millennial makeover

Walker Awakens a Sleeping Giant

2011-03-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

The use of a legislative maneuver by Republicans in Wisconsin to accomplish Governor Scott Walker's efforts to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights may have caught Democrats by surprise, but the ultimate result of the actions of Walker and his GOP allies may have been to awaken a sleeping giant.

For the first time in decades, driven by the emergence of the Millennial Generation, the nation's youngest politically active generation (born 1982-2003), the public is as positive about labor unions as it is about business corporations. Pew research findings show that, in the private sector, Millennials side with unions over business in disputes by 51% to 37% and, in the public sector, favor unions over government by a 56% to 32%. These attitudes are reflected in recent surveys showing that both within Wisconsin and across the nation Americans favor the public employee unions in their dispute with the governor. In fact, largely due to defections from Republican union members, one recent survey suggested that Walker would lose a reelection vote to his 2010 Democratic opponent if a new election were to be held today.

In a recent Pew survey, nearly equal numbers of Americans were favorable toward labor (45%) and business (47%). This is in sharp contrast to the Reagan-Gingrich era of the 1980s and 1990s when the public was more positive about business than about labor by margins of around 15 percentage points. The Millennial Generation accounts for almost all of the narrowing of this gap. Millennials are positive about labor unions by a 2:1 margin (58% favorable to 29% unfavorable). The young cohort is far less positive about business corporations (49% favorable to 43% unfavorable). Although in the wake of the Great Recession, older generations are less positive toward business than they were a decade or two ago, they are still narrowly more favorable toward corporations (46% each favorable and unfavorable) than toward labor (42% favorable to 44% unfavorable).

The Millennials' endorsement of labor unions does not simply stem from a supposed tendency of young people to always support the underdog or liberal causes. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, youthful members of the individualistic and entrepreneurial Generation X (born 1965-1981), and a key Ronald Reagan support group, usually tilted toward management in its disputes with labor. Rather, the Millennial Generation has positive impressions of labor unions because it is what generational theorists have labeled a "civic generation." Civic generations, like the Millennials and the GI or Greatest Generation are characterized by their group-orientation, their tendency to build, reform, and utilize societal institutions, and their belief in cooperative approaches to accomplish their own and the nation's goals.

At around 95 million, the Millennial Generation is the largest in U.S. history, but its full force has yet to be felt. In 2008, when Millennials preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66% to 32% margin and accounted for 80% of the president's popular vote margin, they comprised less than one fifth (17%) of the electorate. In 2012, when Obama runs for reelection, Millennials will account for about a quarter (24%) of those eligible to vote. In 2020, when the youngest Millennials reach voting age the generation will comprise more than a third (36%) of American adults.

As we point out in our upcoming book, Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, with numbers like these the emerging generation is about to reshape all aspects of national life, including the relative positions of labor and management in the U.S. economy and American politics. The last time a civic generation so thoroughly dominated American society, as the Millennials are about to, was in the 1930s when the GI Generation, whose numbers were equal to those of the two preceding generations combined, spearheaded labor's drive to organize the nation's industrial workforce. They were so successful that more than a third of all American workers were union members by the mid-1950s. In the decades after it fought and defeated the Axis in World War II, the GI Generation assumed positions of power and thoroughly shaped the nation's institutions, just as Millennials will do in the years to come.

In the Millennial era that lays ahead, public opinion and governmental policy will be more sympathetic to labor than they have been at any time since the GI Generation ran things. Given the preference of many Millennials for public and governmental service, public employee unions should find fertile ground for organizing and for maintaining public support for a level playing field between workers and employers. That is why Governor Walker's battle in Wisconsin and similar efforts in other states over the ability of workers to organize are likely, in the end, to fail and why the decades ahead are likely to be better for organized labor than the previous few decades have been.

The Millennial Mosaic

2011-02-24T14:18:00.000-08:00

Esperanza Spaulding photo by Andrea Mancini.

Esperanza Spalding, winner of the best new artist award at this year’s Grammies, personifies the ethnic trends reshaping America. She is a fresh-faced 27-year old jazz bassist whose very name portrays her mixed ethnic and racial heritage as the daughter of an African-American father and a Hispanic, Welsh, Native American mother. Spalding first gained her deep interest in music watching French-born Chinese American classical cellist Yo Yo Ma on “Sesame Street,” a TV program that has perhaps contributed to ethnic acculturation in the U.S. as much as any other institution. Spalding’s formal musical training was originally classical, but at age 15 she decided that her passion was jazz, itself a quintessentially American 20th Century fusion of black rhythms and the melodies of European immigrants.

The United States has gradually been becoming more diverse for decades, but Esperanza Spalding’s Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) is most radically altering the nature of that diversity. The entirely senior citizen Silent Generation (born 1925-1945) is 90% white. Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) and Generation X (born 1965-1981) are a bit more diverse: 17% and 25% non-white respectively. In contrast, four in ten adult Millennials are either African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or of mixed race. Among all Millennials of high school age or younger, about half now come from what was once called a minority group. Moreover, according to the 2009 Census population estimates, the under 18 population of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas is majority-minority with Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, and New York poised on the brink of that benchmark.

In 2008 the Census Bureau made these demographic trends “official” by forecasting that the United States will become a majority-minority country around 2040. By 2050, with an estimated 46% of the population, non-Hispanic whites will still remain the country’s single largest racial group, but Hispanics (30%), African-Americans (15%) and Asians (9%) will together comprise a majority of the U.S. population.

Generational theory, first developed by William Strauss and Neil Howe, offers important historical insights on what this new majority-minority America might look like. As we point out in our forthcoming book, Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, we are in the midst of what Strauss and Howe have defined as a “fourth turning.” These periods have invariably been associated with the most intense social and political stress in US history: the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression. Civic generations, heavily populated by the children of large waves of immigrants, are more ethnically diverse than older generations, contributing to the ethnic and racial tensions that have existed during each of these time periods. At the same time, because civic generations are comprised of group- and team-oriented, conventional and institution building individuals, ethnic absorption and acculturation also increases during and just after fourth turnings as each civic generation matures. This is in sharp contrast to “idealist” generations, such as the Baby Boomers, that reject the mainstream culture and often form movements promoting ethnic separatism.

Ethnic tensions during previous similar generational changes rivaled those the country is experiencing today. In the run-up to the Civil War, the rabidly anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic American or Know-Nothing Party captured close to a quarter of the national popular vote in the 1856 presidential election,and more than a third of the vote that year in all of the states that eventually comprised the Confederacy. In the 1930s, as the civic GI Generation children of the Eastern, Central, and Southern Europeans who comprised America’s last previous great wave of immigrants came of age to help elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, his most virulent opponents claimed that the president was really a Jew named “Rosenfeld” and derided his program as the “Jew Deal.”

We see similar language in today’s discourse, at least on the fringes. Some extreme opponents of President Barack Obama accuse him of being foreign-born and a crypto-Muslim. In a more obscure way, if one searches Google for the seemingly innocuous phrase, “US majority nonwhite 2040,” two of the first three listings are from racist groups decrying this change and the third is from a liberal group advising the need to “understand” the fears of white people in a rapidly changing America.

