gop

DemfromCT over at DailyKos has an interesting interview with Ruy Teixeira, an expert on political demographics and a Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and Center for American Progress and author of the recently published working paper titled, Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties.

While you should go check it out in its entirety, here are the main points, which should be very familiar to faithful Future Majority readers.

• The Republican base is shrinking. The white, working class vote, a demographic that you hear all the "smart" television personalities talk about, is vanishing before our eyes, notes Teixeira. We heard a lot about this particular voting bloc in the 2008 Democratic primary, especially in the Ohio, Texas, and Mississippi contests. Yet, those states, like everywhere else, are seeing the size of this group diminish.
  

  In Texas, the white working class share is down 17 points, with minorities up 9 points and white college graduates up 7 points. In Ohio the share of white working-class voters fell by 15 points between 1988 and 2008 while white college graduates rose by 8 points and minorities by 6 points. Even a state like Mississippi has seen a huge drop in the white working class vote since 1988 (down 21 points).

• Millennials continue to decidedly identify with the Democratic Party. Though we continue to battle the "conventional wisdom" that youth always become more conservative with time, Teixeria corrects this, pointing to multiple studies that show partisan loyalty increases with age. And why would Millennials be attracted to the GOP anyway? In supporting the oppressive Arizona immigration law, continuing to treat gay people as if they are not human, and acting as if government has no redeeming value, it is almost as if the Republican Party is running away from our generation (you know, like Mark Kirk).
• To continue to build a long-term political advantage while championing good policy, the Democrats need to provide an alternative to Arizona's SB 1070, getting behind comprehensive immigration reform. Polling shows that the Arizona legislation is popular, but so is a description of a fairer comprehensive reform, in which the federal government strengthens border security and investigates employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants. These undocumented workers currently living in the United States would be required to register with the federal government, have criminal background checks, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for U.S. citizenship (84 percent of those supporting the Arizona law support this alternative). For the Democrats to put forth a strong alternative to the GOP-backed position, they would be strengthening their attachments with already friendly Latino voters, and they also would be enhancing their stature as a party that can solve our larger problems.

The writing is on the wall. Despite the gloomy outlook for the midterms at this point, there are quite a few promising long-term trends for the party. Yet, in order for these to mean anything, we must go all out, institutionalizing peer-to-peer registration efforts. Luckily the DNC recently unleashed their voter registration strategy for the midterms, which significantly targets young voters and minority voters, a large chunk of the President's and the Democrats' base.

And while we face some short-term stress in 2010 while looking at some friendly long-term trends, the GOP is in the opposite situation. While the Tea Party continues to drum up conservative resistance to Obama and the Democrats (occasionally attracting attention for racist behavior), they are moving in the wrong direction of where they need to be to have any influence on the Millennial vote in the long-term. With Millennials forming about 40 percent of the electorate (and 44 percent of the generation identifying as a minority) in 2020, they form the anchor of this country's electoral future; meanwhile, the GOP can't seem to break away from the Tea Party, which actively resists a move toward the center.

For further reading, check out Teixeira's white paper (linked above) and read the reviews by Tom Schaller for FiveThirtyEight.com and Ed Kilgore at the Democratic Strategist.

Oops... So yesterday I talked about the outreach Karl Rove is doing or says the GOP should do to young voters. Turns out that the GOP program that works to get young donors in it is filled with "young guns" in their 50's...

Maybe age is just a state of mind - or an arbitrary number. If you feel young, if you feel there are songs to be sung... or even better if you're a previous member of the GOP's Young Egles program and you like to go to bondage strip clubs then the Young Guns is for you - just bring your checkbook...

Via the Daily Beast:

In fact, the current crop of the 22 Young Guns looks very much like the old generation of conservative leaders. These upstarts together average an age of 49.6 years old — two months shy of the average age of new members who joined Congress in 2008. And those current reps are no spring chickens themselves. According to one analysis, the 111th Congress is the oldest, on average, of any since 1907.

More than half of the Young Guns, having celebrated the big 5-0, are already eligible for an AARP membership. Only two of the group’s designated candidates– Martha Roby, who is running for Alabama’s 2nd District, and district attorney-cum-reality-television star Sean Duffy, who is running for the open seat in Wisconsin’s 7th District — are under the age of 40.

I referred to it this past weekend, but I wanted to be sure I clarified a portion of Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul's episode given Sarah Palin's recent defense of Paul.

