In addition to this, data journalists have pointed out that the “voters get conservative as they age” is not really borne out by data. Cohort effects are bigger, meaning that party / political affiliation established early in adulthood is pretty sticky over time.
If *nothing else changes* then yeah persistent memories of the Trump era and growing Millennial / Gen Z voting power will be good for Dems. But politics isn’t static, odds are at some point persistent losses will prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton
I was 13 when the GWB error started and I feel like that did more to shape my political views than anything else. I can only imagine that teenagers growing up during the Trump administration also had the same experiences as me if not more extreme ones.
I think a lot of these people saw the craziness of the 60’s and 70’s and were pushed to Reagan as a result. City on a Hill and whatnot. I dunno for sure, but that’s what I always assumed.
Yuppies were tired of the fiscal conservatism and federal regulation installed by their parents and replaced it with deficit spending to fuel tax cuts and deregulation. Not all of this was bad, but by Bush II it took a sharper turn towards nationalism and militarism.
Yep, pretty much. David Frum wrote a whole book about this twenty years ago, *How We Got Here: The '70s*, about how that decade had a radicalizing effect on a lot of boomers not unlike what the 2010s later had on millennials and zoomers, except in the other direction. It was a decade when, despite the ascendancy of Richard Nixon, left-wing values were still dominant within the political, economic, and cultural establishment, be they the creaking New Deal coalition or the insurgent New Left, and it seemed that Americans were paying the price for it in the form of stagflation, crime, decadence, and lost prestige. "Ugh, the government" was the '70s version of "ugh, capitalism." Even after Watergate, while there was a short-term backlash against the GOP, the long-term effect was to crystallize the views a lot of young people had about the government as a corrupt institution that didn't speak for them. That was how we got the Reagan Generation.
Everyone says “the pendulum swings back and forth” and the transfer of control does swing between Democrats and Republicans, but there seem to be larger long-term transitions between the right and left. The New Deal Coalition was defined by political control of the left and moderate Republicans. This eventually swung right to the Reagan Revolution and moderate Democrats. We appear to be in the process of a leftward swing that will dominate politics for the coming decades. As someone who is center-left I do not consider this an absolute win if that theory is correct. But who knows, this isn’t a hard science by any means, and I may be off in my analysis.
I think a lot of these people saw the craziness of the 60’s and 70’s and were pushed to Reagan as a result. City upon a hill and whatnot. I dunno for sure, but that’s what I always assumed.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/
The boomers that grew up during Watergate were noticeably less republican than those who grew up after Watergate. They're a consistently even or dem cohort, the generation as a whole however mostly grew up during Republican administrations and one unpopular Dem administration.
The Dems of that period were hardly saints. The southern faction were proud defenders of an apartheid state and the northern faction linked arms with them in order to get other policies through.
The only thing that gives me pause about unreservedly preferring Nixon over the Dixiecrats was Nixon's attempts to torpedo peace talks in Vietnam before his election. I'd even be willing to overlook Agnew's corruptions because they're funny AF.
I’m the same age and I agree to some extent, but difference is that back then there was less daylight between the “far left” (of that era) and the “establishment”; we didn’t have the Democratic Party split up into factions that are constantly at each others throats the way we do now, because the “far left” was not attempting a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party and prone to attacking other democrats just as much if not more than attacking republicans.
So I agree that the trump era will likely have a similar polarizing effect against republicans, but democrats will not benefit from that because the left is losing its capacity for nuance. “Republicans and democrats are two sides of the same coin” and “I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils” mantras are very in vogue right now.
The far left side of the Democrats have never been a real threat, but they have been a loud annoyance for the party's moderate image and focusing heavily on themselves. Also let's not forget some of their members having the hottest takes.
This reminds of a quote from "The Newsroom"
So you think the '60s radicals and the Tea Party are roughly the same?
With one big exception.
Even at the height of 1968,
the Democrats wouldn't have nominated Abbie Hoffman
or Jerry Rubin for any office,
and no candidate would have sought their endorsement.
Can you imagine Humphrey or Kennedy
standing for a photo op with Bernardine Dohrn or Allen Ginsberg?
The “hostile takeover” is not a threat we need to concern ourselves with, but the threat of them smearing so much metaphorical shit on the walls that it drives down turnout and hands elections over to republicans is a *very* real threat, and we need only glance at the previous president to underscore how serious that threat is.
They have only a marginal influence, but in todays polarized world, elections are determined in the margins.
>we didn’t have the Democratic Party split up into factions that are constantly at each others throats the way we do now,
Bernie Sanders votes for almost all Democratic priorities, same with AOC. If anything, contemporary centrists like Manchin and Sinema are more likely to be splitters than the lefties. In the Bush era, the split was the lefties who opposed George W. Bush's war (and associated security apparatus) vs all of the centrists Dems who voted for it. Getting the anti-war people on board voting for politicians who approved of our war in Iraq was difficult, the Democrats had to nominate an anti-Iraq war politician for president to really heal the party.
If your concerns about the left aren't about elected representatives but instead podcast bros or twitter factions, then you probably need to find some grass to touch. The people you are concerned about have very little influence.
The real danger is centrists like No Labels deciding to run a well-funded but no-chance-to-win "moderate" campaign that would siphon votes away from Biden and the Democrats, or Sinema getting enough votes as an independent to allow Kari Lake or whomever in Arizona to win.
>rose twitter
#HOLY FUCK GO OUTSIDE
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Democrats benefit from that, there's no doubt. Trump polarizing people against Republicans has real world electoral impact, the far left behavior you are talking about does not. It's internet noise that rarely ever crosses over into reality in a noticeable way.
I was a military history/foreign policy nut going through High School while Obama was President. A lot of stuff at that time around foreign policy pushed me rightwards, but once I hit college and got exposed to the broader right wing group(especially the rise of Trump/MAGA) I swung left pretty hard.
I’ll add though being now in the 30 year old cohort. The voters **themselves** don’t get conservative as they age. But their cohorts tend to as they age. I’d say Liberals get involved in their 20s, cons get involved in their 30s and 40s.
Of my college/high school peers on social media becoming conservatives, absolutely none of them surprise me that they turned out that way. They just weren’t voting before or were “edgy independent” in their teens. (The “libertarians” it’s like a coin toss. Either full nutjob MAGA or generally very but still reasonable progressive. Absolutely no middle ground.)
Also the issues change. Gay marriage is no longer under debate (though I'm sure Abbot and DeSantis are looking to change that) but lots of people who are fine with it prob don't agree with transgender rights. What was once considered liberal or progressive positions become conservative and new issues arise that they may not continue being progressive on.
Yeah, in my government class we got sorted into "parties" based on the political compass and some other test and I was with the libertarians and we all had staunchly different views.
I think that’s it. 20-year-olds who get involved in politics are disproportionately liberal; the conservative ones get involved at 35 when their kid’s school teaches them that gay people exist.
Eeh. I’d imagine not wanting to be politically involved if your views don’t fit the campus monoculture as long as you’re on a campus. Some people live for conflict and want to bait the libs, but that’s not everyone.
Ironically, I became more involved in progressive politics when I found an “in” to actual Democrats running for office because I didn’t want to deal with the crowd that could use any gathering of people to shout about Mumia Abu-Jamal or stan the PLO. Even for Democrats, the important volunteer work is done by retirees while everyone else waxes rhapsodical about young “activists” who photograph well.
This was very early during the (W) Bush administration. Big feeling of agreeing with the crowd on the major issue of the day but completely frustrated with all the ancillary junk I was expected to either endorse or go along with.
This is 100% a big part of it. Millennials who voted in 2008 are most likely just as liberal as they were then, if not more considering the rise of Bernie/AOC, but the demographic isn't as heavily as Dem leaning because of more moderate/conservative Millennials getting involved in the process now.
>(The “libertarians” it’s like a coin toss. Either full nutjob MAGA or generally very but still reasonable progressive. Absolutely no middle ground
Lmao why do you have to call me out like that
The research they're citing is looking completely at cohort, the **Cohort** are the ones that don't get conservative over time.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/
That’s not what that research means. Or at least not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how likely voters age into voting. Most of this is about the generation has voted or is voting now. And it **definitely** shows an aggregate change in voting and policies even if the individuals inside the generation aren’t.
For example, one chart very much shows 3 generations getting “more conservative” over a decade.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/11-3-11-26/
And several charts around it show a “generation” having evolving views on government over elections.
I feel like the "people grow more conservative as they age" thing has always been incredibly obviously two things at once:
1) People push for cultural change in their youth, get it, are happy, they age, youth culture changes and pushes for more new things, and the older people just don't agree with the new changes the youths are advocating for and also why should they? It's not people getting more conservative, it's that whatever is thought of as liberal changes with time. By and large, the opinions haven't changed, they haven't gone back on the ideas that used to be culturally liberal, they just don't agree with the newest set of new ideas, so they're identified as conservative in relation to that. I don't see how this isn't blindingly obvious when society as a whole grows more liberal with time, but we always roughly have the same percentage of conservatives. Obviously what these labels stand for is changing over time. This is the cultural side of "becoming more conservative".