Fortunately civic generation Millennials have many characteristics that lead to ethnic acculturation and absorption The Civil War generation was critical to absorbing the Irish into the American mainstream, in part through the role played by Irish detachments in the Union Army, something that helped the Irish overcome the charge that they were an alien Papist force set on undermining a free Protestant nation. Similarly, the GI Generation’s Poles, Italians, and Jews became acculturated during and after World War II, in part through their service in the armed forces or in the domestic war effort. In sharp contrast to the anti-Semitic charges leveled against FDR, commentators on all sides of the political spectrum describe America as a “Judeo-Christian Nation.” Foods like bagels and pizza, once available only in urban ethnic enclaves, became commonplace, sold by pizza chains started by Irishmen and Greeks, or bagels marketed by brands such as Pepperidge Farm.

In the current fourth turning, America’s newest ethnic minorities will also become acculturated and, in turn, shape the nation’s culture. A 2007 Pew survey indicates that while only 23% of first generation Hispanics speaks English “very well,” that percentage rises to 88% among those in the second generation and 94% within the third. At the same time, researchers at the University of California-Irvine and Princeton found that Latinos tend to “lose” their Spanish the longer they are in this country. This research indicates that although first generation Hispanics bring Spanish with them, by the second generation only a third of Latinos speak Spanish “very well.” By the third generation, that number drops to 17% among those with three or four foreign-born grandparents and to only 5% among those with just one or two foreign-born grandparents.

And, so as the United States endures the tensions and rancor of another generational fourth turning, it is important to realize that this too shall pass. Millennials will, as have other civic generations before them, redefine what it means to be an American in ways both more diverse and inclusive than older generations may be able to imagine or appreciate.

Victory for Egypt's Leaderless Revolution

2011-02-11T18:02:00.000-08:00

As jubilant young Egyptians danced in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, celebrating the departure of their 82 year old former president, American television commentators immediately began discussing two issues that seemed to them to be of greatest importance: who were the leaders of the uprising and how did they use social media to bring down the reign of a thirty-year dictatorship? In doing so, they revealed the same type of inter-generational misunderstandings that cost Hosni Mubarak his presidency.

The revolution was successful because it had no leaders, only coordinators of bottom up energy. Its use of social media was brilliantly conceived to meld online organizing with offline action, not supplant it. The inability of older generations to understand the power of this new form of leadership among Egypt’s, and ultimately the world’s, young people suggests there will be many more such surprises in the future, both at home and abroad.

One of the first celebrities to emerge from the uprising, Wael Ghonim, made this point as emphatically as he could to CNN in the midst of the celebrations. “I am not a leader. The leaders are in Tahrir Square.” Not to be dissuaded, the interviewer then asked him if he was planning on entering politics. Ghonim wisely responded that all he wanted to do was go back to work for Google and some day meet Mark Zuckerberg, whose creation had enabled the activists to gain support for their revolution. That answer of course set off another media frenzy, especially on Twitter, about how this was only the first of many Facebook revolutions to come. It may be, but only if other young people read Ghonim’s promised new book, Revolution 2.0, and learn the organizational lessons it promises to teach.

This group of Egyptian under-thirty organizers learned an important lesson from the failure of their fellow generation’s protest in Iran. That uprising was shut down by Iran’s secret police, who used the protesters’ tweets and Facebook messages as a primary source of information on who should be arrested and imprisoned. In Egypt, the roughly one dozen technologically sophisticated middle class young organizers assumed the police were monitoring their communications and deliberately sent them scurrying to false protest locations, announced on their Facebook sites, even as selected members of their group were sent quietly into poorer neighborhoods to organize the groups who were ultimately successful in taking over Tahrir square.

All of these plans for offline action were hatched in secretive, in person meetings, many in the homes of their loving parents. In the same way that the 2008 Obama campaign used a social media site to provide a way for millions of its American Millennial Generation supporters to organize the on-the-ground voter interactions that propelled it to victory, these young Egyptians knew both the value and the limitations of social networking technology to effect huge social change.

Since 2008, these organizational lessons have been available to older leaders willing to see beyond their own generation’s perceptions of what it takes to lead change, but few have absorbed them. Malcom Gladwell continues to belittle the power of social media to create tipping points, as if demonstrating in the streets like it was still the 1960s is the only tactic to bring about change with any value. His fellow Boomer, Tom Friedman, who had previously mislabeled American Millennials as “Generation Q[uiet],” was hobnobbing with other clueless elites in Davos when the Egyptian revolution broke out and was completely surprised by events in the region of the world where he first developed his reputation as an astute observer. And of course the most obviously out-of-touch older leaders were President Mubarak and his sidekick, Vice President Omar Suleiman, who continued, right up to the day they lost power, to underestimate the ability of the youth of their country to channel the pent up desire of the Egyptian people for freedom and a new way of life.

It’s not surprising that the facility of young people in using new technology is the first thing older generations notice and comment upon when talking about “kids today.” Many older people, however, fail to look beyond those surface behaviors to the deeper values that now animate young people around the world. The belief of the emerging generation in democratic values, in the ability of people to govern themselves, free from dictation from above, and in the power of individual initiative to inspire collective action on behalf of the community’s greater good, determine the way young people use technology, not the other way around. All of those attitudes and values were in clear evidence in Egypt over the last few weeks, reminding those clinging to power and outdated perceptions of how to hold onto it, that a new generation has arrived. Like their civic-oriented counterparts in America eight decades ago, this century’s emerging generation has a “rendezvous with destiny” and will lead the world in entirely new ways into a new era.

Why Most Americans Are Both Liberal and Conservative

2011-01-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

American politics is consumed by a bitter, at times violent, debate about the overall role of government and specific governmental programs.Pundits often frame this divide in terms of geography (red states versus blue states), ethnicity (Hispanics and blacks versus whites), class (rich versus poor), or age and gender. Those factors matter, but seeing polarization only in terms of group versus group misses an important paradox about Americans: Most of us have both deep conservative instincts and liberal instincts.

This personal inner conflict need not calcify our national divide. Instead, it could form the basis for a new and unifying consensus or civic ethos. To do this, though, our political leaders must build on the quintessentially American politics of today's Millennials (those born between 1982 and 2003), who prize individual initiative at the local level to achieve national goals.

Why we look left and right at the same time

American political opinion looks in two directions – both left and right, or liberal and conservative – at the same time. Social scientists Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril were the first to use survey research to describe and analyze this paradox of public opinion that has always shaped US politics.

In their book, "The Political Beliefs of Americans" (1967), they maintained that Americans consistently demonstrate a conflict between their general attitudes toward "the proper role and sphere of government," (which drove the big GOP gains last November) and their attitudes toward specific governmental programs (which helps explain broad American support for "big government" programs like Medicare).

