Believe it or not, over the past few years, history literally repeated itself. And it wasn’t the first time, either. Every 20 years or so, another new generation of voters comes of age over a 4-6 year period. And the Millennial generation was a new breed of cat. They were the first truly internet and digital proficient generation. They were also more liberal, more progressive, more tolerant, and more morally and socially conscious.
From day one, it was apparent that the GOP had no time for a bunch of snot nosed brats. They can almost be forgiven for their short sighted stupidity for one reason. Unlike today, the GOP’s vaunted base of a mix of bedsheet banditos, goose steppers, lower income scared whiter people, and refried Jesus wheezers were 20 years younger, at their zenith. The GOP was in its delusional endless summer, nobody would ever get old. They didn’t need the Millennials, so why bother to court them and make concessions?
The Democrats on the other hand loved them. They actively courted them, made them feel welcome, and since there were younger Democratic Representatives and even Senators than most of the GOP, they started their outreach on digital media. Then candidate Barack Obama sealed the deal in 2008, when his vaunted social media operation blew everybody else out of the water. And today the Millennials are a solid part of the progressive Democratic base.
And now, because tempus does fugit, it’s time for another generation of voters, Generation-Z. The Parkland Kids y started in 2018 when they became the vanguard of the generation by storming into public prominence following the MSD high school massacre. They were motivated by gun control, and they used social media to go national. And they turfed out some 31 GOP incumbents with A or A+ NRA ratings.
And the Democrats were ready for them. After taking control, the Pelosi led House quickly passed bills calling for universal background checks, and an assault weapon ban, putting the pressure on the GOP controlled Senate, and in doing so, pointing their new weapon right at Mitch McConnell and the GOP Senate in 2020. And when the Democrats flipped the Senate in 2020, Biden got them the most comprehensive gun reform legislation in more than a generation. Promises made, promises kept.
This time, there is no excuse for the GOP’s shortsighted stupidity. In 2004, their base was in its prime. Today, they’re dying off like roses in the November frost. And they’re nob bringing in many new acolytes. And they permanently pissed away the last generation of new voters who could have recharged their batteries. And what are they doing with Gen Z? Well, let’s put it this way. According to Gen Z activists, they’re picking up rumblings that the official GOP response to their unwanted presence is to try to move to remove polling places from college and university campuses, to make it more difficult for Gen Z voters to cast their ballot, and trying to pass a law that would raise the legal voting age from 19-21. If this is GOP outreach, I don’t even want to see what outright rejection looks like.
But here’s where the rubber really meets the road, and why the Republicans are boned. Sideways. Starting with 2018, Gen Z fueled 18-29 voters have turned out in record numbers each cycle, one thing that is skewing the polls, since most pollsters ignore them for their historic low turnout. And each time, they’re breaking for Democrats by a 2-1 margin. And it isn’t just young white liberals. In 2022, post election review shows that 19-29 Hispanic Males voted for the Democrats by a 68% rate. And African American males voted for the Democrats at a 58% clip. These aren’t small movements, these are the kinds of numbers that can easily change races, especially in college towns which trend liberal. But these kinds of numbers can also change statewide races by overwhelming GOP dominated cow county votes.
And I’ll close with this. According to Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member to be elected to the US House, and the one who related the GOP’s plans to quash Gen Z voters, almost half of Gen Z voters won’t come of age to vote until the 2024 election cycle. And with the GOP embarking on a full blown civil war, I don’t see the GOP doing anything to attract them. The math is simple. Every year about 2 million teens turn 18 and are eligible to vote. Which means in a 6 year generational cycle there are some 12 million new voters. Quite a haul if the Democrats just maintain their messaging discipline, and follow through whenever possible on their promises.
All of which begs a relevant question: why in the name of sleeping Cthulhu did the GOP do this?! Here is my theory/suspicion on that: MAGA or Never Trumper, every Republican out there truly thought, at one point or another, that we’d be in a dictatorship by now. They likely would use another term–like, say, “permanent Republican majority”–but that’s what they craved. But they blew it, forgot you needed buy-ins from more than the usual suspects. Christ, Reagan’s people understood THAT much, which is why we got Reagan Democrats once upon a time.
Now they’re on the back foot, with only a possible narrow majority in the House to show for their myopia. It won’t get better anytime soon for them.
Trumpler helped them go to sleep, comfy in their imaginary dictatorship, because he got away with so much dictatorial shit for all his years in power. Including 2 failed impeachments, either of which should have seen him turfed out of the White House in disgrace. Moscow Mitch’s grip on the Senate was absolute enough that those attempts to hold Trump accountable failed, so the MAGAts could bask in a golden future just over the near horizon, wherein they had total power over a cringing, weak-kneed populace. They’d not only own the detested Libs, they’d literally lock ’em up. Sadly for them, their Fascist fantasies were just that: daydreams. The reality is that Americans aren’t Fascists, because they’re not stupid.
Indeed, Jarvis, I am reminded of a similar complacency that stole over Dems in the post-Watergate era as described by Harlan Ellison in “Songs The Sixties Sang”. Then, as now, the complacent slept one too many years and watched in horror as it cost them.