Palin was trying to make the case, like she did after her horrible interview with CBS's Katie Couric, that the media is out to get candidates, looking for "gotcha" moments. Thus, according to Palin, Rachel Maddow conspired to get Rand Paul to flip-flop all over the place in his appearance on her show last week, which set this debacle into action.

Yet, Frank Rich notes this is a fallacy. Again and again, long after its passing, Paul is on record as saying he is not behind the Civil Rights Act:

With Rand Paul, we also get further evidence of race’s role in a movement whose growth precisely parallels the ascent of America’s first African-American president. The usual Tea Party apologists are saying that it was merely a gaffe — and a liberal media trap — when Paul on Wednesday refused to tell Rachel Maddow of MSNBC that he could fully support the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But Paul has expressed similar sentiments repeatedly, at least as far back as 2002.

The more the Democrats can use Paul to represent what the GOP is increasingly representing in American politics -- the idea that no government is better than any government -- the better shot they have at avoiding a major beating at the polls come November, especially if Democrats are successful in mobilizing pro-government Millennials. This is why people like Fox analyst and ex-Bush adviser Karl Rove phoned Paul at the end of last week begging him to cancel his scheduled appearance on Meet the Press.

Brandon Griefe at U.S. News and World Report wrote a piece yesterday arguing that the Republicans have an opportunity to make amends with young, Millennial voters given the "genuine fear" created by Democratic spending.

With such a large and active base of young supporters it would appear Democrats have their Republican opponents nearing checkmate. But a closer look at the chessboard reveals neither party is in good strategic position to topple the other’s king.

The Republicans’ problem has been their inability to connect with youth and minorities. Only recently have they begun to deemphasize the socially conservative aspects of their platform that have polarized voters since the culture wars of the 1960s. A recent Pew Research poll found that young adults are “clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and…are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition.” These and other social issues are not major concerns of young adults, a fact that is slowly being realized as Republicans seek to broaden their voting base.

But Democrats’ recent legislative priorities show they’ve also done a poor job at setting the board up for success. Enormous debt and deficit spending to fund a variety of new programs has created a dire fiscal future that is creating genuine fear among young adults. Then-Sen. Barack Obama said it best in 2006:

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.

The rhetoric of 2006 has not translated into reality come 2010. The failure of leadership now continues under his watch with trillions in new debt obligations. Young adults will not be able to ignore the red ink that fills the nation’s ledger forever. Unless Democrats act quickly to reverse the growth of the government’s deficit they will poison the well of Millennial support that carried them to historic victories in 2008.

Griefe's analysis is faulty and disingenuous for three reasons.

1.) I don't believe I saw anything from Griefe or anyone else about deficit spending when George W. Bush was in the White House. When Bush entered the Oval Office, Bill Clinton handed his administration a surplus. When he left, we were trillions of dollars in debt. Two major tax cuts and two wars did quite a bit of damage:

Obama's stimulus package accounted for only .07/$1.00 of the national debt when he signed it into law. Nearly 90 percent of the debt was created under George W. Bush.

To clean up the mess Bush left, Obama has to spend more.

2.) The message about the national debt does not carry any water with Millennials, especially since they are encountering the worst youth unemployment rate since World War II. Our friend Karlo tackled this conservative talking point last year, aptly comparing someone climbing a hill to one's life-long relationship with government.

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to traverse a hill. The hill represents how much taxes you expect to pay over your lifetime. One end of the hill is the start (the beginning of your life), the top of the hill is middle-age, and the other end of the hill is, well, six-feet-under. At both ends of the hill, you pay relatively little in taxes, and the top of the hill is when you pay the most in taxes. This is what tax-paying looks like throughout the course of one's life. For some generations, traversing this hill was made easier (but not faster), because the government helped invest in the well-being of the tax-payer very early on in life.

This is not the case with Millennials. The rising cost (PDF) of college and beyond has not resulted in a proportionate increase in services or resources. When you place this fact of rising costs into the context of rising college attendance, the effect is magnified. The share of young people that have attended college has increased 21 percentage points from the 1970s to the present (PDF, pg. 5). What's more is the fact young people with post-graduate degrees on are on the rise, too. What all this amounts to is a more difficult (but not slower) journey over the hill. It's almost as if Millennials have to carry a heavy backpack (read: student debt) and still keep pace with everyone else. Now add to that the fact that the end of the hill for Millennials is much farther away than it is for previous generations due to longer life expectancy.

