Generation X

Two articles caught my eye today. The first, from AFP, was headlined: US Election Shapes Up As Duel of Generations.

About 44 million young people between the age of 19 and 29 will be able to vote in November, according to a recent Gallup opinion poll. Sixty-five percent of them say they plan to vote for Obama, compared to only 31 percent who plan to do so for McCain.

But among those aged 65 and over, McCain and Obama are statistically tied, 44 to 45 percent respectively.

Seniors traditionally have high turnout rates -- 72 percent voted in 2004 -- while young voters are have historically been fickle and unreliable.

The age difference also marks the candidates' style. During the television debates, McCain, 72, quoted Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, while Obama, 47, referred to Google.

On Sunday former secretary of state and military leader Colin Powell endorsed Obama, calling for the need for "generational" change.

"I think we need a transformational figure, I think we need a generational change. That is why I'm supporting Senator Obama," Powell said in an interview with NBC.

While the story is much more evenhanded than the title (ie - blame the editors, not the reporter), the entire framework of generational warfare is unnecessarily antagonistic and troubling, for numerous reasons. First, I think it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate. Second, I see it as a potential narrative device for the Right to delegitimize an Obama win, oppose a legislative agenda that conflicts with its own, and it lays the groundwork for driving a wedge between Democrats and young voters. Let's pick this apart a bit.

First, let's deal with the inaccuracy. Here's a look at the actual Gallup data referenced in the story:

Yes, voters under 30 overwhelmingly prefer Obama, but every age demographic in the Gallup data favors Obama, even if within the margin of error. If there was a real generational battle brewing, I would expect seniors to be as lopsidedly for McCain as youth are for Obama. That's not happening. What we are seeing is the growth of a potential electorate-wide mandate, not an inter-generational duel.

I think what this piece also misses is that young voters today don't want anything to do with a generational battle or duel. We're in the middle of two wars with mounting casualties, few indicators of success, and our friends fighting on the front lines; the economy is tanking at a time when good entry level jobs that provide health care and the opportunity to pay off our school debt are already fewer and further between; the planet is getting hotter and our nation's energy policy is the very definition of insanity.

That's a lot to take on, and if we're going to make any progress at all we will need to build intergenerational alliances with Gen Xers, Boomers, and the Silent Generation. Like the AARP says - Divided We Fail.

After all, isn't that what the Obama campaign has been all about? Moving beyond ideology and partisanship. Reaching out to all Americans to roll up our sleeves and Get. Shit. Done. You can argue whether or not Obama, in this respect, represents a new reality or just new rhetoric, but it's hard to argue with the sentiment and expressed intent of the electorate in poll after poll, news story after news story.

Unfortunately, even if young people aren't looking to engage in generational warfare, the narrative is out there, and conservatives are already leaping to take advantage of it. Which brings us to the second point, and the other article I want to reference, this time an op-ed column in today's Washington Post by Robert Samuelson:

Young Voters, Get Mad

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, October 22, 2008; Page A19

To: Voters Under 35
Subject: Your Future
Recommendation: Get Angry

You're being played for chumps. Barack Obama and John McCain want your votes, but they're ignoring your interests. You face a heavily mortgaged future. You'll pay Social Security and Medicare for aging baby boomers. The needed federal tax increase might total 50 percent over the next 25 years. Pension and health costs for state and local workers have doubtlessly been underestimated. There's the expense of decaying infrastructure -- roads, bridges, water pipes. All this will squeeze other crucial government services: education, defense, police.

Samuelson is a right-of-center pundit who frequently writes about "entitlement" reform - one of the few areas where conservatives perceive they have an "in" with young voters - often under the guise of "helping out" young people. His arguments are very much in line with the work of organizations like Americans for Generational Equality, who stoke intergenerational strife to advance their policy agenda.

At Pushback, Matt Zeitlin gets to the heart of what Samuelson is hoping to achieve:

Robert Samuelson has written one of the most annoying types of column today, one in which he self-righteously exhorts the young to march in lockstep behind his own agenda of cutting benefits and restricting eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Before he suggests that we young people picket the AARP (seriously), he makes all sorts of misleading claims about how baby boomers are screwing us juveniles:

Conservatives are on the brink of losing big in the upcoming election. Even before the dust settles, one of the first things they will realize is that the electoral math has changed, and they are going to need to appeal to a greater segment of youth to blunt the Democratic advantage. This intergenerational warfare narrative - focusing on "entitlement reform" - will be the wedge they try to drive between moderate Millennials and the Democratic Party. Barring radical shifts to the left in their policy proposals on the environment, military spending, and health care, it's pretty much the only card they've got.

