05-20-2023, 03:51 PM
I have typically said that new Millennial voters have been going about 60-40 D while older voters are going about 5% more R than D. I may have understated the situation. Millennial voters have been slow to enter the electorate, but I would not assume that they will not be an increasing share. Even simply as replacements for voters over 50 they are nothing but trouble for the GOP as it now exists. Any GOP to attempt to win over Millennial voters will alienate the current core of corporatists, Protestant fundamentalists, and bigots.
To be sure, the politicians that we now have generally do not fit Millennial culture yet. The ones who do somewhat better at this are doing better in winning elections (think of President Biden, who is about 50 years older than the average Millennial voter!) States recently becoming more R in contrast to the US average (Florida, Iowa, Ohio) because they concentrate old or white rural people can rebound in a D direction.
Not even rurality of a State indicates that it will remain R-leaning. Think of the non-voting farm laborers and those who work in factory-like dairies and meat-processing places. The owners and bosses are over-represented in local politics, as are their families, in the electorate in contrast to other places. Now ask yourself how the children of those non-voting alien workers will vote when given a chance. These people well fit the model of second-generation Americans doing industrial work circa 1935. Such was a peak time for the Democrats seeking votes. FDR's 46-state hammering of Alf Landon is even more impressive when one considers that the two states that FDR lost were Maine and Vermont. White "ethnic" voters were the core of FDR's wins outside the South, and those are the differences between the elections of the 1920's and the 1930's. When the Democrats get the bulk of the rural workforce, then the GOP of the Reagan-Trump era will be cooked to a crisp electorally.
To be sure, the politicians that we now have generally do not fit Millennial culture yet. The ones who do somewhat better at this are doing better in winning elections (think of President Biden, who is about 50 years older than the average Millennial voter!) States recently becoming more R in contrast to the US average (Florida, Iowa, Ohio) because they concentrate old or white rural people can rebound in a D direction.
Not even rurality of a State indicates that it will remain R-leaning. Think of the non-voting farm laborers and those who work in factory-like dairies and meat-processing places. The owners and bosses are over-represented in local politics, as are their families, in the electorate in contrast to other places. Now ask yourself how the children of those non-voting alien workers will vote when given a chance. These people well fit the model of second-generation Americans doing industrial work circa 1935. Such was a peak time for the Democrats seeking votes. FDR's 46-state hammering of Alf Landon is even more impressive when one considers that the two states that FDR lost were Maine and Vermont. White "ethnic" voters were the core of FDR's wins outside the South, and those are the differences between the elections of the 1920's and the 1930's. When the Democrats get the bulk of the rural workforce, then the GOP of the Reagan-Trump era will be cooked to a crisp electorally.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.