In addition to this, Millennials themselves tell National Journal that they think Obama's spending has been a good thing.

A plurality of Millennials say they believe that the president's agenda will increase rather than diminish opportunities for their generation (41 percent to 27 percent). More respondents say that his policies averted an even worse economic crisis (44 percent) than believe that Obama ran up the national debt without doing much good (36 percent). By 46 percent to 31 percent, they also say that the comprehensive health care reform bill Obama recently signed into law is a good thing for the country. Just one-fourth believe that the country is worse off because of the president's policies; the rest feel that his efforts have significantly improved conditions (16 percent) or are beginning to move the nation in the right direction, even if they haven't yet produced major gains (43 percent).

Given the toxic economy the Bush policies gave Millennials as they have come of age, making the figurative hill even steeper, the government must invest in the youngest generation to ensure they have a chance of getting over the top, and thankfully, it is.

3.) Griefe comically cites a list of GOPers including Rand Paul and Bob McDonnell as smartly handling social issues in order to keep the focus on the fiscal matters at hand.

This is pretty simple.

Rand Paul doesn't think the 1964 Civil Rights Act should have passed.

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia issues a proclamation for Confederate History Month in the commonwealth, failing to mention trafficking of human beings and the consequential brutal decades of Jim Crow.

I'm not sure whether Griefe had a brain lapse here or what. Griefe is right that if the GOP can't get social issues right, they won't have any shot at Millennials period. Justin Miller at The Atlantic notes this, describing Millennials as the generation least tolerant of racism. The list of Republicans Griefe provides, though, is laughable. Their clumsy navigation of social issues has provided Democrats with several opportunities to beat back any Republican momentum.

The generational theft argument sounds good, but it doesn't play with young people. It plays even less with Millennials when it's shrouded in social issues.

Nice effort. Back to the drawing board.

How does one know when a politician isn't up with the times? I suspect there are a number of devices that get to this metric, but one might be looking for someone harping about the nation being "center-right."

John McCain, of 2008 "Country First" fame, appeared with Sarah Palin yesterday to speak to a crowd of Tea Partiers. While Palin continued to gloss over the constant references to violent acts in her exhortations to teabaggers over the past couple days, McCain railed against health insurance reform, vowing a repeal of the newly-passed law.

When McCain spoke, he responded to President Obama's speech yesterday, in which Obama defied Republicans to campaign on a platform of repealing the health care reform law, in light of the various benefits included within it. "And my attitude is, 'Go for it,'" Obama said.

McCain declared: "We're gonna 'go for it,' an we're gonna repeal this bill. We're gonna stop this spending."

McCain also said: "Our answer is, yes, we're gonna 'go for it,' and we're gonna get it, and we're gonna restore the government back to the people of this country, because this is a right-of-center nation, and this president is governing from the left, and it will not stand."

When I finish reading that, the question that immediately pops into my head is... "What happens if it does stand?" What happens if people like this health insurance reform, given that a majority of Americans had already liked the bill's individual previsions or believed they weren't liberal enough? What happens if the world does not end? More broadly, what happens when the entirety of the nation's most diverse generation ever comes of age and is largely politically active, expressing its left-leaning viewpoints?

I think this all comes back to many members of the GOP and the conservative fringe being unable to zoom out and view these events over the long-term. We saw this with McCain himself in his poorly-run campaign in 2008 -- the difference between tactics and strategy. Yes, Obama faced some trouble with the Rev. Wright controversy, but he gave a forward-looking and eloquent speech that muted much of the criticism. Yes, the McCain campaign was enjoying success in its portrayal of Obama as a celebrity political novice that summer, but because it wasn't rooted in anything, the McCain camp apparently didn't think anything of choosing a mayor with frighteningly little experience as their vice presidential nominee. Yes, health insurance reform has had its troubles, and while the GOP was responsible for many of those Democratic struggles, their refusal to do anything other than saying no left them without any input whatsoever. And now, there's this call for repeal, a move to take away all the benefits given to 32 million people. A conscious choice to choose the student loan industry over young Americans.

As the GOP leans more to the right, its rhetoric closer and closer to a boiling point, it will increasingly place itself in untenable political positions. The GOP chooses to live in the moment, ignoring the political realities around the corner. Contrary to John McCain's wishes/statements, this is no longer a center-right nation. As the Millennials come of age politically, their size and pro-government/socially liberal positions will tip the country to the left, a la the 1930s.