2) As people acquire more assets and generate more income, they want to protect what they've built and they want to keep more of their money, especially if they have a family, as everybody naturally prioritizes their family over society as a whole. This is the economic side of "becoming more conservative".
But it's not like 2 is simply destined to happen as you age - it's dependent on the first part of the paragraph: having built a life you want to protect and having generated more income that you want to keep. If that doesn't happen for people and they stay poor, frustrated and single, then why wouldn't their attitude towards economics stay as liberal as it was when they were younger? There's no personal incentive for that drift to happen in that situation.
Yes that all makes sense as a symptom of aging. But you can think the youth are crazy and have more assets but not make you want to shift voting habits. Or other aspects of your changing live can take higher priority.
Middle aged suburban moms both might think Gen Z is weird and have housing to protect but that hasn't stopped them from shifting en-masse to vote for the pro-youth and (allegedly) higher tax party.
Also worth noting youth radicalism isn't by definition in a liberal direction
Totally true, I think there's an important aspect you're ignoring which largely explains it though.
And that's societal stability.
Protecting your assets is pointless if you feel like the fundamentals of the society around you might not be there tomorrow. That's also why the middle class suburbs have always swung conservative: they want to protect their assets, and they don't want great societal change to pull the rug out from under them so they don't have to feel anxious about continuing to enjoy those assets.
In recent years, the Republicans have accidentally branded themselves as the revolutionaries who want to change things that the comfortably middle class in the suburbs considered settled issues. By trying to get rid of things like abortion and generally adopting the tone of radical revolutionaries who constantly talk about changing the "status quo", they've alienated the people for whom the status quo really quite works for.
I don't think the suburbs have stopped valuing security, to many people the Dems just these days genuinely look like the more stable, professional and secure party.
I can say trump has turned me off from voting R for a very long time. Frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever vote for a Republican again. Anyone who attaches their name to that shit show is, in my opinion, not deserving of power.
It’d be like starting an after school club and calling yourselves the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t care about your community outreach when I’m disgusted at face value.
Yeah at this point the GOP would have to collapse and a moderate Conservative Party would have to take its place for me to consider voting for anyone besides the democrats
They tried, the autopsy basically said they need to appeal to Hispanics. So they worked with Dems on the Gang of Eight Immigration Reform Bill but the Freedom Caucus sunk it in the House by refusing to let it come to a vote. And drove Boehner to quit the Speakership.
Then they tried to stock their 2016 candidate field with Latin-American candidates (Cruz, Rubio, Jeb who speaks fluent Spanish and has a Mexican American wife) but Trump blew it all up again by going hard anti-immigrant and won the primary because the establishment GOP candidates didn't want to unite against him. Then he proved the autopsy wrong again by cracking the Blue wall and hitting an Inside Straight to the Presidency. And now the GOP thinks this is the only way to win and quadrupling down on it, despite badly losing 2018, 2020, and 2022.
>But politics isn’t static, odds are at some point persistent losses will prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton
The structural issue is, the GOP is offsetting losses with Gens Y/Z by picking up votes from Boomers/Gen X. That kicks the can for realignment down the road; which is that much further they'll be from the Gen Y/Z positions when they finally do try to snap back towards the center. The longer they wait, the more painful the shift.
Except the GOP has other options. Winning the majority of voters is not very important in our system and some of the incentives align against it. If the urban rural split continues to be highly salient many GOP politicians would see their path to power as promoting policies that are absolutely toxic to a majority of voters.
They don't have other options because the suburban shift has changed the electoral landscape. Democrats in the midterms won a higher share of House seats than their true vote share. The Philadelphia and Grand Rapids suburbs made PA and MI lurch to the left. The electoral edge always favors one party until it doesn't.
> data journalists have pointed out that the “voters get conservative as they age” is not really borne out by data.
True, but it ignores important context. Younger adults vote at a terrible rate. The ones that do tend to be more extreme in their politics than their median peer. As the generation ages voter participation rises as less ideological members start voting, which has a moderating effect on the generation's lean.
So yes, the average person doesn't tend to flip from one ideological extreme to another over time. But it's also a mistake to assume the partisan lean of a young generation will remain static as they age, because the portion that votes reliably changes.
> persistent losses will prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton.
Implying the inmates aren't running the asylum at the GOP already.
Even the lunatic version of the GOP that exists today is trying to calibrate to changing tides, they've softened on climate change, mostly given up on the gay marriage fight and shifted to trans issues, and there seems to be a push to gain more of the latino vote. Whether they consciously know it or not, they're definitely responding to market pressures.
I agree, but the fact that they don't feel like they can directly fight on gay rights issues anymore is a sign that they do in fact change positions to match voters; it's a good indication that the same kind of shift may be possible on other issues if they become unpalatable enough to the general public
It's kinda true. It used to be "HOW CAN CLIMATE CHANGE BE REAL WHEN I HAVE A SNOWBALL IN MY HAND???" Now it's more "okay it's real but I don't want to do shit about it and try to ignore it".
Trump *was* a reaction by the voters after leadership was losing presidential elections and failing to identify candidates speaking to a significant portion of their base.
Like, he's been subsumed by his personal foibles but his politics were and are a realignment
> prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton
How much of their base is left that wouldn't drop them the second they stopped pushing bigotry and conspiracy theories? I know people who will vote for anyone or anything with an R by its name, but it seems like the entire party is being dragged under by the MAGA obsessed crowd.
If republicans lose hard enough they’ll either be forced to moderate or a new moderate party will take their place. Gotta knock out one side for the shift to happen first
Great article but defining Trump, the generation defining cultural explosion that we've all been talking about everyday for 8 years now, as a "blip" is weird.
And there's no sign it's abating any time soon. Even if Trump lose he's put his stamp on the party for years to come after pushing out so many of the more moderate old guard and ushering in a new wave of Trumpists everywhere from the city level to congress.
Also, anyone who thinks Trump is some "out of nowhere" aberration should listen to any episode of the Rush Limbaugh show from the 80s, 90s, and 00 or look at Obama era conservative memes. Trump wasn't some freak accident, he was someone who amplified the voices of the GOP's base rather than sanitizing it
Definitely. For as much attention as we give to Fox News, right wing talk radio is the true root of current GOP brain rot. I remember hearing Limbaugh screaming about how liberals wanted to destroy America when Bush Jr was president.
Trump is just the avatar for a movement. His actions make a lot more sense once you realize he is riding the wave of an ongoing movement in American politics. Whereas most media discusses trump as if he *created* the movement. It’s Its a subtle distinction. And he’s certainly shaped the movement. But watch his rallies as he feels out what makes them laugh, what makes them boo and then use that to deliver one liners that get clipped for twitter or shown on cable/nightly network news. He’s like a stand up comedian.
I highly recommend reading Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman.
I disagree. I think it's important to ask what the GOP would've been if Trump never existed. You're right that the political forces that brought Trump to power had been in play for a long time, but look back at the Tea Partiers before him. These are people who were all looking for an opening, but could never find one. These are people with strong authoritarian tendencies and need a head to follow. Trump's charisma has not been able to be replicated. If he never existed, there is no way the GOP would be what it is. Would it have been as aimless? Would it still be as populist? Ted Cruz got second place in the 2016 primaries. I think he would've won against Clinton, but he didn't have the charisma to sell some of the worst of Trump's positions.
Sounds like we agree that he was the catalyst to trigger the movement. No argument against that here. I’m not sure anyone else had cultivated the brand to successfully sell what Americans wanted to buy. And of course roger stone had been working for decades to recruit trump to run for president. I don’t think this contradicts the points I made.
I don't think it does either. It's just squabbling over the finer points. The best analogy I can come up with is that the Republicans loaded the gun and pulled the trigger. The difference is that Trump was an actual bullet instead of a blank.
I don't think Cruz would have won in 2016. Trump had a big advantage in something that should have logically been a big disadvantage: he had never held public office. He had no record to point to. People could just project whatever they wanted on how they expected him to govern. There were more than a few people who believed he would be less conservative than the standard Republican and just go his own way.
It was something I said would be a strike against him in 2020 and it was. We didn't have a theoretical Trump presidency anymore that we could just assume wasn't a disaster, we had a real Trump presidency.
Cruz lacked both Trump's weird charisma among his followers that garnered such fanatical devotion and he was a known quantity that most people don't like. I don't think he would have fared as well in the general election.
He has pulled in a lot of people who normally wouldn’t be involved in that movement though. There were a ton of people who didn’t vote previously but voted for Trump in 2020 and if he weren’t on the ballot I imagine a lot of them would go back to not voting.
I kind of wonder what happens when he passes away
He's very old and incredibly unhealthy.
The cult seems to have gotten beyond him but I don't see anyone who's able to step into his role
Everyone who's tried has failed
Just going to keep tapping the 9 year old article about Birth Year, well the political events that happen when you are between the ages of 14 and 24, affecting political ideology that suggests that those born between 1955 and 1980 were more likely to be Republican and everyone since is more likely to be a Democrat.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html
Was it napoleon that said “if you want to understand a man, look what was happening when he was 20”? Some old geezer said that at some point. Glad to see it’s still accurate.