In the coming days and months - probably as soon as exit polls are released on November 4th - this is a narrative against which we are going to have to push back hard.

As you saw in today's Quick Hits, CBS News has a great story up about McCain's lack of appeal to youth voters.

The article starts with observations of McCain's lack of comfort with technology, the thing that binds most Millennials together. But then it digs deeper into the dissonance that exists between McCain's stances on issues and the increasingly liberal views on the Millennial Generation.

Of course, when it comes to the youth vote in this election, any Republican nominee would begin the race at a significant disadvantage. Young people are clearly skewing to the left this election year, identifying more with the Democratic Party and embracing more liberal positions on so-called wedge issues by sizeable majorities. They've supported more lenient approaches to dealing with illegal immigrants, agreed that all citizens should have healthcare (even if the government has to provide it to those who can't afford it) and supported either same-sex marriage or civil unions for homosexual couples. Meanwhile, John McCain has wavered on immigration, his healthcare plan has been described as “total laissez-faire liberty” and he opposes both same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt.

I think that many Millennials would forgive John McCain for refining his positions on issues, as Millennials are pragmatic by nature and, in the end, want the best solution, not the purest ideology. But McCain's problem is that he has switched his positions on issues clumsily, such as immigration, Bush's tax cuts, and whether or not he's able to understand the U.S. economy. That would theoretically undermine his ability, in many Millennials' eyes, to offer any expertise at digging this country out of its rut.

So then McCain and the Republicans, understanding this, are forced into a decision. Do they hand the massive Millennial Generation over to the Democrats for good by discouraging their participation in this election, or do they start trying to build a relationship with young people with the remaining time left in order to strengthen it down the road? While they'd be wise to do the latter, it doesn't look good.

Between February 1 and July 31, Obama held thirty-two campaign events in college towns; McCain held three. The McCain campaign has yet to publicly announce an official youth outreach or youth vote campaign director. On the other hand, Obama has hired former Rock the Vote political director Hans Reimer. Not surprisingly, young Republicans have complained about the McCain campaign's poor efforts at the grassroots level and failure to make use of existing networks. "They definitely haven't reached out to the younger generation as strongly as I hoped they would," an organizer for the Young Republicans in South Carolina recently told a local newspaper. "It's a big mistake. You've got to create something that people want to be a part of. I'm just not getting that feeling this go-round." A young conservative political strategist named David All concurred, remarking to the Washington Post that "Republicans are sort of talking down to Gen-Nexters, not bringing them in."

One more thing I found to be interesting.

"Let me just start by saying that it would not be unheard of for a Republican candidate to win the youth vote," says Justin York, a grassroots youth organizer for McCain in Florida and an incoming junior at the University of Central Florida (UCF). York points out that Ronald Reagan, nearly McCain's age in 1984, won the majority of youth voters in his reelection bid and George H.W. Bush, at the age of 64, also captured the majority of youth voters four years later. And if York's organizing efforts in Florida pay off, perhaps McCain can repeat their successes.

Not so fast, Justin. The problem with York's first statement is that he's living in the 1980s. With today's youth, it would be unheard of for a Republican to win the youth vote. Ronald Reagan did enjoy success with Generation X. But Generation X is certainly different than the engaged, institutional, liberal Millennials. Justin also seems to be ignoring the 1990s. In 1992, the youth vote soared, but Bill Clinton was favored by the youth by a 44 percent to 34 percent (Bush) to 22 percent (Perot) margin. In 1996, Clinton again was favored, this time over Dole, by a 53 percent to 34 percent margin. Granted, many 1992 voters did not vote at all in 1996, but even so, the Republicans clearly did not enjoy any appreciation from that demographic.

McCain and the Republicans are treating (and hoping) the Millennials are like Generation X, a generation that, at worst for the Republicans, splits their vote somewhat evenly between the GOP and the Democrats, and is ambivalent about politics. But fortunately for the Democratic Party and our democracy, Millennials are different. They are engaged, they are liberal, and come November 4th, all signs point to them turning out and voting for Democrats in large numbers.

I'm back from New Orleans and catching up on email and reading, including a (newish) 55 page report from CIRCLE, and working on finishing some longer/more-researched pieces. Things should be back up to speed tomorrow. I'm also finally done with traveling for the next 5 weeks (until Iowa), so I'm hoping to maintain a quicker pace and higher word count here at FM through the end of the year. Until then, here's an interesting quick hit.

Scholars and Rogues has an interesting post that examines four recent news articles, each tackling the Obama campaign from a generational angle.

The piece is good in that each of the articles linked, while deploying a generational frame for their analysis, come to widely varied conclusions. However I disagree with some of the assessments.