So, again John -- what happens if it does stand? What's the contingency plan?

In the wake of the release of the Powerpoint presentation revealing the Republican Party's strategy of fear, a new ad scaring young Americans away from supporting health insurance reform.

Perhaps this is just one conservative know-little's analysis, or maybe it's a sign of a recycled talking point to come.

John Feehery, a political pundit who has experience under former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, writes in The Hill that Republicans might be the best fit for Millennials based on the youth's love of free markets. Feehery tries to make his argument based on the Pew Research Center's recent report on Millennials.

While Republicans may seem out of step with Millennials, especially because their social conservatives have such hostility to gay rights and insist so ardently for traditional values, the free-market principles of the party, which stress a light touch on regulation and more freedom to allow a rapidly changing marketplace to evolve on its own, should work well with younger voters who see all of the opportunities that come from the Creative Revolution.

Perhaps Feehery skipped over broad swaths of the data. The release I read discussed Millennials pro-government tendencies. More than half (the only generation that can claim this) of youth favor government intervention and an activist government.

In case pictures aren't your thing:

Millennials are significantly less critical of government on a number of dimensions than are other age cohorts. This tendency has been seen on a variety of individual survey questions as well as on a three-question index of items from the political values survey; this index covers opinions about government’s effectiveness, government regulation of business and whether the government has too much control over people’s lives.

I applaud Feehery's argument that Millennials should be courted, but his analysis that Republicans have a shot at this generation based on non-existent anti-government views is just plain out of whack with reality. The "creativity" argument is creative, but it's wrong. It'll be interesting to see if the GOP tries to use it in a ploy to attract Millennials. Stay tuned.

Update: Andrew Romano of Newsweek makes the same faulty argument. Notice the lack of data simply discussing Millennials' views on government that I provided above.

The basic idea is less government, more liberty, which is far more consistent than the GOP's current platform—and has the added bonus of being far more appealing to the (largely anti-Bush) Millennial Generation as well. As compared to the average American voter, Millennials are less willing to agree that military strength is the best way to ensure peace (52–42 overall vs. 38–58 for Millennials). They are more liberal in their views on family, homosexuality, and civil liberties (especially as compared to the Silent Generation). And they are identical on questions about whether "it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can't take care of themselves," which suggests that with old age still half a century away—and with the Boomers threatening to bankrupt the country—they'd see entitlement reform less as a threat than as a precaution. What's more, "while the Democratic Party has a larger advantage among Millennials than it does among the two oldest cohorts, a greater proportion of the party’s support comes from people who do not explicitly identify as Democrats but only lean toward the party." They're Independents, in other words. They could be convinced.

This week's DailyKos/Research 2000 poll examined beliefs and political philosophies of republican voters. Nate Silver from 538 has an interesting take on it:

"This accounts for what might be the Republicans' greatest strength as we head into the November midterms as well as their greatest liability. The strength is that they can somewhat comfortably adopt a nationalized, one-size-fits-all message. They don't have to worry about the constellation of constituencies that Democrats have: labor voters, Baby-boomer liberals, blacks, Hispanics, college-educated technocrats, libertarianish younger voters, etc. Their base is the same pretty much everywhere, and actuating a strategy that appeals to that base is not challenging.

The liability, meanwhile, is that while the Republican base might be the same pretty much everywhere, the rest of the electorate isn't. Some states and districts have different ratios of Republicans to Democratic and independent voters. Moreover, they have different types of Democratic and independent voters, some of whom may be amenable to the Republican message and others of whom won't be."

Notable graphs where 18-29 year old voters differed the most from other age demographics:

This week NPR also did a report about young voters and the Teabagger movement.

"Mr. JORDAN MARKS (Executive Director, Americans for Freedom): I personally went and interviewed young Democrats that had spent a lot of time on his campaign to figure out what they had done differently.

GONYEA: But beyond the Internet, conservatives say their basic message is now getting more traction. As president, Barack Obama now has a record and conservatives say theres reason for young voters to start to scrutinize what hes accomplished.

Twenty-six-year-old Ashley Sewell of the group Smart Girl Politics says recent college graduates are facing a brutal job market. She says 20-somethigns are worried and that provides an opening.

Ms. ASHLEY SEWELL (Smart Girl Politics): I think so, primarily because the conservative movement has really started to gain some traction. And I think that were starting to gain some legitimacy in the conversation.