According to Mr. Free and Mr. Cantril, most Americans have conservative attitudes concerning the size of government, and liberal beliefs in support of programs to protect themselves economically. This leads majorities to favor smaller government, individual initiative, and local control while endorsing major governmental programs ranging from Social Security to student grants and loans.

Tensions go back to our founding

This tension has always been a part of American politics. The US Constitution was itself the product of fierce debate in the wake of the failed Articles of Confederation. The ingenious solution the Founders gave us was both a strong central government and equally powerful guarantees of individual liberty embodied in the Bill of Rights. Notably, that solution was largely the product of that era's young adults, the so-called Republican Generation.

Still, the Constitution didn't settle the question of the government's role in the economy and personal welfare. That wasn't resolved, at least temporarily, until the Great Depression, when Americans gave their strong support to FDR's New Deal programs. Again, it was that period's young adults – the "greatest generation" – that led the new consensus.

Small government, big programs

Such consensus, of course, doesn't erase our conflicting convictions. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, Gallup revealed this conflict between the public's programmatic liberalism and conservative ideology. On the one hand, large majorities believed that the government should provide free medical care to the poor (76 percent), extend long-term, low-interest loans to farmers (73 percent), and implement the newly created Social Security program (64 percent). By contrast, only a minority wanted the government to take over railroads (29 percent) and banks (42 percent), or limit private fortunes (42 percent).

In 1964, as President Johnson was announcing his Great Society initiatives, Free and Cantril, using the results of commissioned Gallup polls, determined that within the electorate, ideological conservatives outnumbered liberals by more than 3 to 1 (50 percent to 16 percent). But in those very same surveys, support for liberal government programs exceeded conservative opposition by a ratio of 4.6 to 1 (65 percent to 14 percent).

Using data from four of the Political Values and Core Attitudes surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center over the past two decades, we confirmed their research. Across four Pew surveys, from 1987 to 2009, ideological conservatives outnumbered liberals by a ratio of 3.5 to 1, but liberal supporters of specific programs outnumbered conservative opponents by a 2.2 to 1 margin.

In every Pew survey, there were always more conservatives than liberals regarding the overall role of government and a greater number of liberals than conservatives in support of programs designed to promote equality and economic well-being. In effect, the United States is neither a center-right nor a center-left nation; it is, and always has been, both at the same time.

Not surprisingly, voters who identify as Republicans have tended toward the conservative side of these two tendencies. And Democratic identifiers have leaned toward the liberal side. Although the gap between the identifiers of the two parties has widened recently, during most of the time since Free and Cantril first published their findings, the greatest number of both Democratic and Republican identifiers, as well as independents, has been ideologically conservative and programmatically liberal.

Moderates driven out

Today, driven by more liberal attitudes among the Democrats' young Millennial Generation and minority supporters, and the more conservative beliefs of the Republicans' older, white base, the leadership of the two parties is more polarized than at any time since the Great Depression.

For the first time ever, among Democrats in the House of Representatives, the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus contains more members than the moderate New Democrats and conservative Blue Dogs combined.

Across the aisle, few congressional Republicans are willing to call themselves moderates, and liberals, once a meaningful bloc in the GOP, have entirely disappeared.

Despite these divisions, the leaders of each party must find a way to work together to synthesize both strands of America's political DNA – a belief in the importance of a strong national community and equality of opportunity as well as a strong desire to limit government's encroachment on individual liberty – into a new civic ethos that is broadly acceptable to most Americans.

Millennials can foster a new consensus

The belief of America's youngest adult generation, Millennials, in the efficacy of individual initiative at the local level to achieve national goals provides a basis for just such a solution. To once again bind the wounds of internal discord, our political leaders should adopt this approach and successfully appeal to the ideological conservatism and programmatic liberalism of the American people.

(This article appeared originally in the Christian Science Monitor)

Which Deficits Do Millennials Care About?

2010-12-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

The nation’s capitol is abuzz with talk about deficits. The Republican co-chairman of the President’s Deficit Reduction Commission, Alan Simpson, a member of the aging Silent Generation (born 1925-1945), began the debate by lecturing his younger Baby Boomer (1946-1964) colleagues about the need for their generation, labeled by Simpson the “greediest generation,” to finally face up to their lifelong avoidance of responsibility and agree to painful reductions in their future retirement benefits and current tax preferences. The generation gap that has separated Boomers from their elders for decades appeared to be almost as wide today as it was in the 1960s.
The Commission’s confrontational conversation was all about money, devoid of any discussion about what kind of country America should become. By contrast, the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network,a think tank run by and for Millennials, released an equally important document, a Blueprint for the Millennial America.In stark contrast with the zero sum proposals being tossed around by older generations, the Blueprint’s focus was on America’s civic deficit-- the imbalance between what we need to do as a nation and the investments we are willing to make to retain our global leadership. The group launched its Think 2040 project, this past March, in order to “leverage our unique generational characteristics, transform our communities nationwide, and redefine the American dream,” in the words of its national director, Hilary Doe. Their vision, generated in a year-long discussion with over two thousand Millennials, focused on what type of country America’s youngest generation (born 1982-2003) wanted to inherit when it takes over the reins of power in 2040.
The participants envisioned an America “that continues to be a model for the world in terms of innovation, productivity, and strength… [and] a moral leader as well.” They wanted America to live by three core values: “a deeply held concern for equity, respect for the individual and society, and a belief in community empowerment and self-determination.” Together, these values, and the group’s vision, paint a picture that “uniquely represents the world Millennials aspire to create: more accessible, more equitable, more community-driven, more entrepreneurial, more inclusive, and better prepared to tackle the long-term challenges our country faces.”
Participants were appalled at the inequities of the country’s current educational system, “the foundation of our economy and democracy,” and placed its reform at the top of their list of priorities. They committed to changing the system’s unequal outcomes, but didn’t want American schools to “lose their essential creativity and civic function in an effort to meet federally mandated standards.” Rather, as part of their generation’s focus on acting locally to implement national goals, they favored “an eclectic mix of federal incentives and local power and creativity to revitalize American education.”
The Millennials who participated in Think 2040 approached America’s environmental problems with the same values that informed their broader vision. Because they believed that “environmental challenges fundamentally alter the texture of communities,” they proposed solutions that respected “the needs of America’s communities,” so that no one would be asked to “make sacrifices without fully considering the cost to communities across the United States.” To accomplish this goal, which clearly reflects the unique sensibilities of Millennials, the report prioritized the development and usage of renewable sources of energy above all other environmental solutions. The participants argued that “creating a thriving domestic market for renewable sources of energy, fostering a strong green-jobs sector, and achieving energy independence….was essential for the long-term health of the country’s environment and its economy,” as well as “maintaining national and global security and preserving biodiversity.”
Just as, after World War II, the previous civic generation, Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation, created “a system of global cooperation to promote human rights, poverty reduction, and conflict resolution,” these globally minded Millennials shared “an overwhelming belief that it is the moral duty of the United States to reduce global conflict by reinvigorating international institutions.” They pointed out that “the rise of genocide in the 20th century has led to a fundamentally different conception of America’s international responsibility,” to guide the country’s foreign policy. In their Millennial America, the United States would work “with its allies across the globe to promote sustainable development, capacity building, and community ownership, instead of invading and occupying enemy territory,” and use “defense, diplomacy, and development as equal pillars of U.S. foreign policy.”
At home, Think 2040 participants wanted “to build an American economy that supports and rewards creativity, ingenuity, and personal determination to succeed,” leading them to endorse banking reform, infrastructure investment, and turning the nation’s social safety net into a “trampoline.” Their government social safety trampoline would “lower barriers to entrepreneurship, enable workers to rebound in times of need, and combat intergenerational poverty by allowing children the opportunity to succeed regardless of their family challenges,” in order to produce an economy with greater upward mobility.
Exemplifying their generation’s penchant for combining high ideals with pragmatic solutions, the Blueprint’s action plan suggested Millennials “demand change, but act locally. Work to combat challenges, but do so from within the system. Create change, but not just through protest….What allows us, as communities, to overcome obstacles ... is collaborative action.” The report emphasized the need not only for high levels of civic engagement by the generation, but the need for reforms in the political system to reduce the role of money in elections creating “a more open, accountable, and democratic electoral system.”
Doe is confident of her generation’s ability to effect the changes the Blueprint advocates because “our shared experiences have made us socially empathetic, tolerant, informed, collaborative, engaged, innovative, entrepreneurial, effective problem solvers both capable and willing to work together to overcome the challenges that we face.” Unlike older generations that are ready to engage in pitch fork battles to protect their own perquisites and power, Millennials consistently look for win-win solutions to the challenges the country confronts. Perhaps, if more decision-makers in Washington listen to the voices of this generation so eloquently captured in the Blueprint, they will find a vision for the future that can point to a way out of the partisan gridlock that continues to poison U.S. politics as it has for decades.
Rather than judging the value of deficit reduction and other policy proposals based on the number of oxen they gore, we should judge each one by how much it contributes to building the kind of America we want our children and our children’s children to inherit. Based on that criterion, the Blueprint for the Millennial America sets a high bar for the rest of the country to jump over.

