The Gray Champion is something I keep coming back to, and at root its just a fun guessing game.  

I believe there will be one President in between Trump and the first Millennial President, that person most likely being the Gray Champion.

My top 5:

1. Michael Bloomberg
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Joe Biden
4. Mitt Romney
5. Elizabeth Warren

Can I change my username to "Wayfarer"? Please.

Stemming from Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" and the idea that smaller cohorts within a larger age group can have outsized control/impact, I applied this to the major generations and think there is something to it (at least for the Boomers and Millenials).  

The eye-popping fact that led me to this thinking:  every American President, except for Obama, since 1992 was born in 1946.


I would define the Control Cohort as the earliest core group within a generation.  This group gets outsize control due to the increased advantages they get from entering the market as the last generation is leaving and so more openings are available, and how those benefits over a life compound.  Other recurrences of this would be the Robber Barons during the Gilded Age and Steve Jobs / Bill Gates Silicon Valley giants.

For the Boomers this would be 1946-1949. For the Millennials 1984-1987.  The first year of the generation seems to have the most clearly dominant actors of any year of the generation.

Boomer evidence-nearly every major political actor of the generation:

1946-Bill Clinton/ George W. Bush/Donald Trump
         
1947-Hillary Clinton/ Mitt Romney/Dan Quayle/Arnold Schwartzenneger

1948-Al Gore/ Howard Dean

1949-John Boehner/ Elizabeth Warren

Early Millennial Evidence (outside of politics mainly):

1984-Lebron James, Mark Zuckerberg, Ezra Klein, Connor Lamb, Ben Shapiro


How is this useful?  I would predict the first Millennial President would be born in 1984 and will likely take office by 2028 so Connor Lamb 2028?  Shapiro?

And if a Boomer wins in 2020 this would give Warren the edge.

Let me know what you think and list any others you find that should be included.

I've been working on the various strands of this for several years now, and a lot of the inspiration for this Political Cycle Theory comes from this Vox Article about political realignments. The research-based model it puts forth shows that in the entirety of American history the "political clock" has always moved clockwise.  

Here's my simplification of the model:



Also want to copy over the established "party eras" in American history as they are in-line with this:

Four Major Eras of American Political Parties

• Era of the Democrats 1800-1860. Federalist disappeared by 1816. ...
  
• Era of the Republicans 1860-1932. Lincoln helped the Republicans jump from 3rd party to major party.
  
• Return of the Democrats 1932-1968. Great depression reached the Republicans Party.
  
• The Start of a New Era 1968-Present.
  

I don't really see "Homeland" or "New Adaptive" sticking as the official name for the next Artist generation.  Best I've heard it called is "iGen", but what do y'all think?

We know that civic generations should be preoccupied with masculinity and have a disdain for female influence in politics. Do you see any signs this is happening? I don't

There are signs that millennials are more in favour in some aspects of traditional masculinity. More guys wear beards than it used to be the case in early 2000s. There have been some movies where tough men are portrayed in positive light rather than as outcasts and bandits. But in general, feminism is stronger than ever. Furthermore, millennial men are often stereotyped as "snowflakes". It's the ladies who flex their biceps on Instagram!

I suspect the 2030s won't be nearly as male-fixated as the previous 1T was. It could even be a feminist-oriented decade. Then, the 2T would be a rebellion against millennial mother figures rather than dads as the previous time.

Apparently Trump has more flunkies (a nasty way of looking at it, but the GOP is an authoritarian cadre party; cadre parties have flunkies and not independent actors) in the Senate, but he has lost the House. A bunch of states have ditched Republican governors from the Tea Party era.

Effects on the presidential election: Republicans will have no help from Democratic Governors in some states that Trump won in 2016. Trump will have to win fair and square, and if his approval levels result in poor electoral numbers, he will not win.

Only eleven Democrats will be up for re-election in 2020 in the Senate, and only two will be in a state that Donald Trump won in 2016. Doug Jones, the incumbent Senator from Alabama, won under freakish circumstances unlikely to be repeated. The other incumbent Senator running for re-election in a state that Trump won in 2016 will be Gary Peters in Michigan -- and he won against the 2014 Republican wave, which says more about Michigan. On the other side, Susan Collins (R, Maine) has probably doomed her Senate career in a state that looks hostile to Trump, and Corey Gardner (R, Colorado) is in a state hostile to Trump after having barely won in a wave year. Also, Arizona has an appointed Senator... appointed incumbents tend to have trouble.

There will be relatively few gubernatorial races -- eleven.