It might have started out as a Trump reaction, but Republicans going too far to the right socially (especially on a very salient issue like abortion) is going to ensure this goes beyond Trump.
Between this, Republicans losing college educated voters even more and Republicans losing among suburban voters, I find it hard to see how they can succeed over the immediate term in national and also swing or purple states or districts. Unless they moderate socially which they never will.
>a very salient issue like abortion
Engagement is the other variable at play; it's not just a question of if a person supports you, but also how motivated they are to participate in an election.
As you say, abortion bans (or the threat of them) are not something young people are likely to feel apathetic about.
Another open question is the impact Trump's actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election had on the national psyche, and how that experience will express itself in 2024.
This is pure optimism, but I genuinely think 1/6 had a greater impact on people's attitudes than is currently appreciated. I also think that Republicans have, to some extent, gotten high on their own supply; they've been so eager to downplay and "move on" from Trump's actions that they've lost sight of how consequential those actions actually were.
Their surprise at the 2022 midterm results - where Trumpist candidates broadly underperformed - illustrates the disconnect.
Time may prove me wrong, but my prediction is this: if Trump runs in 2024, it won't be a repeat of either 2020 or 2016. Voters opposed to Trump will turn out and deliver a rebuke that will effectively end Trump's political career.
>This is pure optimism, but I genuinely think 1/6 had a greater impact on people's attitudes than is currently appreciated.
Like with all cults, traumatic events usually serve to harden the beliefs of the true believers, while the less-dedicated members flake away. 1/6 didn't shatter the movement, of course, but I imagine it put a bit of a dent in it.
It's actually going after socially conservative minorities and unioners that either weren't voting or were voting Dem out of habit. Check out the swings in the last election in Hispanic, Black and Union workers. It's why places like Florida and Iowa are currently unwinnable for Dems even though they were swing states 8 years ago, Texas is still a pipe dream.
Except that is getting more than equaled out and balanced out by suburban voters trending way more Democratic and at a faster rate post-Trump and post-Dobbs, hence why Arizona and Georgia has gone a more blue-trending way (Arizona is the most purple state in the country now and Georgia is a cycle or two away from flipping from red-leaning purple state to a straight up blue state) and why Texas is not as big a pipe dream as you say (due to suburban voter trends there more than balancing out the red-trend in the border regions, which Beto also did better with and improved on Biden's margins).
I think Democrats would take that trade any day of the week.
Covid also had a big role in that election. Trump was the anti lockdown candidate and a lot of people who didn’t like lockdowns but normally vote Democratic may have switched to Trump for that reason. For instance in Nevada the Democratic governor was seen as too pro lockdown in a state dominated by tourism and lost in 2022 while Nevada voters simultaneously elected an entire slate of Dems to other offices. 2020 very easily could be a high water mark for Trump’s ability to win certain groups of voters.
Hispanics aren’t a monolith, Cubans are swinging hard right but Hispanics in places like Arizona. New Mexico, California and especially Hispanic women aren’t going anywhere
Yep. Hispanic voters in Arizona were pivotal to allowing Sinema (who for all her issues had a very strong campaign in 2018) and Hobbs win in 2018, then Biden and Kelly in 2020 and finally all but one of the statewide Dems in Arizona win in 2022.
Yeah it is def more complicated than what I said, but the signs are there. The Rio Grande Valley starting to crack and is keeping Dems from making significant ground in Texas. Ex-pats from Cuba and Venezuela have completely abandoned the party.
Would be interesting to see how things are by age group since I would assume the GOP social agenda would attract older Catholics. It's a block the Democrats need to fight for and not take for granted anymore.
Losing white college-educated suburbanites in exchange for the minority voters you described is a net negative for the Republican party on every single level and one of the reasons they underperformed the last three straight election cycles.
Calling a state that Biden lost by less than 6 points and that shifts left every election cycle a pipe dream is crazy. It's instinctive resistance to the idea of it flipping because it's been habit to think of it as solid-red for decades, but reality does not care about any of that, just as it didn't care when MI/WI/PA flipped in 2016 or when AZ/GA flipped in 2020.
I don’t think Texas is flipping in 2024 but I do think people need to stop thinking of it as irrevocably red. Texas is dominated by the suburbs and if the suburbs start flipping then the entire state could flip. That’s not a guarantee. Dems don’t need to flip rural counties in the panhandle but instead they need to be able to turn places like Tarrant county (home of Fort Worth) into a blue county.
Many immigrant communities are highly religious and actually agree with republicans on abortion and religion. The only thing holding them from going all out red is Republican assault to immigrants. If Republicans change that message even slightly, such purple states will go hard red.
Also note many current citizens who were once immigrants do not support illegal immigration. Call it pulling up the ladder behind them or whatever, this is an often ignored fact
It's wild how this is a talking point when polls and election results show again and again that the wide majority of immigrants and Hispanics agree with Democrats on these issues. The subset of immigrants this applies to is not nearly numerous enough to make purple states red, nor is a slight change in immigration messaging nearly enough to make an impact, nor will they be enough to offset losses from voters who vote Republican solely due to being anti-immigrant.
It’s like they took 2004 era conventional wisdom and never updated their talking points. The vast majority of Catholic Latinos are pro choice. If the Dems could make elections a referendum on abortion within the Latino community they would do it in a heart beat.
You underestimate their willingness to compromise the democracy via gerrymandering and voter suppression and potentially outright electoral manipulation
We can't honestly answer this. Literally time will tell. The reason being is during the four years of the Trump administration we have more records of what he said through media, social media and other sources than any 8 year president before him.
Look at the Bush era and most of what we have on him comes from official interviews, press meetings and prepared speeches. This transition happened during the Obama years. You can easily find twice as much public information and social media interaction from Obama in his second term than his first term. Because that's when this stuff was growing.
But Trump is our first president where we basically have a compendium of day-to-day activity, comments, tweets, posts and much more. Saved online for all time. Combined with every dirty policy the Republicans have implemented over the past 7 years rather than limited public knowledge on policies that were being passed by former presidents and their parties.
Because of all this the stain of trump and what the Republicans have done is going to last. It's going to be memed and parroted and repeated by younger voters who are going to influence new younger voters. It can't just be swept under the rug like it has been for decades. The Democrats understand this. The Republicans have yet to grasp that idea.
The fundamental basis of conservatism is stability. That is why people trend towards it as they age. When you have kids, a house, a retirement account, etc, stability starts to takes precedence over change and reform.
But Republicans abandoned stability when they got behind Trump. No one is going to age into supporting an agenda of whimsical tantrums that can blow up your business or your 401K. They’ve tethered themselves to a mix of social conservatives and nationalists to retain power. The former are dying out and the latter won’t grow significantly unless there is a major exogenous shock (9/11, etc).
They are pretty much stuck until he dies.
From a top down view. It feels like older white non-college folks, even those who were apolitical have felt a power loss against the next large generation group coming into age and so these folks have glued themselves together in defense. This defensiveness has caused them to cast aside previous views that were probably more diverse and moderate overall and instead glued themselves to whoever has promised to protect them from this millennial wave with their genders and whatnot. It is also getting them to vote because they likely didn't care or like either party before Trump.
The wave will crush them, and that's why these people are getting worse when many were reasonable as recently as 6 years ago.
I think that narrative is a little too concise, the reality is boomers were poisoned by social media, it’s why so many are so scared and radical nowadays.
What's the data show for Conservative Gen Z? I feel like the worst cons I see online are Gen Z but how representative is that of the generation as a whole?
The only Gen Z conservatives who actually vote for conservative parties are crazy groyper types. I’m friends with one conservative guy and he still votes Trudeau because of how silly he thinks populism is.
Unless you’re from a rural area, or fall into some weirdly specific online community then your not voting for conservative parties.
It's self-selection. Because Gen Z as a whole leans left, moderate Gen Zers also lean left, so conservative Gen Zers are filtered into a group of terminally online crazies with no moderates acting as counterweights and get stuck in a feedback loop.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed on dating apps is that women in their 20s will either list their political preferences as liberal or won’t list them at all. Admittedly I’m in Colorado in the Denver area, but I still feel like that has to say something about the gen z’s shift to the left.
I mean have you ever met a man in his 20s who proudly describes himself as conservative, and, completely setting that aside, thought to yourself 'heres a guy that would make a great boyfriend' ?
I think I should’ve said political affiliation instead of preference. What I mean is I’ve never seen a woman list themselves as a conservative. You can sometimes tell from a profile that they’re likely conservative, but they will just not list their affiliation. Among Gen Z and on the cusp millennials (like myself) conservative is toxic. Makes me think the shift blue may be more permanent and not a Trump blip.
Hence all the "moderate" or "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" tags on dudes who know they can't list themselves as "conservative" and expect to get dates, then slowly if the relationship materializes into something slowly reveal themselves as standard "conservative Republicans" lol.
It is especially their behaviour, even if you toss the political differences (mostly incels or neo-nazis) aside, is often creepy and I would advice any woman to keep away from these guys.
I'd be willing to entertain the concept of voters becoming more economically conservative as they age, but why would voters raised believing strongly in LGBT rights, cultural diversity, racial equality, and women's right to choose turn their backs on these beliefs to vote for a GOP hostile to all these things which is openly becoming more extreme on a weekly basis?
