The Mindset of My Schizoid Generation

Update: Well now, Tengrain has linked this article to another Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just a reminder to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET THE VOTE OUT AND EVERYONE VOTE DEMOCRAT! #BlueWave2022 !!! 

There's been a bit of discussion in the media about the role Generation X - my generation, the generation of Slackers and Grunge and mullets and Gangsta Rap and crazy hair and MTV and Star Wars and neon fashion and (skip a bit, brother) - is playing in modern politics, especially when a recent poll came out suggesting the current set of 50-somethings (NO WE'RE NOT OLD, WE'RE NOT OLD, WE STILL WANT OUR MTV) could arguably be more conservatively radical than even the Nixon-age Boomers.

Well, it may be worse than that: My fellow Gen Xers may be more conspiracy-addled and wingnut-driven than all the other generational groups in America. All the MAGA and QAnon craziness in one easily packaged demographic.

We turn to Shirin Ali at Slate (paywalled) to see how bad the post-punk, post-modern, post-sanity mindset of the Slacker Generation has gotten: 

The Gen X cohort, born between 1965 and 1980, certainly did experience one specific set of significant events that could have defined their politics: They grew into adulthood while Republicans held the White House for 12 years, as Politico points out... They also became the first generation to grow up with personal computers while also experiencing shaky economic times as children and young adults in the 1980s and ’90s.

But it’s not just about what they’ve lived through—it’s also about what they’re approaching. Retirement is an area of concern for Gen X, with the demographic expected to retire in the early and mid-2030s. It’s something they are seriously concerned about, showcased in a study from Transamercia Center for Retirement Studies that found only 22 percent of Gen X were “very” confident they would be able to fully retire with a comfortable lifestyle and 78 percent said they were concerned Social Security would not be there for them when they did decide to retire. This could explain the rightward bend...

I don't know how that could happen: If Gen X is worried about Social Security not being there, you'd think they would avoid the Republicans who are openly planning to gut Social Security if the Republicans retake Congress next year. Back to Ali:

But a closer look doesn’t paint such a simple, red picture for Xers. A Gallup poll conducted from January to July 2022 found that 30 percent of Gen X identified as Republican while 44 percent were independent—the highest proportion of independent voters in any generational block. And Gen X doesn’t actually seem to be aging into conservatism either, in fact, it’s the opposite: In 1992, Gallup found that adult members of Gen X were even more likely to identify as Republicans than Democrats, 32 percent to 24 percent. So really, Gen Xers have swung a little more toward the Democratic party over time (now 27 percent identify as Dems)...

Whew. So if there's any good news, it's that my generation has stuck to the habit of not joining up for shit. Still, where's our collective head at?

Currently, the oldest Gen Xers are 57 years old, and along with every other generation, they likely formed their partisan presidential voting patterns when they were around the ages of 14 to 24, according to a working paper by Columbia University’s Yair Ghitza and Andrew Gelman from 2014. They attempted to debunk the idea that as people age they inevitably become more conservative by arguing that most people’s political orientations in early adulthood carryover at least until late middle age. The theory wasn’t assigned to a specific political ideology, but instead whatever political views people developed through adulthood tend to stick throughout life, whether it’s Democratic-leaning or Republican...

It seems that, yes, our childhoods and college years - the years we form our world-views - do radicalize us for the rest of our lives. Growing up under Reagan and the Bush the Elder term that extended into the early 90s - and then under the Clinton years that stuck to a pro-Capitalist, centrist political policy - made it so that a majority of us Xers - even Indy and Democratic voters - are still affected by the Rightward world-view that instructed us as teens:

Reagan captivated the country and was reelected for a second term in a landslide, followed by Bush I. By the time Bill Clinton landed in the White House, Reagan Conservatives were roughly 30 years old, well past the peak of political socialization.

In other words, Gen X isn’t a political novelty, it’s a cohort that came into adulthood when Republicans dominated the White House, and that likely influenced their voting patterns as they aged. Like Gelman’s research found, white voters born in 1952 and socialized during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were 5-10 percentage points more likely to support Democratic presidential candidates than those born in 1968 who went on to become Reagan conservatives...

Ali also points out something else: About 61 percent of Generation X is White. Of the post-Boomer generations aging into political power, we're the least ethnically diverse... and as such not as affected by social justice issues that the Millennials and Gen Z groups are. While Gen Xers are still informed by some of the racism and sexism they witnessed - Rodney King, the awareness of workplace sexual harassment, et al. - they are not directly affected by those external issues.