Will Ideology or Pragmatism Rule American Politics?

2010-11-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

Now that the dust from the midterm elections has settled, America remains just as divided as before on what type of governing approach it favors. As the LA Times’ Gregory Rodriguez, points out, if the United States “was a cartoon character, it would be a cheerful fellow with his head in the clouds and his feet planted squarely on the ground.”

To win the support of the public, America’s next governing consensus must encompass the nation’s highest ideals, while presenting realistic solutions to today’s challenges. In the short run, the ideological orientation of each party’s congressional representation will push both parties toward their ideological poles. Flush with victory, top House Republicans and strategists said, they saw “little distinction between incumbent members and those who would be joining them as freshman…both benefited from the Tea Party activism that helped them trounce Democrats” and said that “the support deserved to be rewarded”. Congressional Democrats, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives, are also more ideologically uniform than previously. Virtually all of the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (75 of 79) were reelected in 2010, as were a clear majority (40 of 68) of the centrist New Democrats. By contrast, a majority of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition (29 of 54) were either defeated or saw their open seats won by Republicans. Together, these changes meant that, for the first time since these organizations were formed in the 1990s, the Congressional Progressive Caucus was larger than the Blue Dogs and New Democrats combined.

The magnitude of the Republican victory was impressive, but constituted more of a continuation of the type of partisan political volatility the country experiences during periods of great generational change than a massive shift of America to the GOP and conservatism. A Pew survey taken just before the election indicated that the distribution of party identification within the electorate was little different in 2010 (49% Democratic to 39% Republican) than it was in either 2008 (51% to 36%) or 2006 (47% to 38%), two years in which Democrats won sweeping victories at the polls.

Nor did Election Day exit polls show a clear endorsement of GOP positions on key issues. Only half of the voters (48%) called for repeal of the Democratic healthcare reform law. About the same number (47%) wanted the law left as is or even expanded. Only four in ten voters (39%) favored extending the Bush-era tax cuts to all Americans, including those with incomes greater than $250,000. By contrast, a majority endorsed either the Obama administration’s position of extending the tax cuts to only those with incomes below that level (37%), or the even more liberal position of letting the tax cuts expire for everyone (15%).

Moreover, exit polls indicated that although the Democrats lost some ground among almost all demographics, the composition of the two party’s coalitions remained largely unchanged. The votes of Millennials (55% Democratic to 42% Republican), African-Americans (90% to 9%), and Hispanics (64% to 34%) were only slightly altered from what they had been in 2006 and 2008. The Northeast (53% to 45%), the West (49% to 48%), and the nation’s cities (56% to 41%) provided a firewall that helped the Democrats retain control of the Senate.

The GOP did strengthen its position within its core constituencies, winning solidly among men (56% Republican to 42% Democratic), as well as in the South, in rural areas, and among senior citizens, all of which voted Republican by about 1.5:1 margins. The Republicans were also able to split the women’s vote which they had lost in previous elections, primarily due to massive support from female senior citizens who voted 57% to 41% in favor of the GOP, even as younger women retained their Democratic allegiance. Geographically, Republican gains came predominantly in the Great Lakes watershed where the GOP won at least 25 new House seats, or about 40 percent of their pickups.

The Republicans also made major gains in America’s suburbs, where the greatest number of Americans of all ethnicities and generations, including Democratic-leaning Millennials, African-Americans, and Hispanics, now live. Obama narrowly won the suburbs, 50% to 48%. In 2010, the GOP carried them even more decisively, 55% to 42%. Democratic losses in the suburbs were particularly great among white voters who had not completed college and were among those who had been most hurt by the Great Recession. The party able to win over suburban voters with a message that is both ideologically and pragmatically appealing will gain the strategic high ground in the battle over the nation’s political direction in 2012 and beyond.

One of the reasons for this shift in the makeup of the 2010 electorate was a drop in the contribution from Millennials. Turnout among those 18 to 29 years of age was comparable to previous midterm elections: 23 percent of all Millennials eligible to vote did so, slightly more than in 2002 but a point less than the 24 percent turnout in the 2006 midterm elections. Those Millennials that did vote preferred Democratic candidates in almost all contested elections and approved of Barack Obama’s handling of his job as president by a 60% to 40% margin. In contrast to all other generations, Millennials remain overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal in their political orientation.

If the 2008 election was a victory for young Millennials, the 2010 midterms represented a triumph for senior citizens. A big part of the increase in votes for Republican candidates was inspired by the Tea Party movement’s older supporters. A solid plurality (40%) of 2010 voters claimed to be Tea Party supporters and nearly nine in ten (87%) of them voted for Republican house candidates. The GOP’s clear emphasis on ideological themes, built around concerns about the nature and scope of government, inspired its frightened and frustrated base to turn out in record numbers to prevent what it perceived to be a dangerous drift toward liberal hegemony.