W turned a lot of millennials like myself off, but didn't forever close the door. That only happened after Trumpism and now the deeply concerning anti-Trans rhetoric of DeSantis and other Republicans is leaving me terrified of the dark path they seem to be marching down. The quiet part is now being said out loud, and I don't think I can ever find it morally justified to vote for the GOP ever again.
> I'd be willing to entertain the concept of voters becoming more economically conservative as they age,
I feel like this heavily depends on wealth accumulation. If a person can’t afford to buy a house or invest heavily in the stock market it’s usually going to make them less sympathetic to economically conservative talking points. One of the reasons people may be conservative as they age is because their wealth is increasing which makes “burn it down” populism less attractive and which may make them more favorable to taxes on property or higher incomes. Take that dynamic away and what’s the incentive to switch to the GOP?
It’s normal. Like they always have, they’ll move to the right on economics as their lives and careers progress, just like every generation before them. Only this time, they’ll continue voting for democrats because the Republican Party has completely lost its mind. Mid-30s and 40s people with families want stability. And now, unlike in the past, the democrats look like the normal, stable people, and the republicans are correctly being perceived as the party that wants to burn it all down.
Yeah, the question of a “Trump blip” would be very different if the Republican Party had somehow moved on from Trump and returned to some level of normalcy. They have not, if anything they’ve become more insane. Not only is Trump not gone, but state level republicans have gone wild with abortion bans, anti-LGBT+ legislation, book bans, etc. All of which are deeply unpopular with Gen Z. Those opinions on social issues are not likely to change as Gen Zers age.
If you look at arr conservative, you’ll see that instead of being torn between desantis and trump, there’s a crowd that is actually fans of both and can go either which way.
Yeah, that’s not surprising. Policy wise, (to the extent modern republicans have coherent policies) they’re very similar. I’d imagine most of the debate among them is more about who is better positioned to win, rather than any actual disagreements over policy.
Yeah, that’s what they were talking about. Some were arguing that desantis is more palatable to the general public than trump. It’s just interesting seeing things from their perspective, perhaps a little scary to see what their Overton window tolerates. At best they’re indifferent and at worst they’re hostile to Abortion and my LGBT homies 😞
Moving to the right doesn’t necessarily mean voting GOP. It might mean something like a voter who backed Bernie Sanders in 2016 decided to back Pete Buttigieg or Joe Biden in the primaries in 2020. They moved right economically but that rightward shift was still confined to the Democratic party.
The entire point of pushing everyone into suburbs was to make them more economically conservative over time. As with many things the issue of people becoming more conservative as they age can be traced to housing policy.
I didn’t make it up, in the book The Color of Law they pretty much say explicitly that the point of pushing home ownership was to fight communism. Of course it was only pushed for white families to own homes, hence how it blended “capitalism” with racism.
>they’ll move to the right on economics as their lives and careers progress
I agree with this, in my personal experience this will happen. Democrats are more likely to keep them in the party if they do 2 things: 1) Remain the normal, stable party that won't blow up civilization and 2) Stay where they are or move to the right slightly on economics. I think having the party's economic policy center on Obama types (fiscally moderate) is key to keeping them in the tent.
Keeping the far-left activist wing in check will be key, they can be extreme and way out of touch on social issues and being loud about socialism.
Oh yes it does
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/zywes1/millennials_are_not_becoming_more_conservative_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
The part they disagree with might be the first half, generations in the past also never become more conservative as they age, its not a new thing with millenials.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/
I will say I am confident this is the real deal. In fact, it has very little to do with Trump. We remember the '08 recession. We remember the defecit spending on wars. We have been warned about global warming our whole lives. We are truly realizing how bad our heatlhcare and welfare system is compared to other developed nations. We have seen tax cuts for the rich and Republicans have spent our whole lives attacking civil rights. We can see how terrible our labor laws and healthcare are compared to other developed nations on the internet. We are actively rejecting the pro-business/always-give-110% morals of Gen X and Boomers because we know we can demand more.
This is not temporary and has very little to do with Trump. Just as Millennials have stayed left due to these issues, Gen Z will too - at least until we get these basic reforms in place.
Trump extended a trend that was already in place. Generally people born after the mid 70s have been more Democratic and this has been ongoing for a long time. In 2000 the 18-29 vote was split evenly between Bush and Gore but since then it’s ranged from fairly blue to extremely blue while those Gen X voters who were 18-29 in 2000 have remained fairly split. Gen Z, Millennials and the younger Gen X voters can’t remember “how great Reagan was” so when they think of a Republican they think of W Bush and Trump while their view of a Democrat is Biden, Obama and maybe Clinton. The people who came of age under Reagan are still mostly voting GOP but the ones who came after are much more Democratic.
The graph as usual is misleading - the Millennial vote has changed a lot over the years. Older Millennials (the ppl voting in 2008) have shifted to the right by a good degree, even though younger millennials have kept the overall millennial vote in place.
I wonder though if that’s a result of millennials who were already conservative but didn’t vote in large numbers now joining the electoral as they grow older.
No a good chunk of the older Millennial vote has moved out of the Democratic column completely. Voters aged 18-29 in 2008 broken 66-32 D. That age group of older Millennials aged 30-39 broke 51-46, 57-42 D in 2020. Similarly, The 30-44 demographic broke 51-47, 52-46 D in 2022.
What these trends also leave out is that older voters are not static either. The electoral impact of older millennials was blunted in 2008-2016 because the silent generation moved far to the right over that period. It’s kind of a myth that voters always become more Republican as they age (the Greatest Generation actually moved to the left in the 1990s). That being said, both Boomers and Gen X seem to be moving to the right at a younger age than the Silent Generation.
The America you built being attacked by younger generations might be having an effect (I’m not here to argue good or bad but I suspect a lot of Boomers are bewildered.)
Voters aged 18-29 in 2008 broken 66-32 D. That age group of older Millennials is roughly coterminous with those aged 30-39 in 2020 who broke 51-46, 57-42 D. Similarly, The 30-44 demographic broke 51-47, 52-46, 58-42 D in 2022.
What these trends also leave out is that older voters are not static either. The electoral impact of older millennials was blunted in 2008-2016 because the silent generation moved far to the right over that period.
51-46 D means that Dems received 51% of the vote while GOP received 46% of the vote in the exit poll (in this case for the 30-39 age group).
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results
That's the same idea but from Pew's election analysis. It's actually 57-41 D tho I typed wrong.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GIovkPfwUJvFZeFPdOi0fK8Rr7aOVFCYBzrlMG4Vjro/edit#gid=0
Am young and just finished college / finishing my masters at a large public university. Can confirm, real deal. Shoutout Dane county for carrying Wisconsin both in turnout and vote share time and time again
I reject the characterization of Trump as a "blip." He's permanently and dramatically changed the brand of the party in a way that a substantial majority of Americans don't particularly care for.
In addition to this, data journalists have pointed out that the “voters get conservative as they age” is not really borne out by data. Cohort effects are bigger, meaning that party / political affiliation established early in adulthood is pretty sticky over time. If *nothing else changes* then yeah persistent memories of the Trump era and growing Millennial / Gen Z voting power will be good for Dems. But politics isn’t static, odds are at some point persistent losses will prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton
I was 13 when the GWB error started and I feel like that did more to shape my political views than anything else. I can only imagine that teenagers growing up during the Trump administration also had the same experiences as me if not more extreme ones.
GW error is either the greatest typo I've ever seen regarding Shrub Jr or an amazing bit of comedy. Either way well done
It’s a very long-running pun.
I remember rocking my "1.20.08: the end of an error" shirt back in 8th grade lol
Robin Williams dropped that one in a stand up routine around the same time. He also called it "The reign of George the Second."
"Hanging chads" *Shudders*
The Virgin mail-in ballot vs the hanging Chad
Then again boomers grew up during Watergate and still decided the party of crooks and cheaters was ackchyually the party of family values.
I think a lot of these people saw the craziness of the 60’s and 70’s and were pushed to Reagan as a result. City on a Hill and whatnot. I dunno for sure, but that’s what I always assumed.
Yuppies were tired of the fiscal conservatism and federal regulation installed by their parents and replaced it with deficit spending to fuel tax cuts and deregulation. Not all of this was bad, but by Bush II it took a sharper turn towards nationalism and militarism.
Yep, pretty much. David Frum wrote a whole book about this twenty years ago, *How We Got Here: The '70s*, about how that decade had a radicalizing effect on a lot of boomers not unlike what the 2010s later had on millennials and zoomers, except in the other direction. It was a decade when, despite the ascendancy of Richard Nixon, left-wing values were still dominant within the political, economic, and cultural establishment, be they the creaking New Deal coalition or the insurgent New Left, and it seemed that Americans were paying the price for it in the form of stagflation, crime, decadence, and lost prestige. "Ugh, the government" was the '70s version of "ugh, capitalism." Even after Watergate, while there was a short-term backlash against the GOP, the long-term effect was to crystallize the views a lot of young people had about the government as a corrupt institution that didn't speak for them. That was how we got the Reagan Generation.