Considering this matter as an Xer myself, I have to look back at how I perceived my own demographic and how short-sighted I was. When Obama won the Presidency in 2009, I was under the impression that my generation - which was coming to that moment that the Boomers were starting to age out of power allowing Xers to fill the gaps - would be more Left-leaning than how we turned out. I knew me and mine grew up under Reagan and were influenced by his role, but I had hoped we were also too jaded and cynical to buy into the Far Right Ayn Randian fantasies that had been in vogue during the 80s. 

I know we grew up to "Red Dawn" and "Rocky IV" and "Top Gun," reading "Atlas Shrugged" instead of "Great Gatsby," all of that. But I know that also we grew up to the downfall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism as a political-economic global threat. I would have figured a majority of my fellow Xers would have turned away from the "socialism"-baiting of the Far Right: Where "socialism" was Dog-Whistle code for the anti-Semitism and racism that still informs much of the hatred and extremism of the modern Conservative movement. 

I had hopes that my generation - which brought us Grunge and the Internet and a Slacker mentality - would have been too split, too schizoid to cause any damage to the nation and world. It seems I was wrong. Too many of the kids from the 1980s grew up to be the QAnon conspiracy nuts of the 2020s.

What has happened is that the large plurality of Generation X has tuned out, given the high percentage of non-party affiliation my generation has today. But it's left my era a bit over-represented by the Reagan-spawn who are leading the rabid mobs of the modern GOP voting base, which is a shame. It'd be nice if more of the independent-minded Gen X voters reappraised their place on the political battlefield and realize the Far Right Fantasy is a nightmarish realm of racism, poverty, and pain.

It's not too late, Xers. You can still vote Blue this midterms and save the next generations from wingnut doom. GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS THIS 2022!!! 

If Trump Wins The Nomination, How Many Hispanics Flee The GOP?

I mentioned before about ethnicity as voting blocs in the United States.

As far as how Americans voted in 2012:

• The numbers came down to about 93 to 98 percent Blacks voting Democratic, which is as close to absolutely everyone in that bloc.  Given how the Republican Party is staging itself for 2016 - with voter suppression efforts and platform issues that would anger Blacks - there's little chance of the GOP breaking the Democratic monopoly on that bloc.
• There were about 70 percent give or take for Asians voting Democratic.  Of the ethnic groups, there's a shot Republicans could win more Asian voters their way, except for the fact Asians have a pro-immigrant stance that might be repelled by the harsh anti-immigrant stance the GOP is sticking with (again).  There are individual nationalities - Indian, Japanese, Chinese - that may as a group lean one party or another, but for now there's no singular issue that can divide this bloc.
• Hispanics/Latinos were around 70 to 71 percent voting Democratic.  Culturally, this is an ethnic group that's incredibly diverse yet sharing common enough points to be a unified bloc.  A lot of that is due to La Raza, a sense of community/family that highlights a religious-conservative bent... and yet a social-liberal one at the same time.

Hispanic voters are a key ingredient on the national level for Republicans.  Without enough of them to merge with the GOP voter base of Whites, Republicans can't see any good shot at the White House.  Dubya secured 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, which helped him win.  Romney secured 27 percent of the Latino vote and lost the popular vote - and a solid number of Hispanic-heavy states - by five points.

So here we are facing 2016.  Here's a Republican Party whose anti-immigration stance has already alienated a sizable portion of Hispanic voters to begin with.  And here comes Donald Trump insulting the sh-t out of Mexicans and talking about building a super-wall along the border (and forcing Mexico to pay for it).

Even with Trump boasting he'll win the Latino vote - which is so ludicrous I'm seeing conservative blogs choke on it - how can any sane, self-respecting Hispanic-American accept this guy?  There's a reason a lot of businesses are dumping Trump, and it all has to do with the fact he's insulting a growing and powerful voting (and economic) bloc.

If Trump really does secure the Republican nomination - and despite all hand-waving to the contrary by the experts, Trump is polling too well with an overly angry and fear-induced wingnut base that can dominate the primaries - just how bad is it gonna be for Republicans in dire need of Latino voters?

You can immediately take that 27 percent that voted for Mitt in 2012 and reduce it to ONE percent within a five percent range for statistical error.  There were 11.2 million Latinos who voted in 2012: give standard population growth or voter interest to go up a little, let's say to 13 million.  Let's be generous and give Trump five percent Hispanic voters (as per the statistical range).  Multiply 13,000,000 to .05 and you get 650,000 voters, less than a million.  At least Mitt got 3-plus million.