GONYEA: Professor Peter Levine runs a nonpartisan program at Tufts University specializing in politics and young people.

Professor PETER LEVINE (Director, CIRCLE; Civic Studies, Tufts University): So I don't think the fact that they would be enthusiastic about Barack Obama in 2008 would guarantee that they would continue to feel that way. Theyre faced with a lot of things, including a very high unemployment rate. And it would be easy for them to change their mind about the effectiveness of government. "

Gonyea goes on to say that Levine describes young voters as being more liberal than the US as a whole and when conservatives spend too much time on issues like gay marriage it works against them.

As Democrats approach the end of their first year of the 21st century in control of both Congress and the White House, we are reminded of a hard truth: progressive change is much more difficult than conservative retrenchment.

Throughout history change has always faced an uphill battle against the seductive forces of fear, hatred, dogma, and tradition. In fact, major progressive change is so difficult and occurs so infrequently that such victories are historical outliers. As Mike Lux points out, only four or five decades in the history of the United States have proved to be fertile ground for such change.

Some believed that the 21st century would be different, that the proliferation of technology and the internet would be a panacea. However, this view ignored those aspects of this century that make change more difficult. While it is true that the internet has enabled more public participation and government transparency and allowed people to compete with the media power of corporate television and radio, it also allowed people to self-select their news, information, and facts. No longer can a Walter Cronkite turn the tide of American public opinion against a war with a single statement. The internet is a value-neutral platform and it spreads conservative messages just as effectively as progressive ones. Life expectancy is dramatically longer than in the past, slowing generational change and keeping old prejudices and fears alive (this is where conservatives will convince themselves that I am arguing for death panels as a progressive conspiracy). Change today will be just as difficult as it has been in the past.

Also extinguished a year in is the naïve belief in bipartisanship, that we can convince Republicans to join with Democrats to do the right thing for the American people. Bipartisanship only exists when there is a Republican in the White House, and such bipartisanship has had devastating consequences (see Iraq War, Bush's tax cuts to the wealthy, deregulation).

Republicans view government as a zero-sum game. Health care is not a service for the American people but a battle to be fought for political gain. Helping the uninsured and those who have had the American dream shattered by health care costs is nothing compared to the potential to recreate Waterloo. The conservative platform is dogma, with their evangelists castigating those who do not show proper devotion to the faith. To them, legislation is but a chessboard where black and white move their pieces through amendments and procedures to ultimately topple the opponent's king.

Change takes time. The Presidency, control of the House, and a 20 member majority in the Senate is not a sufficient condition. Democrats need candidates that are not just electable but also effective, as well as the courage to believe that standing firm for our ideas can actually be a winning strategy. We need to enlarge the electorate by putting serious effort into engaging Millennials and minorities. Progressive victories have proved us to be on the right side of history--ending slavery, universal suffrage, the New Deal, and Medicare--and we need representatives that will make the right decision now and not worry about whether history will move fast enough to prove them right before the next election.

Change requires sacrifice and effort, new strategies, more profiles in courage, and a dream that will never die.

More concern trolling on the right (well, from the Wall Street Journal) regarding young voters' support of Obama, and thus, the Democratic Party come 2010:

Moreover, the sour mood that has gripped the nation’s politics could only further turn off the young. This means that the decision of Republican congressional leaders to put up a solid front of opposition to Obama could be highly functional for a party that would rather see younger, more progressive voters ignore Election Day.” Dionne further notes: “More than is often appreciated, the electoral revolution that brought Democrats to power was fueled by a younger generation with a distinctive philosophical outlook. Put starkly: If only Americans 45 and over had cast ballots in 2008, Barack Obama would not be president.”

Yes, let me admit that given the nature of our politics over the last half a year and our current trajectory, we may have a rough time getting young people engaged a year from now, at least at the rate that we would prefer. (Or we may not -- a year is a long time, and quite a bit can happen.)

If I'm to put my Republican long-term strategist glasses on though, the bold part of the quote above is anathema to what I'm trying to do. The functionalist tendency of the GOP these days keeps it from repairing those relationships with young people. When party leadership and those in the party attempt to disengage a certain group of people from the political process to suit their short-term needs, how do they turn around and preach the importance of involving young people in their party structure? Quite simply, they can't. At least not credibly.

That is why only 6 out of every 100 voters aged 18-29 likes the GOP.