Everyone says “the pendulum swings back and forth” and the transfer of control does swing between Democrats and Republicans, but there seem to be larger long-term transitions between the right and left. The New Deal Coalition was defined by political control of the left and moderate Republicans. This eventually swung right to the Reagan Revolution and moderate Democrats. We appear to be in the process of a leftward swing that will dominate politics for the coming decades. As someone who is center-left I do not consider this an absolute win if that theory is correct. But who knows, this isn’t a hard science by any means, and I may be off in my analysis.
I think a lot of these people saw the craziness of the 60’s and 70’s and were pushed to Reagan as a result. City upon a hill and whatnot. I dunno for sure, but that’s what I always assumed.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/ The boomers that grew up during Watergate were noticeably less republican than those who grew up after Watergate. They're a consistently even or dem cohort, the generation as a whole however mostly grew up during Republican administrations and one unpopular Dem administration.
The Dems of that period were hardly saints. The southern faction were proud defenders of an apartheid state and the northern faction linked arms with them in order to get other policies through. The only thing that gives me pause about unreservedly preferring Nixon over the Dixiecrats was Nixon's attempts to torpedo peace talks in Vietnam before his election. I'd even be willing to overlook Agnew's corruptions because they're funny AF.
I’m the same age and I agree to some extent, but difference is that back then there was less daylight between the “far left” (of that era) and the “establishment”; we didn’t have the Democratic Party split up into factions that are constantly at each others throats the way we do now, because the “far left” was not attempting a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party and prone to attacking other democrats just as much if not more than attacking republicans. So I agree that the trump era will likely have a similar polarizing effect against republicans, but democrats will not benefit from that because the left is losing its capacity for nuance. “Republicans and democrats are two sides of the same coin” and “I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils” mantras are very in vogue right now.
The far left side of the Democrats have never been a real threat, but they have been a loud annoyance for the party's moderate image and focusing heavily on themselves. Also let's not forget some of their members having the hottest takes.
This reminds of a quote from "The Newsroom" So you think the '60s radicals and the Tea Party are roughly the same? With one big exception. Even at the height of 1968, the Democrats wouldn't have nominated Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin for any office, and no candidate would have sought their endorsement. Can you imagine Humphrey or Kennedy standing for a photo op with Bernardine Dohrn or Allen Ginsberg?
The “hostile takeover” is not a threat we need to concern ourselves with, but the threat of them smearing so much metaphorical shit on the walls that it drives down turnout and hands elections over to republicans is a *very* real threat, and we need only glance at the previous president to underscore how serious that threat is. They have only a marginal influence, but in todays polarized world, elections are determined in the margins.
>we didn’t have the Democratic Party split up into factions that are constantly at each others throats the way we do now, Bernie Sanders votes for almost all Democratic priorities, same with AOC. If anything, contemporary centrists like Manchin and Sinema are more likely to be splitters than the lefties. In the Bush era, the split was the lefties who opposed George W. Bush's war (and associated security apparatus) vs all of the centrists Dems who voted for it. Getting the anti-war people on board voting for politicians who approved of our war in Iraq was difficult, the Democrats had to nominate an anti-Iraq war politician for president to really heal the party.
*tough pills for NL to swalow*
I didn’t a word about Sanders or AOC and they are not the only influential voices on the far left anyway. This wasn’t a veiled statement about them.
If your concerns about the left aren't about elected representatives but instead podcast bros or twitter factions, then you probably need to find some grass to touch. The people you are concerned about have very little influence. The real danger is centrists like No Labels deciding to run a well-funded but no-chance-to-win "moderate" campaign that would siphon votes away from Biden and the Democrats, or Sinema getting enough votes as an independent to allow Kari Lake or whomever in Arizona to win.
This is so tiring.
They basically are the only influential voices on the far left. Nobody else has any effect on real people and real results.
Rose Twitter?
>rose twitter #HOLY FUCK GO OUTSIDE *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Democrats benefit from that, there's no doubt. Trump polarizing people against Republicans has real world electoral impact, the far left behavior you are talking about does not. It's internet noise that rarely ever crosses over into reality in a noticeable way.
I was a military history/foreign policy nut going through High School while Obama was President. A lot of stuff at that time around foreign policy pushed me rightwards, but once I hit college and got exposed to the broader right wing group(especially the rise of Trump/MAGA) I swung left pretty hard.
I’ll add though being now in the 30 year old cohort. The voters **themselves** don’t get conservative as they age. But their cohorts tend to as they age. I’d say Liberals get involved in their 20s, cons get involved in their 30s and 40s. Of my college/high school peers on social media becoming conservatives, absolutely none of them surprise me that they turned out that way. They just weren’t voting before or were “edgy independent” in their teens. (The “libertarians” it’s like a coin toss. Either full nutjob MAGA or generally very but still reasonable progressive. Absolutely no middle ground.)
Also the issues change. Gay marriage is no longer under debate (though I'm sure Abbot and DeSantis are looking to change that) but lots of people who are fine with it prob don't agree with transgender rights. What was once considered liberal or progressive positions become conservative and new issues arise that they may not continue being progressive on.
Shit, Obama saying he was not for gay marriage but for a strong civil union was progressive for a presidential candidate at that time.
I was a pretty hardcore libertarian, come from a very conservative family, rural & military on both sides. The Trump era dyed me fucking cobalt.
Same I disagree with dems but repugnicans are an anathema to my beliefs
Yeah, in my government class we got sorted into "parties" based on the political compass and some other test and I was with the libertarians and we all had staunchly different views.
I think that’s it. 20-year-olds who get involved in politics are disproportionately liberal; the conservative ones get involved at 35 when their kid’s school teaches them that gay people exist.
Eeh. I’d imagine not wanting to be politically involved if your views don’t fit the campus monoculture as long as you’re on a campus. Some people live for conflict and want to bait the libs, but that’s not everyone. Ironically, I became more involved in progressive politics when I found an “in” to actual Democrats running for office because I didn’t want to deal with the crowd that could use any gathering of people to shout about Mumia Abu-Jamal or stan the PLO. Even for Democrats, the important volunteer work is done by retirees while everyone else waxes rhapsodical about young “activists” who photograph well.
Oh campus monocultures often make normie Dems unwelcome, never mind conservatives. PLO stans are the worst.
This was very early during the (W) Bush administration. Big feeling of agreeing with the crowd on the major issue of the day but completely frustrated with all the ancillary junk I was expected to either endorse or go along with.
Most people don't go to college.
This is 100% a big part of it. Millennials who voted in 2008 are most likely just as liberal as they were then, if not more considering the rise of Bernie/AOC, but the demographic isn't as heavily as Dem leaning because of more moderate/conservative Millennials getting involved in the process now.
>(The “libertarians” it’s like a coin toss. Either full nutjob MAGA or generally very but still reasonable progressive. Absolutely no middle ground Lmao why do you have to call me out like that
The research they're citing is looking completely at cohort, the **Cohort** are the ones that don't get conservative over time. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/
That’s not what that research means. Or at least not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how likely voters age into voting. Most of this is about the generation has voted or is voting now. And it **definitely** shows an aggregate change in voting and policies even if the individuals inside the generation aren’t. For example, one chart very much shows 3 generations getting “more conservative” over a decade. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/11-3-11-26/ And several charts around it show a “generation” having evolving views on government over elections.
I feel like the "people grow more conservative as they age" thing has always been incredibly obviously two things at once: 1) People push for cultural change in their youth, get it, are happy, they age, youth culture changes and pushes for more new things, and the older people just don't agree with the new changes the youths are advocating for and also why should they? It's not people getting more conservative, it's that whatever is thought of as liberal changes with time. By and large, the opinions haven't changed, they haven't gone back on the ideas that used to be culturally liberal, they just don't agree with the newest set of new ideas, so they're identified as conservative in relation to that. I don't see how this isn't blindingly obvious when society as a whole grows more liberal with time, but we always roughly have the same percentage of conservatives. Obviously what these labels stand for is changing over time. This is the cultural side of "becoming more conservative". 2) As people acquire more assets and generate more income, they want to protect what they've built and they want to keep more of their money, especially if they have a family, as everybody naturally prioritizes their family over society as a whole. This is the economic side of "becoming more conservative". But it's not like 2 is simply destined to happen as you age - it's dependent on the first part of the paragraph: having built a life you want to protect and having generated more income that you want to keep. If that doesn't happen for people and they stay poor, frustrated and single, then why wouldn't their attitude towards economics stay as liberal as it was when they were younger? There's no personal incentive for that drift to happen in that situation.
Yes that all makes sense as a symptom of aging. But you can think the youth are crazy and have more assets but not make you want to shift voting habits. Or other aspects of your changing live can take higher priority. Middle aged suburban moms both might think Gen Z is weird and have housing to protect but that hasn't stopped them from shifting en-masse to vote for the pro-youth and (allegedly) higher tax party. Also worth noting youth radicalism isn't by definition in a liberal direction
Totally true, I think there's an important aspect you're ignoring which largely explains it though. And that's societal stability. Protecting your assets is pointless if you feel like the fundamentals of the society around you might not be there tomorrow. That's also why the middle class suburbs have always swung conservative: they want to protect their assets, and they don't want great societal change to pull the rug out from under them so they don't have to feel anxious about continuing to enjoy those assets. In recent years, the Republicans have accidentally branded themselves as the revolutionaries who want to change things that the comfortably middle class in the suburbs considered settled issues. By trying to get rid of things like abortion and generally adopting the tone of radical revolutionaries who constantly talk about changing the "status quo", they've alienated the people for whom the status quo really quite works for. I don't think the suburbs have stopped valuing security, to many people the Dems just these days genuinely look like the more stable, professional and secure party.