Because despite Trump's assertion, he has so openly and brazenly insulted Latinos - Mexicans in particular, but essentially every nationality from south of the border has to be offended - that there is no way he can win over that voting bloc.  Whatever promises Trump thinks he could make by the general election cycle - he seems to think he can offer a no-details "jobs" package - he's already violated the KEY rule - hi, Machiavelli! - of winning the people's favor: he's made himself hated.  Once they hate you, they will not and cannot forgive you.

The perfect example is the African-American voting bloc.  Once the Republicans openly pursued their Southern Strategy, they began losing Black voters in droves.  Going after social aid programs since the 1980s, massive voter suppression efforts geared at denying them access to the ballot since the 1990s, and then obstructing Obama since 2009: There's barely - maybe 5 percent - any Black Republicans left.  All because the GOP made themselves hated by Blacks as an entire group.

Going full anti-Immigrant - and doing so in an insulting manner - is going to drive away Latinos (and a good number of Asians who are affected on the same issue) to the same level as Black voters.  And there are not enough White voters - even though the overall population has Whites in a majority, we do not vote as solid a bloc as the other ethnics - who will cross over due to Trump's fear-mongering.  He's already got the base he's pandering to: there is no way he is winning over pro-Immigration Whites or even White voters with a lick of common sense and common decency.

This is the reason the RNC chair has reportedly called Trump this afternoon to tell him to "tone it down" (likely in not as polite a tone either).  The Republicans know they've lost the Black vote and have few illusions about breaking that bloc.  There are utterly terrified - they have to be - if the Latino bloc rejects the GOP en masse at the same percentages that Blacks have.  It would not only kill them in the Presidential election, it could well crush them in a dangerous Senate electoral cycle - there are 24 GOP-held seats up for grabs and a lot of them in Purple-Blue states - and even disrupt the gerrymandered control of the House and legislatures of certain Hispanic-heavy states.

Even if Trump loses the primaries or drops out, this is a bridge getting burned for the Republican Party: mostly because the Latinos have to be looking at the polling numbers go UP for Trump among the GOP primary likely voters, and they have to realize that this is what the Republican Party looks for in their leadership and messaging.

There are no sure things, obviously.  The history and trends, however, all point to the GOP alienating another voter bloc.  We need to see if there are updates to voter registration numbers: I'd love to see how many Hispanics are switching to No-Party or Democratic affiliation this past week alone...

Update: in Slate, Jamelle Bouie notes the Republican Party has a serious image problem with Latino voters already.

...In the past six years, GOP states have targeted Latinos for greater scrutiny, GOP officials have called for “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants, and GOP presidential candidates have stood with nakedly anti-immigrant politicians. And although there are smart, reasoned arguments against comprehensive immigration reform and other permissive immigration policies, the rhetoric that counts—that resonates with actual Republican voters—comes from figures such as Iowa Rep. Steve King, who once warned that a path to citizenship would “destroy our republic.”

At this point, Latinos don’t just oppose particular candidates, such as Mitt Romney. They disdain the Republican label itself. According to a 2014 survey from the Pew Research Center, just 10 percent of Latinos say that the Republican Party “has concern” for their communities, compared with 50 percent who say as much about the Democratic Party. Few agree with Republicans on policy—especially immigration—and just 27 percent of Latinos identify with the Republican Party, compared with 63 percent who identify with Democrats. Not surprisingly, this has carried over to the 2016 GOP presidential field. As of October, notes Latino Decisions, just 32 percent of Latino voters would consider a vote for Jeb Bush, just 35 percent would consider a vote for Sen. Marco Rubio, and just 24 percent would consider a vote for Sen. Ted Cruz (Note: Jeb, Rubio and Cruz are the candidates who are tied to the Hispanic community by marriage or blood, and thus viewed as the more 'palatable' to appeal to that bloc).

So the Republicans are in trouble already.  Trump is clearly not helping matters by stirring up the Far Right voting base - which ought to be the real concern here more than having an egomaniacal bankrupt con artist garner a primary lead - to expose just how fearful and hateful that primary voting base can get.  Right now, 63 percent Latinos identify as Democrat.  Just think how many will identify as Democrat if Trump wins the nomination on his platform of insult and debasement.

The Secret About White Voters

This was something I spotted on Think Progress earlier today:

...McAuliffe’s numbers among black voters are likely to improve as undecideds tune into the campaign, but right now he is not riding a groundswell of African-American enthusiasm. Instead, his relatively strong lead comes from a counter-intuitive Cuccinelli weakness: white voters.