The Presidential election will be all up to Donald Trump. Will he moderate? Will he compromise? I doubt it. We know his personality, and basic personalities  rarely change at his age except as the result of dementia. I have never seen dementia make any person more pleasant to be around.

Hi, I propose following theory for this current Fourth Turning we're in:

Regeneracy began almost immediately with TARP and stimulus bills. There were a number of programs from the FED and federal government to 1. arrest the credit crisis and 2. jump-start the faltering economy. We now know this was a lot faster and more successful than post 1929. Instead of a 3 year free-fall before FDR did "something" in the Great Depression, we arrested the fall in asset prices and GDP within about a year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average made new highs 5 years after the peak compared to 25 years before. UE fell to new lows within 8 years. Thus, economy repaired quickly.

However, politically the divisions and value wars continued unabated. Progressives vs. conservatives and also a new and growing group of people who are the losers from the Great De-industrialization in America. The latter forming a new coalition with the conservatives, creating the New Deal Coalition of our current Fourth Turning. We may call it the New Deplorables Coalition. They have been uniting behind President Trump. He is the Grey Champion leading us through the Fourth Turning. 

It seems to me that the upcoming Midterm elections actually are the climactic battle between the two value regimes in America. After this we have a quick path to the resolution (a large variety of domestic changes and international trade pacts, re-establishing the industrial core of our economy).

Can anyone guess the generations of the characters in the following films?

Lady Bird (2017)

Mid90s (2018)

Dazed and Confused (1993)

American Graffiti (1973)

It (2017)

I am 18. I belong to the massacre generation.

Quote:By Julia Savoca Gibson
Julia Savoca Gibson is a freshman at the College of William & Mary who plans to study history, film and the media. She is from Richmond.

November 1
It was last Saturday when it hit me that my entire life has been framed by violence.

I don’t remember being born on Jan. 28, 2000, and I don’t remember being a year and a half old when 9/11 happened. I don’t remember the panic of my mother as she stepped outside our house in Washington and smelled the smoke of the burning Pentagon. I don’t remember her knowing I would grow up in a changed world.

But I remember other things. I remember being 7 years old and seeing adults who were sad, angry, shocked after something terrible happened at Virginia Tech. I remember not knowing why. I remember the lockdown drills at my elementary school, the helpful signs in every classroom telling us where to hide in case of a “Code Blue,” which meant active shooter. (I remember we were told that having all the kids in one corner, a misguided protocol no longer followed, was the best means of protection.)

I remember being in seventh grade, and I remember my teacher looking up from her computer, pale, and running out of the room without a word during a quiz. I remember her walking back in, tears streaking her face, as she told us there had been a shooting in Newtown, Conn., where her grandchildren lived. I remember her telling us they were all right, and I remember thinking of my little brother in his second-grade classroom and feeling my stomach churn.

I remember walking into my high school the day after the Orlando nightclub shooting and seeing one of my gay friends sitting limply in a chair, eyes hollow. I remember sobbing. Often, I remember sobbing. I remember friends’ tears a year later, after the shooting in Las Vegas, and I remember feeling angry that I wasn’t crying. I remember Parkland the most clearly. I remember the silence. No one talked about it the morning after. No teachers mentioned it. I remember bringing it up at lunch but receiving only passing responses. I remember talking to my friend Max about how odd it was that no one said anything. I remember him gathering our friends to organize a walkout. I remember walking out, and I remember the silence of the crowd of students standing outside in the March cold. I remember the crackle of the megaphone we used as we read one name of one victim every minute. I remember those 17 minutes. I remember marching, once, then twice, and again and again.

I remember going with two friends last Friday to a Shabbat service in the spare room of a local Methodist church, sponsored by my college’s Jewish organization Hillel. I remember my friend Lucy leading the prayers, with her singing and playing guitar, and I remember my valiant attempts to sing along using the transliterations below the Hebrew in the books they’d handed out. I remember getting kosher dinner with them afterward as they explained to me how and why kosher food was a thing. I remember them describing the different kinds of Judaism they all came from.

I remember waking up on Saturday morning and seeing the news on my phone. I remember the sadness, shock, anger. I remember the haunting thought that the shooter might have gone to our service instead, or could go to the next one. I remember a stream of dripping wax burning my finger at the vigil I attended. I remember the look in my Jewish friends’ eyes.

And it was then that I remembered everything at once. I remembered all the violence looming around me, and my friends, and my entire generation. I remembered that for anyone born near the year 2000, this is all we’ve ever known.

I remember filling out my absentee ballot a few weeks ago. I remember voting, hoping that weeks, years, decades from now I’d be able to remember that we changed.