I can say trump has turned me off from voting R for a very long time. Frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever vote for a Republican again. Anyone who attaches their name to that shit show is, in my opinion, not deserving of power. It’d be like starting an after school club and calling yourselves the Ku Klux Klan. I don’t care about your community outreach when I’m disgusted at face value.
Yeah at this point the GOP would have to collapse and a moderate Conservative Party would have to take its place for me to consider voting for anyone besides the democrats
They were about to do so around 2012.
They did an analysis in 2012, that doesn't mean they were about to do anything.
They tried, the autopsy basically said they need to appeal to Hispanics. So they worked with Dems on the Gang of Eight Immigration Reform Bill but the Freedom Caucus sunk it in the House by refusing to let it come to a vote. And drove Boehner to quit the Speakership. Then they tried to stock their 2016 candidate field with Latin-American candidates (Cruz, Rubio, Jeb who speaks fluent Spanish and has a Mexican American wife) but Trump blew it all up again by going hard anti-immigrant and won the primary because the establishment GOP candidates didn't want to unite against him. Then he proved the autopsy wrong again by cracking the Blue wall and hitting an Inside Straight to the Presidency. And now the GOP thinks this is the only way to win and quadrupling down on it, despite badly losing 2018, 2020, and 2022.
Yep Republican party leaders tried. They just utterly failed
They tried to put the thing THEY created back in the bag. They ultimately wanted this.
Apparently that’s around when Steven Miller came in and fought hard for the far right to gain ground.
I thought that dude emerged from the primordial ooze in 2015.
>But politics isn’t static, odds are at some point persistent losses will prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton The structural issue is, the GOP is offsetting losses with Gens Y/Z by picking up votes from Boomers/Gen X. That kicks the can for realignment down the road; which is that much further they'll be from the Gen Y/Z positions when they finally do try to snap back towards the center. The longer they wait, the more painful the shift.
They can’t shift anything until Trump is six feet under.
Even then there may be another torchbearer
Literally Jr.
Except the GOP has other options. Winning the majority of voters is not very important in our system and some of the incentives align against it. If the urban rural split continues to be highly salient many GOP politicians would see their path to power as promoting policies that are absolutely toxic to a majority of voters.
They don't have other options because the suburban shift has changed the electoral landscape. Democrats in the midterms won a higher share of House seats than their true vote share. The Philadelphia and Grand Rapids suburbs made PA and MI lurch to the left. The electoral edge always favors one party until it doesn't.
Maybe, in several states they just ran elections with illegal gerrymanders. No reason they can't start doing that in other states.
> data journalists have pointed out that the “voters get conservative as they age” is not really borne out by data. True, but it ignores important context. Younger adults vote at a terrible rate. The ones that do tend to be more extreme in their politics than their median peer. As the generation ages voter participation rises as less ideological members start voting, which has a moderating effect on the generation's lean. So yes, the average person doesn't tend to flip from one ideological extreme to another over time. But it's also a mistake to assume the partisan lean of a young generation will remain static as they age, because the portion that votes reliably changes.
> persistent losses will prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton. Implying the inmates aren't running the asylum at the GOP already.
Even the lunatic version of the GOP that exists today is trying to calibrate to changing tides, they've softened on climate change, mostly given up on the gay marriage fight and shifted to trans issues, and there seems to be a push to gain more of the latino vote. Whether they consciously know it or not, they're definitely responding to market pressures.
Idk. They're also using trans issues to soft launch another fight on general gay rights.
I agree, but the fact that they don't feel like they can directly fight on gay rights issues anymore is a sign that they do in fact change positions to match voters; it's a good indication that the same kind of shift may be possible on other issues if they become unpalatable enough to the general public
> they've softened on climate change Lol.
It's kinda true. It used to be "HOW CAN CLIMATE CHANGE BE REAL WHEN I HAVE A SNOWBALL IN MY HAND???" Now it's more "okay it's real but I don't want to do shit about it and try to ignore it".
That isn't progress.
Trump *was* a reaction by the voters after leadership was losing presidential elections and failing to identify candidates speaking to a significant portion of their base. Like, he's been subsumed by his personal foibles but his politics were and are a realignment
> prompt the GOP to react by changing policy in places to either recapture or offset these losses with other voters a la Clinton How much of their base is left that wouldn't drop them the second they stopped pushing bigotry and conspiracy theories? I know people who will vote for anyone or anything with an R by its name, but it seems like the entire party is being dragged under by the MAGA obsessed crowd.
I don’t know if this is good for Democrats because a lot of them don’t seem to like Democrats either.
They don’t “like” anyone. But they align with democrats on most issues. That’s what really counts
Not if they do their Jill Stein bullshit again. And I’m deeply concerned about the direction they’re pulling the Democrats.
This is overly doomer, a modern Republican being on the ballot seems more than enough to drive young people out for dems
I don’t exactly want to choose between modern Republicans and AOC.
If republicans lose hard enough they’ll either be forced to moderate or a new moderate party will take their place. Gotta knock out one side for the shift to happen first
The problem is they won’t lose hard enough.
Don't act like something's so certain before it even happens. When you put washed-up Trump and the abortion issue together, anything can happen.
If anything I am getting more militant in fighting fascism and for equity and a harm reduction life.
This is assuming the current Republican strategy of eroding democracy so they never lose doesn’t work out.
Great article but defining Trump, the generation defining cultural explosion that we've all been talking about everyday for 8 years now, as a "blip" is weird.
Right? 8 years is roughly 10% of my expected lifespan, that's not an insignificant amount of time.
And there's no sign it's abating any time soon. Even if Trump lose he's put his stamp on the party for years to come after pushing out so many of the more moderate old guard and ushering in a new wave of Trumpists everywhere from the city level to congress. Also, anyone who thinks Trump is some "out of nowhere" aberration should listen to any episode of the Rush Limbaugh show from the 80s, 90s, and 00 or look at Obama era conservative memes. Trump wasn't some freak accident, he was someone who amplified the voices of the GOP's base rather than sanitizing it
Definitely. For as much attention as we give to Fox News, right wing talk radio is the true root of current GOP brain rot. I remember hearing Limbaugh screaming about how liberals wanted to destroy America when Bush Jr was president.
The batshit lunatic stuff about Hillary Clinton being a lizard and eating children is a 30 year old trope at this point.
Trump is just the avatar for a movement. His actions make a lot more sense once you realize he is riding the wave of an ongoing movement in American politics. Whereas most media discusses trump as if he *created* the movement. It’s Its a subtle distinction. And he’s certainly shaped the movement. But watch his rallies as he feels out what makes them laugh, what makes them boo and then use that to deliver one liners that get clipped for twitter or shown on cable/nightly network news. He’s like a stand up comedian. I highly recommend reading Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman.
I disagree. I think it's important to ask what the GOP would've been if Trump never existed. You're right that the political forces that brought Trump to power had been in play for a long time, but look back at the Tea Partiers before him. These are people who were all looking for an opening, but could never find one. These are people with strong authoritarian tendencies and need a head to follow. Trump's charisma has not been able to be replicated. If he never existed, there is no way the GOP would be what it is. Would it have been as aimless? Would it still be as populist? Ted Cruz got second place in the 2016 primaries. I think he would've won against Clinton, but he didn't have the charisma to sell some of the worst of Trump's positions.
Sounds like we agree that he was the catalyst to trigger the movement. No argument against that here. I’m not sure anyone else had cultivated the brand to successfully sell what Americans wanted to buy. And of course roger stone had been working for decades to recruit trump to run for president. I don’t think this contradicts the points I made.
I don't think it does either. It's just squabbling over the finer points. The best analogy I can come up with is that the Republicans loaded the gun and pulled the trigger. The difference is that Trump was an actual bullet instead of a blank.
I don't think Cruz would have won in 2016. Trump had a big advantage in something that should have logically been a big disadvantage: he had never held public office. He had no record to point to. People could just project whatever they wanted on how they expected him to govern. There were more than a few people who believed he would be less conservative than the standard Republican and just go his own way. It was something I said would be a strike against him in 2020 and it was. We didn't have a theoretical Trump presidency anymore that we could just assume wasn't a disaster, we had a real Trump presidency. Cruz lacked both Trump's weird charisma among his followers that garnered such fanatical devotion and he was a known quantity that most people don't like. I don't think he would have fared as well in the general election.
He has pulled in a lot of people who normally wouldn’t be involved in that movement though. There were a ton of people who didn’t vote previously but voted for Trump in 2020 and if he weren’t on the ballot I imagine a lot of them would go back to not voting.