In the end, however, most of those who voted in 2010 had little good to say about either party. Almost identical majorities among those who voted had an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Reflecting the opinions of some of their Tea Party supporters, even one-fourth of Republican voters expressed a negative perception of the GOP

So, in spite of the internal structural forces impelling both the Democrats and Republicans toward ideological uniformity, the new ruling party will be the one that most effectively integrates their party’s ideology with the country’s demands for solutions that work. That party will need to appeal both to those who embrace the ideals of individual freedom but also understand the need for a pragmatic program of collective action, integrating national purpose with individual choice. Shaped by some of the most profound demographic changes in American history, the key to future success for both the Democrats and Republicans will lie in synthesizing these two strands of America’s political DNA. The party that most effectively accomplishes that goal will be the dominant political force in the Millennial Era for the next four decades.

America's a Different Country

2010-10-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

With less than two weeks to go in the unpredictable 2010 elections, many pundits have been left scratching their heads and admitting that they really have no idea how this election is going to turn out. Nate Silver, today’s most careful analyst of election statistics and forecasting, examined a variety of indicators and concluded that there were more closely contested and hard-to-predict congressional races this election than ever before. The biggest reason for this uncertainty is that America’s electorate is changing as fast as the country’s demographic and generational characteristics are, challenging old assumptions about how politics works in America.

In 1965 the nation was 89% white and 11% black, about the same as it had been during the previous century. Since then, high levels of Asian and Latin immigration have produced an America today which is 66% white and 33% “people of color,” a tripling of the minority population in only four decades. Remarkably, 10% of Americans are of Mexican descent and about 5% of the electorate speaks primarily Spanish. For the first time in US history a president of mixed race, who considers himself to be African-American, resides in the White House.

The second big demographic change is the emergence of the largest, most diverse generation in American history, one which will dominate the political and cultural life of 21st century America as much as the Boomers did in the late 20th century. The Millennial Generation, born from 1982-2003, is sometimes condescendingly referred to as the “youth vote,” but it should be more accurately recognized as the biggest and most important new voting cohort in America. There are about 95 million Millennials, about half of whom are now of voting age. One out of four eligible voters in 2012 will come from this generation and more than one out of three voters will be Millennials in 2020.

Every two years the percentage of non-whites, along with Millennials, in the American electorate is increasing. Non-whites will grow from 33% of the population today to 50% by 2042. As these populations grow, a new political reality will take hold in areas altered by their increased participation, especially in the Southwest and coastal areas of the country. The power of these population shifts to upend conventional political wisdom was demonstrated by Barack Obama’s victories over heavily favored establishment candidates in both the Democratic primary and the general election in 2008.

These demographic transformations are changing the political loyalties and beliefs of the American electorate. Democrats now have their largest lead in national party identification since the early 1960s. In a recent Pew survey, only 15% of Americans claimed to be completely unaffiliated independent voters, while about half (48%) identify with the Democratic Party and 37% with the Republican Party. By contrast, in 1994, the last time in which a newly elected Democratic president faced a midterm election against an aroused GOP, the two parties were tied in party identification at 44% each. This Democratic advantage is due in large part to Millennials and Hispanics who identify as Democrats by a 2:1 margin over Republicans.

Survey data also shows that most Americans continue to favor using government to address their economic concerns and societal challenges. This summer, in a survey conducted for the progressive think tank, NDN, a clear majority (54% vs. 31%) of Americans favored a government that actively tries to solve societal and economic problems rather than one that takes a hands-off approach--numbers virtually unchanged since Barack Obama’s inauguration. More recently, only 29% of those surveyed this fall told Pew they wanted all of the Bush-era tax cuts to remain in place, while a majority (57%) preferred either that those on the wealthy should be allowed to expire or that all of the Bush tax cuts should end. Forty percent of adults told an Associated Press survey they didn’t think the new health care law went far enough, while only 20% felt the federal government shouldn’t be involved in healthcare at all. These pro-government attitudes are likely to grow as more and more Millennials enter the electorate. By a 60% to 36% margin the generation favors a bigger government providing more services over a smaller government providing fewer services.

Rather than being surprised every two years by the changing politics of a nation altered by a rapidly changing demography, pundits would be wiser to anticipate that American politics is going to keep changing and evolving every two years, and will never again look like the politics of the 20th century. In the shorter run, the operative question in this year’s midterm elections is the extent to which the major components of the 21st century American electorate make their presence felt at the polls in November. President Obama, who is concentrating his final campaigning efforts on college campuses and minority neighborhoods, clearly recognizes the challenge—but also the rare opportunity—presented by the 21st century electorate. His success in energizing these newest members of the Democratic Party’s base will determine the still uncertain outcome of the midterm elections. But the longer term direction of American politics will clearly continue to be driven by the demographic and generational changes now sweeping the country.

If Millennials vote, Dems Win

2010-10-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Millennial Generation is positioned to be a decisive force this November. Recent surveys of Millennials conducted in the battleground states of Colorado and Florida for the New Policy Institute (NPI) by market research and consultation firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, provide a revealing portrait of the political loyalties and attitudes of young voters. In both states, a majority of Millennials continue to identify as Democrats, most call themselves liberal or progressive, and most hold favorable attitudes toward Barack Obama and the Democratic Party (and unfavorable attitudes toward the Republican Party and Tea Party movement).If Millennials vote as overwhelmingly Democratic this year as they appear likely to do, they could prove to be the crucial factor in an election that appears to be evenly divided according to the most recent polling.
The results of the NPI survey are corroborated nationally in an early September Pew Research Center survey. That poll gives the Democrats a greater than 2:1 (51% vs. 22%) party ID advantage over the GOP among Millennials. By contrast, the two parties are almost virtually tied in party ID among all older generations (43% Democrat vs. 40% Republican).

Just as important, Millennials hold solidly progressive positions on a range of key issues:
· A solid plurality of them (45%) favors the healthcare reform law passed by Congress and signed by the president in February. An additional 14 percent want to see how the new law works in practice before attempting to change or repeal it. Only 18 percent of Millennials favor repealing it outright. By contrast, older generations are almost evenly divided on this issue (43% supporting the healthcare reform legislation and 35% favoring immediate repeal of the new law).
· Two-thirds of Millennials (67%) oppose modifying the 14th Amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. In contrast, a majority of those in older generations (51%) favor changing the Constitution for this purpose.
· A plurality of Millennials (34%) would prefer to let all of the Bush 2001 tax cuts to expire. An additional 26% favor letting the tax cuts expire for those earning more than $250 thousand per year, but remain in place for other Americans. Less than one-quarter (23%) believe that all of the tax cuts should be extended. On the other hand, among older Americans, only one-quarter (26%) favor ending of all the tax cuts, while a plurality (30%) want all of them to remain in force.