That’s why, in the end, I will vote (or not vote) for a candidate based on what they stand for and how they live up to it. Not because a generational dynamic tells me to, or a self-projecting pundit believes I should, or because they happen to fulfill a token demographic. But because they can prove to me that they are deserving based on their own merit. As a guy who comes in on the tail end of Gen X, I’m old enough to be cynical of what people tell me, but young enough to still want to believe in it. I think that’s a fair compromise, and putting aside generational prognostications and cultural assignations to focus on what matters most–the issues–is equally fair in my view.

Chris Bowers has a similar beef with generational analysis in general over at Open Left.

Speaking as someone who writes about a single generation and their place in progressive politics, I think the author is looking at the concept of a generation all wrong. No one is going to vote a certain way because of their generation. The generational label doesn't emerge independent of environmental factors, family factors, ideology, etc. It emerges decades after those things have shaped people, and everyone who has read anything serious about generations knows that these are imprecise averages that get fuzzier the closer you get to the individual level. It's not a precise science like organic chemistry, it's more about averages, trends, and probability.

That said, I tend to agree with both of their assessments of Generational Arguments as directed at Obama - that they generally say more about the writer's own views than they do the candidate. This isn't because "generation" is a useless concept, but rather because the writers are trying to make one person - in this case Obama - carry all the water for everything anyone ever wrote about Gen X and the Boomers. They're taking it out of the aggregate and into the specific. This is why I've been so resistant to buying the story-line that Obama is the "youth candidate." Polling - a still imprecise but much more reliable tool than generational analysis - has shown time and again that young people - Gen X, Millennials, or any other group - do not vote monolithically. You can make generalizations about the ideology, partisanship, and even temperament of a "generation," but trying to nail that down into a specific candidate is a foolhardy endeavor.

Even so, I'm not nearly as willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater as Bowers and Scholars & Rogues. Of course you can always break "Generations" down into their more useful and informative constituent parts (as Bowers does in his piece). But there are useful things that you can do with generational labels as well. Writing about civic participation and ideological trends among Millennials is useful when trying to convince journalists or political operatives about the need for youth vote outreach or the advances we've seen in youth participation in the last 5 years, particularly among a journalist class immune to nuance. Generational analysis shouldn't be a catch-all for explaining political and cultural trends - which seems to be the big beef that S&R has with the Obama articles - but they can still be useful tools if one keeps it in perspective and is aware of the limitations.

• Atlanta Young Democrats (or at least some members of the org) are getting into a fight with the Georgia Democratic Party over their literal and metaphoric place at the table. I'm trying to find out more about this.
• Joe Anthony decides it's time to move on. At some point today he will delete his profile and disband his 160,000 friends. A somewhat anticlimactic end to SocNet-Gate (or whatever other equally unappealing "gate" you wanna call it).
• Finally, the Politico says it's just more Gen-X whining, but the beef seems somewhat legitimate to me. Check out this book review of The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner Take All America. Maybe the Politico just doesn't want to be held accountable for all those Millennials they sacked last month, but it sounds like Strapped or Generation Debt for the slightly older set.

During my interview with Tobin Van Ostern, of Students for Obama, I made reference to hearing "some political commentary" talking about Barack's strategy as renouncement of Boomer politics. Just to contextualize that (and because I think its a fascinating topic), I got that from a recent episode of Radio Open Source.

From the promo for the show:

Obama’s post-boomer status could become his cardinal trait as he uses it to distinguish himself from his running mates — particularly Empress Boomer Hillary Clinton. All you need to do is replay the elections of boomers past to be reminded that the debating, the stumping, and the campaigning were inevitably stuck in the foxholes of Vietnam and the fraternities of Ivy League campuses. Obama, too young to have dodged the draft, fresh enough that drugs don’t seem to be an issue, is exempt from the accusations that have forever dogged Clinton, Bush, Gore and Kerry.

During this hour we’ll ask the question: how will Obama’s post-boomer status play out on the campaign trail? Will he be able to sustain his cool while other candidates self-immolate? How does a boomer’s approach to politics differ from that of a post-boomer or even a pre-boomer, such as John McCain? What would it mean for the political landscape to have a post-boomer occupy the Oval Office?

What’s your generation? How do your values and approach to politics differ from that of your parents? Or your children? Do you see the boomer presidencies of Bill Clinton and George Bush as distinctly divisive and polarizing? Or do you think harping on generational divides is a way of over-simplifying politics and human behavior? What are your dreams for the next administration?

It's a great show. If you aren't listening to it, I highly recommend it. It's daily listening for me. Subscribe to the podcast - if that's your thing - here.