by the civil rights movement and affirmative action, busing, etc. Future historians will not hesitate to call it racial baiting. Reagan really played the “race card,” which is why it’s ironic when Republicans accuse Obama of that. The only reason there was a conservative movement in this country was backlash to civil rights – the white racists became conservative because they couldn’t stomach the blacks and the browns being given equal rights. Now they’re doing the same to the gays.
Calouste
@freelancer:
Of course Steele doesn’t argue how the same thing somehow doesn’t apply to people getting opposite-sex married or having children.
But that’s logic, and we know the wingnut talking points anti-logic, and they must be kept apart lest their collision destroys the
universeGOP.WereBear
The “old = cranky and clueless” equation is grounded in how gracefully a person is prepared to age.
The inevitable physical attributes of aging (ranging from reading glasses to serious restrictions on activities) is coped with in direct correlation to how steeped in denial a person is prepared to be.
Either they accept that they have to change their lifestyle and come up with new hobbies and pursuits, or they deny it, come up with excuses why they don’t do things they used to enjoy, and blame external forces for why they aren’t doing/enjoying those things.
Ultimately, you wind up with someone vegetating in a recliner and railing against whoever Fox tells them is responsible for all their woes.
Which is kinda depressing in terms of numbers, but certainly not inevitable on an individual basis.
someguy
Amazing how much of the Republicans’ current agenda – from military and economic policy, to education policy, is probably based on plain old fashioned racism. Pro war on brown people (squandering disproportionately the lives of minority troops), anti welfare, against the extension of unemployment benefits (which disproportionately hurts minorities) and against affirmative action. I suspect that they adopted a pro gay bashing plank mainly because gay rights sounds too much like ‘civil rights,’ and we can’t have that.
On the other hand, we should thank them. The Reagan Democrats – now Republicans and probably most of the Rump Republican Party other than Christers – are better off out of the Democratic Party. Seriously – you should send the corpses of Reagan and Nixon thank you cards.
Dave_Violence
You folks don’t know what you’re talking about. First of all, someone born in 2002 won’t be able to vote for Obama when they’re 18 unless the Constitution is amended… As for how “young people” vote goes, it all depends on what appeals to “those people.” The “young people” of today, talking about Americans, have parents who are, as a SWAG, in the age demographic of 22-32 – which is about where people should be having kids, as 22 is how old college grads are and 32 is about the last year of risk-free pregnancy for women. So… 19 years from now, hey! Wait a minute, someone born in 1983 is 26 right now and they could likely have kids, so parents and kids are in the same generation… dang, mind-blowing. Anyway, kids will usually grow up with their parents’ politics. Thusly, the 40-year old, who voted for Obama, right?, with the 15-year old kid will likely see two similar votes cast in the next election.
OR… the kids might rebel (kids do that, don’t they?) and go against the grain. You never know. Why, I bet there’s a few folks out there in their mid-40s who grew up in liberal households who voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 because they didn’t buy the commie, hippie talk of the Democrats.
Who knows what might happen in the next three years? That will likely decide how the vote goes.
Dave_Violence
Yes, Condolezza Rice certainly fit into their plan. You’re an idiot, someguy.
Little Dreamer
More and more these days, I find writers who don’t know what a verb is. Where is the verb in this sentence? Is it there and I’m just getting senile, or is it missing, as I predict?
Little Dreamer
Well, Sarah Palin wasn’t a fossil, but, John McCain sure looked like he was prehistoric.
DougJ
@Napoleon
Okay, I see your point.
JGabriel
@Little Dreamer: The verb in that sentence is “matters”.
Also, words sometimes get left out of sentences by people who think faster than they type. That happens to me pretty frequently, as I’m a rather slow typist. It’s not always a matter of grammatical ignorance.
Little Dreamer
@JGabriel:
I just noticed that, hmmmm, I didn’t see it earlier. It must be that I had just woken from a long nap. I honestly read it several times and could not find the verb – I must be getting senile.
Andy K
@Little Dreamer:
I don’t know if the new punctuation is proper- that is, I don’t know if hyphens or parentheses are more or less appropriate than commas- but any of the three would have gone a long way to clarifying the verb.
wayne fazio
Force is the enemy of freedom.
bill
“What I wonder is if there are a few sensible yet extreme (by current standards) positions Republicans could stake out to make themselves look less fossilized…… Could Republicans support legalizing marijuana without pissing off social conservatives too much?”
Impossible, the Republican party has made up its mind about every issue in the world. They already have a position and they are sticking with it darn it!
But here is an issue for you. Every gun leaves a signature on bullets fired from it, much like a fingerprint, it is a one of a kind unique identifier. If all guns sold in the US required their unique barrel markings on bullets be recorded and archived before the guns were sold, we could easily identify what guns were used in homicides. In addition, bullets can also be given unique identifiers so you could also know where bullets were sold and who bullets were sold to. It would be a big help for police and victims of crimes and would not infringe on people’s right to bear arms. Do you think the GOP would go for something like this? Heck no.
Comrade Kevin
Good luck with that.
Josh Hueco
I will now begin my search for attractive 9 to 12 year-old girls.
Fix’d for BOB
pdbuttons
tea parties are pain
for left of center membranes
a storm is coming
DPirate
The Republican Party might do alright if they, like, believed in the republic or something…