All of this bodes well for the long-term future of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Voting behavior research dating back to the 1950s demonstrates that once political identifications and attitudes are formed in early adulthood, they tend to solidify and remain constant for a lifetime. The Millennial Generation, along with other key components of the 21st Century Democratic Coalition, has the potential to underpin another era of Democratic and progressive dominance, particularly as the Millennial share of the electorate increases from the 17 percent that it was in 2008, to the 24 percent that it will be when President Obama runs for reelection in 2012, and the 36 percent in will comprise in 2020 when the youngest Millennials become eligible to vote.
But the key to Democratic victories in the short term requires Millennials voting in 2010 at a level proportionate to their contribution to the electorate in 2006 and 2008.
Recent polling suggests that is by no means certain. Part of the problem is structural: a June NDN survey indicated that only 60 percent of Millennials, as compared with 83 percent of older generations, were registered to vote.
However, a bigger concern is attitudinal: Millennials, like other components of the Democratic coalition, are not as inspired by or involved in politics as they were in both 2006 and 2008. The June NDN poll indicated that only 44 percent of Millennials in contrast to 64 percent of other generations said they were “absolutely certain” to vote this fall. The numbers were a bit better three months later in both Florida (48%) and Colorado (56%), but they were undoubtedly well below that of older voters in those states. Of greater concern, however, the June NDN survey indicates that only a third of Millennials (33%), as compared to about half of other Americans (47%), placed great importance on the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections. In both Colorado (31%) and Florida (32%), as in the nation overall, only a third of Millennials perceived the election to be very important.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party clearly recognize the crucial importance of the Millennial Generation. The president has scheduled a series of rallies at college campuses across the country, most recently at the University of Wisconsin, to remind Millennials of all that is at stake this fall. The Democratic National Committee has earmarked $50 million to bring Millennials, and other key components of the 21st Century Democratic Coalition, to the polls. The operative question in the 2010 midterm election is whether these efforts will prove to be timely and effective enough to activate the Democratic majority this November.

Generational Economics

2010-09-14T05:48:00.000-07:00

This week three top Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives-- Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan-- will release their new book, Young Guns, outlining a vision for America's future that reflects their Generation X philosophy of individual autonomy and hostility to community or collective action. Originally, Young Guns was the name of a popular movie back in 1988 when Generation X's political idol, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, but the philosophy espoused by Cantor, McCarthy, and Ryan hardly reflects the beliefs and values of today's youngest and largest generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003). Millennials believe in trusting one another and sharing ideas in order to come up with the best results for the entire group. That's why the country is more likely to find economic ideas that call for community action and local initiative more attractive than those being pushed by House Republicans.

On Wednesday, September 15, NDN fellow Dan Carol, will host a roundtable discussion on how to use government to catalyze bottom-up innovation and economic growth at the local level. Joining him will be U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce John Fernandez to discuss his agency's "Jobs and Innovation Partnership" initiative to help build regional economic ecosystems where the private sector can flourish. These ideas, to be detailed in a paper scheduled for release the same day, offer Democrats the opportunity to seize both the generational and the policy initiative in the 2010 midterm election's economic debate.

The proposal's focus on nurturing local economic networks captures the insights of a new economic paradigm, based on complexity science, which suggests economies grow in the same way ecosystems do. Innovation is the key to this process as the system moves through constant cycles of experimentation and reconfiguration, or what economist Joseph Schumpeter called waves of "creative destruction." Complex ecosystems and modern economies continuously adapt and grow through a process of rewarding what works and discarding what doesn't. More trials, including more errors, produce better results and more innovative ideas. Unlike classical economics, which equates wealth with money, this new paradigm states that wealth is maximized when the largest number of people are generating ideas in a competitive, evolutionary environment.

Perhaps the most Millennial of all the insights generated by this new paradigm is the importance it places on establishing a new sense of trust in the way individuals deal with each other. In complex economies, such as that of the United States , the expectations and interpretations each person has about what all the other players want and expect creates an invisible web of human expectations that can only be managed in a Millennial atmosphere of trust and cooperation, not in the Gen X mode of everyone looking out only for themselves. Complexity economics argues that the classical economic paradigm enunciated in the 18th century by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, was wrong in suggesting, "wealth is created by the pursuit of narrow self-interest." Instead, Eric Beinhocker, whose book The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics, is intentionally titled and written as an answer to Smith, argues, "Norms of unchecked selfishness kill the one thing that determines whether a society can generate (let alone fairly allocate) wealth and opportunity: trust. High-trust networks thrive; low-trust ones fail." While the Generation X Republican prescriptions for returning to the discredited laissez faire doctrines of the past rest on the argument that you can't trust government, Millennials know that the only answer to the question "Who do you trust?" is "each other."

Trust is built over time when people have a chance to work together toward a common goal. That is what the Jobs and Innovation Partnership initiative from EDA is designed to do at the regional level. Dan Carol's research paper will present several innovative ideas on how to use government's resources to develop and nurture these networks so that working together becomes easier and more effective. The key to all of these proposals is the emphasis they place on sharing ideas and using a more bottom-up approach to the challenge of restructuring America's economy.

Millennials, suffering the highest levels of unemployment of any generation, will welcome this approach. It reflects their values and beliefs and represents how they will lead the nation in the future. It's time for the rest of the country to embrace these ideas as well rather than returning to the Wild West economics of Generation X's childhood. Counter to the message of another popular 1980s movie, greed isn't good; trusting each other is the best way to breathe new life into the nation's economy.