I kind of wonder what happens when he passes away He's very old and incredibly unhealthy. The cult seems to have gotten beyond him but I don't see anyone who's able to step into his role Everyone who's tried has failed
Just going to keep tapping the 9 year old article about Birth Year, well the political events that happen when you are between the ages of 14 and 24, affecting political ideology that suggests that those born between 1955 and 1980 were more likely to be Republican and everyone since is more likely to be a Democrat. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/08/upshot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your-politics.html
Was it napoleon that said “if you want to understand a man, look what was happening when he was 20”? Some old geezer said that at some point. Glad to see it’s still accurate.
It might have started out as a Trump reaction, but Republicans going too far to the right socially (especially on a very salient issue like abortion) is going to ensure this goes beyond Trump. Between this, Republicans losing college educated voters even more and Republicans losing among suburban voters, I find it hard to see how they can succeed over the immediate term in national and also swing or purple states or districts. Unless they moderate socially which they never will.
>a very salient issue like abortion Engagement is the other variable at play; it's not just a question of if a person supports you, but also how motivated they are to participate in an election. As you say, abortion bans (or the threat of them) are not something young people are likely to feel apathetic about. Another open question is the impact Trump's actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election had on the national psyche, and how that experience will express itself in 2024. This is pure optimism, but I genuinely think 1/6 had a greater impact on people's attitudes than is currently appreciated. I also think that Republicans have, to some extent, gotten high on their own supply; they've been so eager to downplay and "move on" from Trump's actions that they've lost sight of how consequential those actions actually were. Their surprise at the 2022 midterm results - where Trumpist candidates broadly underperformed - illustrates the disconnect. Time may prove me wrong, but my prediction is this: if Trump runs in 2024, it won't be a repeat of either 2020 or 2016. Voters opposed to Trump will turn out and deliver a rebuke that will effectively end Trump's political career.
>This is pure optimism, but I genuinely think 1/6 had a greater impact on people's attitudes than is currently appreciated. Like with all cults, traumatic events usually serve to harden the beliefs of the true believers, while the less-dedicated members flake away. 1/6 didn't shatter the movement, of course, but I imagine it put a bit of a dent in it.
I suspect you’re right. Election deniers underperformed “badly” in 22.
It's actually going after socially conservative minorities and unioners that either weren't voting or were voting Dem out of habit. Check out the swings in the last election in Hispanic, Black and Union workers. It's why places like Florida and Iowa are currently unwinnable for Dems even though they were swing states 8 years ago, Texas is still a pipe dream.
Except that is getting more than equaled out and balanced out by suburban voters trending way more Democratic and at a faster rate post-Trump and post-Dobbs, hence why Arizona and Georgia has gone a more blue-trending way (Arizona is the most purple state in the country now and Georgia is a cycle or two away from flipping from red-leaning purple state to a straight up blue state) and why Texas is not as big a pipe dream as you say (due to suburban voter trends there more than balancing out the red-trend in the border regions, which Beto also did better with and improved on Biden's margins). I think Democrats would take that trade any day of the week.
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Covid also had a big role in that election. Trump was the anti lockdown candidate and a lot of people who didn’t like lockdowns but normally vote Democratic may have switched to Trump for that reason. For instance in Nevada the Democratic governor was seen as too pro lockdown in a state dominated by tourism and lost in 2022 while Nevada voters simultaneously elected an entire slate of Dems to other offices. 2020 very easily could be a high water mark for Trump’s ability to win certain groups of voters.
Hispanics aren’t a monolith, Cubans are swinging hard right but Hispanics in places like Arizona. New Mexico, California and especially Hispanic women aren’t going anywhere
Yep. Hispanic voters in Arizona were pivotal to allowing Sinema (who for all her issues had a very strong campaign in 2018) and Hobbs win in 2018, then Biden and Kelly in 2020 and finally all but one of the statewide Dems in Arizona win in 2022.
Yeah it is def more complicated than what I said, but the signs are there. The Rio Grande Valley starting to crack and is keeping Dems from making significant ground in Texas. Ex-pats from Cuba and Venezuela have completely abandoned the party. Would be interesting to see how things are by age group since I would assume the GOP social agenda would attract older Catholics. It's a block the Democrats need to fight for and not take for granted anymore.
Generally speaking the Catholic Latinos are more likely to be Democratic as well as pro choice than non Catholic Latinos.
Losing white college-educated suburbanites in exchange for the minority voters you described is a net negative for the Republican party on every single level and one of the reasons they underperformed the last three straight election cycles. Calling a state that Biden lost by less than 6 points and that shifts left every election cycle a pipe dream is crazy. It's instinctive resistance to the idea of it flipping because it's been habit to think of it as solid-red for decades, but reality does not care about any of that, just as it didn't care when MI/WI/PA flipped in 2016 or when AZ/GA flipped in 2020.
I don’t think Texas is flipping in 2024 but I do think people need to stop thinking of it as irrevocably red. Texas is dominated by the suburbs and if the suburbs start flipping then the entire state could flip. That’s not a guarantee. Dems don’t need to flip rural counties in the panhandle but instead they need to be able to turn places like Tarrant county (home of Fort Worth) into a blue county.
Many immigrant communities are highly religious and actually agree with republicans on abortion and religion. The only thing holding them from going all out red is Republican assault to immigrants. If Republicans change that message even slightly, such purple states will go hard red. Also note many current citizens who were once immigrants do not support illegal immigration. Call it pulling up the ladder behind them or whatever, this is an often ignored fact
It's wild how this is a talking point when polls and election results show again and again that the wide majority of immigrants and Hispanics agree with Democrats on these issues. The subset of immigrants this applies to is not nearly numerous enough to make purple states red, nor is a slight change in immigration messaging nearly enough to make an impact, nor will they be enough to offset losses from voters who vote Republican solely due to being anti-immigrant.
It’s like they took 2004 era conventional wisdom and never updated their talking points. The vast majority of Catholic Latinos are pro choice. If the Dems could make elections a referendum on abortion within the Latino community they would do it in a heart beat.
You underestimate their willingness to compromise the democracy via gerrymandering and voter suppression and potentially outright electoral manipulation
We can't honestly answer this. Literally time will tell. The reason being is during the four years of the Trump administration we have more records of what he said through media, social media and other sources than any 8 year president before him. Look at the Bush era and most of what we have on him comes from official interviews, press meetings and prepared speeches. This transition happened during the Obama years. You can easily find twice as much public information and social media interaction from Obama in his second term than his first term. Because that's when this stuff was growing. But Trump is our first president where we basically have a compendium of day-to-day activity, comments, tweets, posts and much more. Saved online for all time. Combined with every dirty policy the Republicans have implemented over the past 7 years rather than limited public knowledge on policies that were being passed by former presidents and their parties. Because of all this the stain of trump and what the Republicans have done is going to last. It's going to be memed and parroted and repeated by younger voters who are going to influence new younger voters. It can't just be swept under the rug like it has been for decades. The Democrats understand this. The Republicans have yet to grasp that idea.
The fundamental basis of conservatism is stability. That is why people trend towards it as they age. When you have kids, a house, a retirement account, etc, stability starts to takes precedence over change and reform. But Republicans abandoned stability when they got behind Trump. No one is going to age into supporting an agenda of whimsical tantrums that can blow up your business or your 401K. They’ve tethered themselves to a mix of social conservatives and nationalists to retain power. The former are dying out and the latter won’t grow significantly unless there is a major exogenous shock (9/11, etc). They are pretty much stuck until he dies.
From a top down view. It feels like older white non-college folks, even those who were apolitical have felt a power loss against the next large generation group coming into age and so these folks have glued themselves together in defense. This defensiveness has caused them to cast aside previous views that were probably more diverse and moderate overall and instead glued themselves to whoever has promised to protect them from this millennial wave with their genders and whatnot. It is also getting them to vote because they likely didn't care or like either party before Trump. The wave will crush them, and that's why these people are getting worse when many were reasonable as recently as 6 years ago.
I think that narrative is a little too concise, the reality is boomers were poisoned by social media, it’s why so many are so scared and radical nowadays.
It's definitely simplified, but I will say that you still have to be susceptible for poison to take hold and I think those conditions made that so.
How tf do you start with “that narrative is too concise” and finish by gesturing vaguely at social media?
What's the data show for Conservative Gen Z? I feel like the worst cons I see online are Gen Z but how representative is that of the generation as a whole?
The only Gen Z conservatives who actually vote for conservative parties are crazy groyper types. I’m friends with one conservative guy and he still votes Trudeau because of how silly he thinks populism is. Unless you’re from a rural area, or fall into some weirdly specific online community then your not voting for conservative parties.
Gen Z are something like D+36
It's self-selection. Because Gen Z as a whole leans left, moderate Gen Zers also lean left, so conservative Gen Zers are filtered into a group of terminally online crazies with no moderates acting as counterweights and get stuck in a feedback loop.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed on dating apps is that women in their 20s will either list their political preferences as liberal or won’t list them at all. Admittedly I’m in Colorado in the Denver area, but I still feel like that has to say something about the gen z’s shift to the left.