In the simplest possible terms, Cuccinelli has a white voter shortage. Consider Romney’s performance in in the state in 2012 in what was, after all, a losing effort. Romney carried white voters by a very strong 23 points. By comparison, Cuccinelli only leads among whites by 8 in the Quinnipiac poll.

The mystery deepens when you break down the numbers even further. Among white college graduates, Cuccinelli is only breaking even (Romney won this group by 10 points). The difference can perhaps be explained by Cuccinelli’svery public identification with hardline social conservatism, though it’s hard to say for sure.

What’s really baffling is Cuccinelli’s underperformance with white working class voters, who tend to identify with more “traditional” moral values. In the Quinnipiac poll, Cuccinelli has a 16 point lead among these voters. This may sound good, but it is not remotely large enough for a GOP candidate to carry the state even allowing for the relatively favorable turnout patterns of an off-year election. Romney carried Virginia’s white working class by a whopping 44 points, and still wound up losing.

Cuccinelli may have assumed his far right economic and social positions would be catnip for Virginia’s white voters, especially the white working class. So far, that’s looking like a poor assumption...

The blogger Ruy Teixeira is wondering how candidate Cuccinelli - already a national name thanks to his grandstanding on climate change and pogrom against consensual sex acts - could be losing not just young white voters (as Millennials are proving more liberal at their young age than previous generational cycles) but also older more traditional white voters (the Angry White Guy Coalition).

Well, there's a little dirty secret about white voters that people seem to keep forgetting: well, you see white voters are not as monolithic a group of voters as the pollsters, hucksters, media elites and suckers think we are.

By comparison, let's look first at the major ethnic groups.  Blacks, as documented rather well, nowadays tend to vote entirely for Democrats: sure, there are notable exceptions of African-American conservatives, but they're honestly few and far between.  Blacks are by generational development more pro-government (for good reason), pro-voting-rights (for good reason), pro-public-works (which tends to focus on construction and urban development, both solid job markets).  On the political spectrum, a solid number of African-Americans would lean to the Liberal end, which is currently best represented by the Democrats.  But it's not so much that Blacks are whole-heartedly Democratic: it's that the Republican Party in its current form is so anti-government, anti-voting, anti-anything that it's driving away African-Americans (even moderate ones) to a near 93 percent (98 percent in major urban areas) population count.

Hispanics aren't as devout (that chart for Obama's results show 71 percent compared to Blacks' 93 percent), but still vote in large enough numbers for Democrats to make note (7 out of 10 is a very solid majority).  It's partly due to the Republicans' hard-right turn against immigration, but it also has to do with the Republicans' stance against government social services and health care.  Both are key issues to the Hispanic communities: Hispanics don't have the disdain for the public sector that the current Republicans do.  Where Hispanics can be more conservative on an individual basis, as a community they'll vote the community interests (La Raza as a social concept).  And community interests tend to lean more Liberal (shared resources, free or low-cost public education, health care, public works) than Conservative.  Which is one reason why the Republicans' failure to pass any immigration reform - which hurts the Hispanic community as a whole - is proving foolhardy...

Asians as a smaller percentage of the national population still vote much the way the Hispanic population does, voting for Obama in roughly the same 7 out of 10 percentage.  It doesn't help the GOP that Asians are also greatly affected by the failure of immigration reform.

Into all of this is the White voter bloc.  Other major ethnic groups - Blacks (9 out of 10), Hispanics (7 of 10), and Asians (7 of 10) - have definable voting blocs.  Whites?  While they're the only group to lean Republican,  it's a 59 percent to 39 percent split.  More like a 6 out of 10 vote, the weakest voting bloc by percentage out of the ethnic groups.

While White Americans share the largest overall numbers of the population, White voters overall don't follow clear voting habits: of the major ethnic groups, Whites have clear distinctions between Right, Moderate, and Left voting groups.  Part of it has to do with how little the White voters have at stake on certain issues, especially on immigration (Hispanics, Asians) and on voting rights and civil liberty issues (Blacks overcoming decades of Jim Crow and segregation).  Those issues can galvanize those ethnic groups like no other. Whites would get more worked up on issues like taxes and business regulation, which are more polarizing than galvanizing.  On issues shared between all ethnic groups - education and health care - again these are more polarizing due to their complexity, and while White voters may lean Conservative on those two issues they are not unilaterally inclined to do so.  There may be one issue where whites are more Conservative than others - gun ownership - but even then it's not as absolute a vote-getter as it's polarizing as any other issue.