Its Time for Something Completely Different

2010-08-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

As the country’s political distemper grows, many commentators, reflecting their own generational biases, mistakenly assume that voters are looking for less government as the solution to the nation’s ills. But survey research data from Washington think tank, NDN, shows that a majority of Americans (54%), and particularly the country’s youngest generation, Millennials, born 1982-2003, (58%), actually favor a more active government, rather than one that “stays out of society and the economy.” As generational expert Neil Howe observed, “Dissatisfaction with Obama and the Democratic Congress is probably more fed by their failure to use government boldly and vigorously to face hard challenges than by their excessive boldness.” What Millennials are looking for in terms of public policy, to borrow John Cleese’s warning to his Monty Python audience, is something completely different than the tired approaches of either party that are grist for the current partisan gridlock in Washington.
Millennials are not interested in letting ideological posturing stand in the way of “getting stuff done,” as they like to say. Their generation’s idealism is always accompanied by a pragmatic impulse focused on finding solutions, not confrontation. As with like-minded civic generations before them, Millennials want to reinvigorate the nation’s institutions, giving government a much greater role in determining basic citizen responsibilities in areas as diverse as health care, education and environmental protection.
However, unlike America’s last civic generation, the GI Generation (born 1901-1924), Millennials do not want to place responsibility for achieving their desired results in a remote, opaque bureaucracy. They see government’s role more like that of their parents who set the rules but left room for negotiation on what the rewards would be for abiding by the rules and the consequences that would follow for not doing so. In this Millennialist approach, government provides information and resources to help individuals connect and learn from each other but let’s each person decide how best to discharge their civic obligations.
The healthcare reform legislation that was forged out of the white heat of the political debate in Congress came surprisingly close to this model, and not to the ideological demands that Boomers on both sides of the aisle brought to the debate. Liberals didn’t get their dream of a single payer system or even its “nose-under-the-tent” counterpart, the so-called public option. But conservatives were unable, even after Republican Scott Brown’s surprise election as a United States Senator from deep blue Massachusetts, to prevent Congress from mandating that every person in America buy health insurance in order to achieve the goal of universal access. By building a framework for universal coverage on the scaffolding of the existing private insurance system, the final legislative solution used liberal schemes of regulation and national mandates to create a new role for government, even as it kept government out of the business of actually providing health care.
The final shape of that reform reflects a new Millennialist approach to the making and implementation of public policy. This approach will result in setting new national standards in many aspects of our national life while, at the same time, allowing individuals to make their own choices about how to comply with those standards.
The recent adoption by a majority of states of national curriculum standards for what students must learn in core disciplines such as English, math and science is further evidence of this trend. The development of these standards, coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, outlines “the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers,” without dictating how schools should teach the material.
Meanwhile the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” grant program, has sparked a firestorm of educational reform legislation in states competing for the money that weaken the hold administrators and teacher unions currently have over what goes on in the classroom. The demands of the parents of Millennials for bottom line results, reflected in such grass roots initiatives as the Parent Revolution in California and Connecticut,is providing the political support needed to take on the current educational monopoly, thereby opening the door to widespread experimentation about what works best at the local school level.
While there is no sign yet at the national level that a more Millennialist approach to addressing concerns over global warming and environmental degradation is in the offing, the inability of the Congress to agree on more bureaucratic approaches, such as cap-and-trade, suggest there is an opportunity for such ideas to take hold in the future. For instance, a campaign to reduce the carbon intensive nature of the nation’s infrastructure could include a government sponsored effort to display the carbon footprint of most consumer products and let individuals decide how to alter their personal purchasing decisions to produce the most environmentally favorable results. Similarly, the goal of reducing fuel consumption per family could be achieved by providing tax incentives for telecommuting or for trading in aging gas guzzlers for vehicles that exceed the newly strengthened fuel economy standards for passenger cars. These policies, and others like them, would leave it up to each individual to decide how much they wish to contribute to the nation’s environmental improvement. In line with behavioral economists in and outside of the administration, the strategy would be to “nudge” rather than command behavior in order to achieve the desired policy goal. Given the ever increasing environmental sensitivity of younger generations, the approach is likely to accomplish more in terms of actual carbon usage reduction than the ideologically-driven schemes proposed by Boomers in Congress.
The trajectory of public policy in a Millennial Era is becoming increasingly evident. The push for an increasing number of national standards and preferred behavior will no doubt cause libertarians to decry the evolving “nanny state” and argue strenuously against an increasingly intrusive government. But if liberals can give up their infatuation with bureaucratic solutions and keep their focus on using government to improve society without building new administrative burdens, the public, led by Millennials, will rally to their side. National consensus, coupled with localism and individual choice,will become the watchwords of the nation’s newest civic era.

Dems, Not Independents will decide Midterm elections

2010-08-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

Like the constant buzz of the vuvuzelas during the World Cup, leading members of the inside-the-Beltway punditry have generated an ever louder chorus of warnings recently that "angry" independent voters will determine the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections and, in so doing, threaten the Democratic Party's current congressional majorities.

Actually, however, it is not what independent-or even Republican-voters do that will determine what happens in this November's elections. It is what Democrats do, or perhaps not do, that will be decisive. This is true for two reasons.

First, a significantly greater number of voters now identify with or lean to the Democratic Party than to the GOP. Second, only a relatively small number of politically uninvolved and disinterested voters are independents that are completely unattached to either of the parties.

As a result, the big election story in 2010 will be the extent to which the large plurality of Americans who call themselves Democrats shows up at the polls this fall, and not the voting preferences of unaffiliated independents or Republicans.

This is a quite different situation from 1994, the last time there was a so-called midterm "wave" election in which the GOP wrested control of Congress from the Democratic Party. That year, the two parties were dead even in party ID at 44% each.
But, America is a different country now than it was in the mid-1990s, with a far more ethnically diverse electorate and a new, strongly Democratic generation, the Millennials (born 1982-2003), coming of age. These emerging groups comprise the core of a new, potentially long-lasting majority Democratic coalition.

This year, in sharp contrast to 1994, the Democratic Party holds a party identification advantage over the Republicans. In a June national survey conducted for NDN by highly regarded market research firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, 47% of voting age Americans identified with or leaned to the Democratic Party, well above the 33% who identified with or leaned to the Republican Party and the 19% who claimed to be unaffiliated independents. Even among registered voters the Democratic advantage over the GOP was 11 percentage points (47% vs. 36% with unaffiliated independents dropping to 17%). These numbers were replicated in an early July Pew survey showing the Democrats with a 49% to 42% party ID lead over the Republicans among registered voters.

As is the case in virtually every U.S. election, almost all of those who identify with or lean to a party plan to vote for the candidates of that party this coming November. In the NDN poll, about 95% of both Democratic and Republican identifiers who have made a choice say they expect to vote this fall for the congressional candidate of the party with which they identify. Meanwhile, among the presumably decisive independents, almost two-thirds (61%) are as yet undecided in the race for Congress. The remainder is split almost evenly between the two parties, with 21% preferring the Republicans and 18% the Democrats.

The solid Democratic advantage in party ID, coupled with the strong support given by Democratic identifiers to the party's candidates, and the closely divided independent vote, translates into a clear lead for the Democrats over the Republicans among all Americans on the generic congressional ballot in the NDN survey (35% for the Democrats vs. 29% for the GOP with 34% undecided and 8% favoring another party or candidate).

There is, however, a large fly in the Democratic ointment. At least at this point, Democratic identifiers are significantly less likely to be registered to vote than are Republicans (90% vs. 84%). Democrats are also substantially less likely than Republicans to say they are certain to vote in November (76% vs. 67%). These concerns are particularly acute among Latinos and Millennials, both of which are key components of the Democratic coalition. As a result of these disparities, the Democratic lead over the GOP on the generic ballot drops to three points among registered voters (35% vs. 32%), and to a statistical tie of just two points among those who say they are certain to vote this fall (37% vs. 35%).

What must the Democratic Party do to overcome these barriers? One thing is to organize. The decision of the Democratic National Committee to spend $50 million in 2010 to increase the registration and turnout of "first time voters" (meaning, primarily, Millennials, African-Americans, Latinos, and single women) is a key step in constructing and strengthening the 21st century Democratic coalition for this year and the decades ahead.

The NDN survey portrays a country that is anything but center-right. A solid majority of Americans prefer a government that actively tries to solve the problems facing society and the economy (54%), rather than a government that stays out of society and the economy to the greatest extent possible (31%). Three-quarters of Democrats (76%), and just over half of independents (52%), favor an activist government, while 60% of Republicans want a laissez faire approach.

Similarly, a clear plurality of the electorate (49%) wants government to ensure that all Americans have at least a basic standard of living and level of income, even if it increases government spending. Only 34% supported the alternative approach of letting each person get along economically on their own, even if that means some people have a lot more than others. A solid majority of Democrats (69%), and half of independents, opt for governmental policies aimed at increasing economic equality, something that is opposed by two-thirds (65%) of Republicans.

