01-22-2022, 01:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2022, 01:44 PM by Eric the Green.)
(01-22-2022, 01:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(01-22-2022, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:(01-21-2022, 06:44 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.
I don't think the Millennials have moved to the right; they've moved to the corner. When did they vote in earnest? They liked BHO, and some came out to oppose Trump. But as a rule, they feel screwed and neglected by the older gens, and they're right. They see the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. This is the problem the Democrats can't see. By trying to add to their base from the middle, they lose any chance at adding the masses waiting for someone to lead them.
President Biden is not exciting. People voted for him in part because they came to despise or dread Trump. American politics does not yet fit millennial norms. When it does it is over for any pol who cannot adjust to the Millennial reality. I expect the last remaining Silent and the first wave of Boomers to vacate the political scene fairly soon. One birth year that now encompasses twenty years of the Presidency (1946) with on the whole mediocre-to-dreadful Presidents has gone from freakishly young for the Presidency to freakishly old.
Obama is an oddity for a Reactive type in combining Civic and Idealist traits as do the Silent while being a mature Reactive (which is definitely not Silent), and if we have someone else somewhat like him he will not get in the way of the rise of the Millennial generation.
The problem is that there is no viable successor to Biden that can be elected before the fourth turning is over. It appears to be too late for any other leader to appear and fulfill the GC role.
If Millennials have not moved to the right, then why do polls show Republicans leading by a point or two for the 2022 congressional elections, and why are approval ratings for Biden down by 10-14 points? You don't have to come out and vote to answer a poll. Why didn't Sanders win the Democratic primary in 2020? Why doesn't congress reflect a Millennial demand for the Green New Deal?
Biden is where he was when he ran, pretty much. He had moved to the left of his prior record. I don't see that Biden has moved to the middle; granted that this "middle" in the USA is center-right at best; but the Millennials and other generations don't seem willing to support or elect a genuine left leader. The USA just does not seem able to separate itself from Reagan. We are stuck, it appears; with Biden, and with the center-left as the best we can ever get in the USA. Right now, it appears that once again a center-left Democratic president is not getting support once elected. We only get a center-left government every 12 or 14 years or so, and then only for a year or two at best (the previous time it was only for 7 months). If this pattern has not changed, then we have not entered a genuine 4T this round, and the saeculum cycle is over. Only decline lies ahead.
It would be nice if a leader would appear and step up who was exciting and willing and able to convince center-right Americans, including Millennials, to participate and go further left and deal with real issues. But there is no such leader available who can get him, her or them-self elected.
Mike Alexander and David Kaiser have speculated whether we entered the 4T much too late or too early. I am wondering now whether we will ever enter it, and whether indeed the cycle has stopped entirely for the foreseeable future. In dark ages, there isn't much of a saeculum cycle going on.