There's another aspect of the dirty little secret about White voters: we're not as a group keyed to the idea about race conflict the way the GOP is preaching it.  Yes, there are a good number of Whites who take serious the "reverse racism" argument, but not a majority of whites do.  Left-leaning Whites clearly don't, and there are signs the Moderate White voting bloc won't as well:

...But if the GOP determines that its future lies with an all-out pursuit of whites, it might find an unwanted surprise. Some white voters, particularly young ones, won’t align themselves with a party that can’t attract support from Hispanics, African-Americans, and Asians. To attract more white voters, the GOP, ironically, might first need to attract more minorities.

That’s the central dilemma of any plan to win with a nearly all-white coalition. As the minority share grows with each presidential election, Republicans would need to win a greater and greater percentage of the white vote to prevail. That challenge proved insurmountable last year, when Mitt Romney won nearly 60 percent of white voters and still lost... 

...Seventy-six percent of likely millennial voters, for instance, say immigrants make the country a stronger place, according to a July poll from the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. Just 61 percent (Note: that's still a huge positive for immigration reform that the GOP is pissing off) of all likely voters agreed with that. “On a number of key issues, if the party appears to be intolerant of gays, minorities, or immigrants, it’s going to have trouble competing with this group,” says Michael Hais, a Democrat and a coauthor of the book Millennial Makeover...

...College-educated women and suburban moderates hold similar views. Both groups are more accepting of diversity, and they recoil at the notion of backing a party that doesn't encourage it. It’s a story that has played out in the GOP’s past, says Whit Ayers, a Republican pollster and immigration-reform advocate. The Republican Party’s perceived intolerance turned off voters who otherwise might have been drawn to the GOP on issues such as the economy and foreign policy. “It’s just like the white suburban women who were uncomfortable with politicians who used quasi-racist language,” he says. “They just don’t want to be associated with them.”

For all the crowing in the nation's media elites about America being a "center-right nation" or the counter-claim of it really being a "center-left nation", the ones making those distinctions keep focusing on the "right" and "left" and forgetting the "center" part.  The thing about the voters in the "center" (aka the Moderates): we tend to be open-minded, kinda the whole point of being moderate.  Moderates tend to be open-minded about voting rights and immigration reform, which as the GOP turns further to the Right on those issues will drive those Moderates away.  (Moderates also tend to vote for competency, a skill set the modern Republican lineup is failing at, but that's a divergent issue.  Just related, that's all).

To get back to the issue with Cuccinelli's failings in Virginia, I need to point out that while Virginia has a solid conservative voting base it's not a dominant one: the state isn't fully a Red State (Republican), it's voted Blue (Democratic) the last two elections for President and has voted for Democratic governors (2001, 2005) in its recent history during Republicans' national dominance (both governors now serve as U.S. Senators): Virginia tends to be considered a Purple state (in flux between two parties) far more than other states.

Cuccinelli is currently losing Virginia by about 6 percentage points behind a Democratic challenger - McAuliffe - who really isn't considered even by fellow Democrats to be the best possible choice for the Governor's seat.  That 6 percent difference is similar to the victory difference current Senator Tim Kaine won over his Republican challenger last fall.  And at this point in the election cycle (the governor vote is this November), it's not like Cuccinelli can rally even more Far Right voters who are already rallied for him to make up for that 6 percent difference: this is the point in the general election where the candidates have to appeal to the moderate/undecided voters.  But Cuccinelli's failures to lean more moderate on immigration (he noted he doesn't support amnesty, a key reform issue) doesn't help.

If Cuccinelli does fail in the Virginia election, it will be a big signal to the national Republican Party how their stance is failing with the moderate/centrist voters that are always key to any statewide/nationwide election (in gerrymandered congressional districts, independent votes tend to get wasted).  The Republican leaders - Limbaugh, Fox Not-News, and other non-elected types - always argue that they've lost the last big elections - 2008, 2012 - because the candidates were too moderate.  They won't be able to argue that with Cuccinelli: he's not moderate on anything, there's no way to disguise that.  And while this is a state-level election, the national interest in the campaign during a key mid-term period - especially as it's drawing in fund-raisers across the nation - will draw a lot of dissection and truth-seeking.

That Cuccinelli is "losing" the White Vote - he's actually losing a sizable bloc of it - isn't the reason I took notice of that Think Progress article.  It's that the Republican Party is losing that voting bloc.  I'm starting to feel a little hopeful about 2014...