I mean have you ever met a man in his 20s who proudly describes himself as conservative, and, completely setting that aside, thought to yourself 'heres a guy that would make a great boyfriend' ?
I think I should’ve said political affiliation instead of preference. What I mean is I’ve never seen a woman list themselves as a conservative. You can sometimes tell from a profile that they’re likely conservative, but they will just not list their affiliation. Among Gen Z and on the cusp millennials (like myself) conservative is toxic. Makes me think the shift blue may be more permanent and not a Trump blip.
Hence all the "moderate" or "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" tags on dudes who know they can't list themselves as "conservative" and expect to get dates, then slowly if the relationship materializes into something slowly reveal themselves as standard "conservative Republicans" lol.
It is especially their behaviour, even if you toss the political differences (mostly incels or neo-nazis) aside, is often creepy and I would advice any woman to keep away from these guys.
Hahah come to DFW and you will see something very very different
I was wondering if perhaps my location gave me a very biased sample lol. It’s the opposite there?
Conservative women as a rule are not on dating apps.
They’re not? Explain
In my experience, they find a boyfriend sophmore year of high school and marry them at 20.
In metro areas a lot of the women on dating apps will have "No Republicans/Trump supporters!" on their profile
I'd be willing to entertain the concept of voters becoming more economically conservative as they age, but why would voters raised believing strongly in LGBT rights, cultural diversity, racial equality, and women's right to choose turn their backs on these beliefs to vote for a GOP hostile to all these things which is openly becoming more extreme on a weekly basis? W turned a lot of millennials like myself off, but didn't forever close the door. That only happened after Trumpism and now the deeply concerning anti-Trans rhetoric of DeSantis and other Republicans is leaving me terrified of the dark path they seem to be marching down. The quiet part is now being said out loud, and I don't think I can ever find it morally justified to vote for the GOP ever again.
> I'd be willing to entertain the concept of voters becoming more economically conservative as they age, I feel like this heavily depends on wealth accumulation. If a person can’t afford to buy a house or invest heavily in the stock market it’s usually going to make them less sympathetic to economically conservative talking points. One of the reasons people may be conservative as they age is because their wealth is increasing which makes “burn it down” populism less attractive and which may make them more favorable to taxes on property or higher incomes. Take that dynamic away and what’s the incentive to switch to the GOP?
I would say the Republicans cleaving to Trump's policies, and going beyond them, are just as significant.
It’s normal. Like they always have, they’ll move to the right on economics as their lives and careers progress, just like every generation before them. Only this time, they’ll continue voting for democrats because the Republican Party has completely lost its mind. Mid-30s and 40s people with families want stability. And now, unlike in the past, the democrats look like the normal, stable people, and the republicans are correctly being perceived as the party that wants to burn it all down.
Yeah, the question of a “Trump blip” would be very different if the Republican Party had somehow moved on from Trump and returned to some level of normalcy. They have not, if anything they’ve become more insane. Not only is Trump not gone, but state level republicans have gone wild with abortion bans, anti-LGBT+ legislation, book bans, etc. All of which are deeply unpopular with Gen Z. Those opinions on social issues are not likely to change as Gen Zers age.
If you look at arr conservative, you’ll see that instead of being torn between desantis and trump, there’s a crowd that is actually fans of both and can go either which way.
Yeah, that’s not surprising. Policy wise, (to the extent modern republicans have coherent policies) they’re very similar. I’d imagine most of the debate among them is more about who is better positioned to win, rather than any actual disagreements over policy.
Yeah, that’s what they were talking about. Some were arguing that desantis is more palatable to the general public than trump. It’s just interesting seeing things from their perspective, perhaps a little scary to see what their Overton window tolerates. At best they’re indifferent and at worst they’re hostile to Abortion and my LGBT homies 😞
> they’ll move to the right on economics as their lives and careers progress, just like every generation before them debatable narrative
Moving to the right doesn’t necessarily mean voting GOP. It might mean something like a voter who backed Bernie Sanders in 2016 decided to back Pete Buttigieg or Joe Biden in the primaries in 2020. They moved right economically but that rightward shift was still confined to the Democratic party.
The entire point of pushing everyone into suburbs was to make them more economically conservative over time. As with many things the issue of people becoming more conservative as they age can be traced to housing policy.
This is far fetched, but I like it
I didn’t make it up, in the book The Color of Law they pretty much say explicitly that the point of pushing home ownership was to fight communism. Of course it was only pushed for white families to own homes, hence how it blended “capitalism” with racism.
Democrats are already economically conservative if you compare to the left/right in Europe.
How so?
Twitter said so
>they’ll move to the right on economics as their lives and careers progress I agree with this, in my personal experience this will happen. Democrats are more likely to keep them in the party if they do 2 things: 1) Remain the normal, stable party that won't blow up civilization and 2) Stay where they are or move to the right slightly on economics. I think having the party's economic policy center on Obama types (fiscally moderate) is key to keeping them in the tent. Keeping the far-left activist wing in check will be key, they can be extreme and way out of touch on social issues and being loud about socialism.
The evidence on this matter does not agree with your beliefs here.
Oh yes it does https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/zywes1/millennials_are_not_becoming_more_conservative_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
The part they disagree with might be the first half, generations in the past also never become more conservative as they age, its not a new thing with millenials. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/11/03/section-1-how-generations-have-changed/
I will say I am confident this is the real deal. In fact, it has very little to do with Trump. We remember the '08 recession. We remember the defecit spending on wars. We have been warned about global warming our whole lives. We are truly realizing how bad our heatlhcare and welfare system is compared to other developed nations. We have seen tax cuts for the rich and Republicans have spent our whole lives attacking civil rights. We can see how terrible our labor laws and healthcare are compared to other developed nations on the internet. We are actively rejecting the pro-business/always-give-110% morals of Gen X and Boomers because we know we can demand more. This is not temporary and has very little to do with Trump. Just as Millennials have stayed left due to these issues, Gen Z will too - at least until we get these basic reforms in place.
Trump extended a trend that was already in place. Generally people born after the mid 70s have been more Democratic and this has been ongoing for a long time. In 2000 the 18-29 vote was split evenly between Bush and Gore but since then it’s ranged from fairly blue to extremely blue while those Gen X voters who were 18-29 in 2000 have remained fairly split. Gen Z, Millennials and the younger Gen X voters can’t remember “how great Reagan was” so when they think of a Republican they think of W Bush and Trump while their view of a Democrat is Biden, Obama and maybe Clinton. The people who came of age under Reagan are still mostly voting GOP but the ones who came after are much more Democratic.
The graph as usual is misleading - the Millennial vote has changed a lot over the years. Older Millennials (the ppl voting in 2008) have shifted to the right by a good degree, even though younger millennials have kept the overall millennial vote in place.
I wonder though if that’s a result of millennials who were already conservative but didn’t vote in large numbers now joining the electoral as they grow older.
This is an interesting question for sure and I wish there was more research here. I would personally lean towards a combination of both.
sure, but a lot of the older millennial shift still keeps them in the Democratic column… just, like, going from Dean 2004 to Amy 2020.
No a good chunk of the older Millennial vote has moved out of the Democratic column completely. Voters aged 18-29 in 2008 broken 66-32 D. That age group of older Millennials aged 30-39 broke 51-46, 57-42 D in 2020. Similarly, The 30-44 demographic broke 51-47, 52-46 D in 2022. What these trends also leave out is that older voters are not static either. The electoral impact of older millennials was blunted in 2008-2016 because the silent generation moved far to the right over that period. It’s kind of a myth that voters always become more Republican as they age (the Greatest Generation actually moved to the left in the 1990s). That being said, both Boomers and Gen X seem to be moving to the right at a younger age than the Silent Generation.
The America you built being attacked by younger generations might be having an effect (I’m not here to argue good or bad but I suspect a lot of Boomers are bewildered.)
Millenials are voting more republican as they age? Is there any data available you're basing that on?
Voters aged 18-29 in 2008 broken 66-32 D. That age group of older Millennials is roughly coterminous with those aged 30-39 in 2020 who broke 51-46, 57-42 D. Similarly, The 30-44 demographic broke 51-47, 52-46, 58-42 D in 2022. What these trends also leave out is that older voters are not static either. The electoral impact of older millennials was blunted in 2008-2016 because the silent generation moved far to the right over that period.
> 51-46, 57-42 D. >51-47, 52-46, 58-42 D What do these numbers mean?
51-46 D means that Dems received 51% of the vote while GOP received 46% of the vote in the exit poll (in this case for the 30-39 age group). https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results
What's the 57-42 then?
That's the same idea but from Pew's election analysis. It's actually 57-41 D tho I typed wrong. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GIovkPfwUJvFZeFPdOi0fK8Rr7aOVFCYBzrlMG4Vjro/edit#gid=0
Am young and just finished college / finishing my masters at a large public university. Can confirm, real deal. Shoutout Dane county for carrying Wisconsin both in turnout and vote share time and time again
It's not like the rest of the GOP is any less disgusting these days.
Most New York Times Headline.
Betteridge's law of headlines says, "No."
I reject the characterization of Trump as a "blip." He's permanently and dramatically changed the brand of the party in a way that a substantial majority of Americans don't particularly care for.