Nothing would be more confusing and dispiriting for Democratic voters than for the Democratic Party to turn away from the political and economic approach they strongly favor, and which has been the hallmark of the party's success and identity since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Generating enthusiasm for Democratic candidates in the 2010 midterm election requires highlighting, not downplaying or running away from, the striking legislative accomplishments of the Democratic congressional majority during the first two years of the Obama administration.

Democrats would also be well advised not to base their campaign on pursuing independent voters, angry or otherwise. For one thing, the much-vaunted independents are far less likely to be registered (72%) and certain to vote (52%) than are either Republican or Democratic identifiers. While aiming at unaffiliated and uninvolved voters may be a good idea for a party that has fewer, or even the same number, of identifiers as its opponent, it is not the best strategy for a party that holds a clear party identification lead within the electorate. Doing everything that it can to mobilize its own supporters makes far more sense, and is likely to be far more effective. In the end, what happens to the Democratic Party in 2010 and beyond is in its own hands, and will be determined primarily by the votes of those who identify with it, rather than being in the hands of the media or the other side of the political aisle.

A Regional Perspective on 2010 elections

2010-08-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Virtually all polling analyses that deal with the possible outcome of the 2010 midterm elections, make frequent use of the "generic congressional ballot," a survey question probing House voting intentions on a national basis. But, while there may be national trends, there are no national elections in the United States. In spite of this, pollsters rarely report their results geographically beneath the aggregate national level. That's why a recent posting by Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight is so interesting, refreshing, and important. While many reports based on the national generic ballot stress the similarities between the 2010 midterm elections and those of 1994 in which the Democratic Party lost large congressional majorities, Schaller's analysis points to key regional differences that may buffer the Democrats from the kind of devastation they suffered sixteen years ago.

By eerie coincidence Democrats hold precisely the same number of House seats (256 or 59% of the body's 435) in today's 111th Congress that they held in the 103rd Congress of 1994. But, that is where the similarity ends.

In the 103rd Congress the Democrats held essentially the same percentage of seats (60% or a point or two less) in each of the nation's four geographic regions-the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. Now, the Democrats control the vast majority of House seats in the Northeast (82%) and West (63%). Within the former region, all of New England's 22 Representatives are Democrats as are 26 of New York's 29 (with one Empire State seat currently vacant). In the West, the Democrats are especially strong along the Pacific Coast, holding 33 of California's 52 seats, 4 of Oregon's 5, and 6 of Washington's 9.

By contrast, the Democrats hold 55% of Midwestern House seats, slightly less than the 58% they held in 1994. But, the big change has been in the South. Now, only 43% of Southern Representatives are Democrats, far less than in 1994 when 60% were. It was, in fact, the 1994 election that finally flipped the South's Congressional delegation from majority Democratic to majority Republican. In other words, as Schaller's analysis makes clear "the two Democratic coalitions [in 1994 and in 2010] are not the same geographically."

The alteration in the regional composition of the two party coalitions described by Schaller is a part of broader demographic and political changes that have been portrayed in detail by NDN's 21st Century America Project. Survey research conducted this year in connection with that project both reflects and explains why the regional strength of the two parties in Congress has been altered so significantly since 1994. As the following table indicates, both the Northeast and West contain the greatest number of voters who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party followed closely by the Midwest. By contrast, the South contains the fewest, and among white Southerners a clear plurality identifies with or leans toward the GOP.

Total Electorate Northeast Midwest West South Southern Whites
Democrat 47% 49% 48% 49% 44% 35%
Independent 20% 20% 22% 18% 19% 21%
Republican 33% 31% 30% 33% 37% 45%

Ratio of
Democrat to
Republican 1.4:1 1.6:1 1.6:1 1.5:1 1.2:1 0.8:1
These changes may place the Democratic Party in better position to avoid the massive losses of 1994-and thereby retain their House majority. Schaller projects two possible scenarios for the November midterm elections. The first he labels a "regular wave" in which the Democrats would lose about 36 House seats, a bit above the average losses for the president's party in the midterm election of his first term. The second Schaller calls a "big wave" in which the Democrats would lose about 61 House seats. While their losses would be serious in either scenario, in a "regular wave" Democrats would retain control of the House. In the latter, they would lose it.

According to Schaller, Democratic losses would not be distributed evenly across the country. In a "regular wave," he says, a disproportionately large share of Democratic losses (64%) would likely occur in the two regions where the party is already weakest-the South and Midwest. (That, by the way, would leave the Democrats with only a third of Southern House seats, continuing a trend that has been ongoing for the past five decades). However, in a "big wave," while a majority of Democratic losses would still be in the South and Midwest (58%), more of the incremental losses would come in the Northeast (26%) and West (16%). With three months to go before the election, there is no reason to believe that the midterm elections will necessarily result in a wave of any size, but Schaller's analysis does suggest the best place to look for any early signs of a tsunami that would cost the Democrats their House majority are in the contested districts of the Northeast and West.

Of course, its solid party identification lead nationally and its regional strength in the Northeast and West only provides the Democratic Party with an opportunity to avoid a repeat of the disaster of 1994. There is no guarantee that it will do so. As the election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate earlier this year in Massachusetts, the bluest of all Northeastern states demonstrates, the Democrats can lose almost anywhere if they run a poor campaign and/or candidate. The Democrats lost that special election in Massachusetts not because the state had suddenly become a GOP stronghold or because Massachusetts Democrats turned against Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, or the policies that they favor. That "impossible to lose" election was lost because Democrats failed to mobilize their majority strength in Massachusetts.

If Democrats are wise, what happened in Massachusetts will serve as a warning and not a prophecy of things to come. To ensure the former, Democrats should reject advice, some well-intentioned and some not, to focus their 2010 campaign on appeals to "angry" independents or "disaffected" moderates and focus instead on activating their own sizable base of identifiers, especially in regions where that base has the potential to be dominant. In 1994, when each of the two parties had exactly the same percentage of identifiers, the Democratic Party could not successfully do that. In 2010, it can-- and must-- if it hopes to retain its majority status in the House.

Make Kalamazoo's Promise America's Promise

2010-08-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

A recent NDN survey found that 37 percent of Millennials rated the cost of a college education as a critical issue facing America. It ranked behind only the economy and education, in a virtual tie with the national debt and federal spending, on the list of issues about which Millennials are concerned. While the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" initiative has ignited a firestorm of K-12 educational reforms in states across the country, no comparable program exists to deal with the increasing costs and stagnant graduation rates of the nation's colleges and universities. To his credit, President Barack Obama led this year's successful efforts by Democrats to federalize the student loan program and expand the size and availability of Pell Grants in order to lower the burden of paying for college. But, that is only a short-term fix to the challenge of doubling the number of students who graduate from college by 2020--a pledge leaders of community colleges made at the administration's urging. To achieve that goal, America needs to develop a new, Millennial Era consensus that every young American should complete his or her postsecondary education and graduate debt free. One community, Kalamazoo, Michigan has already made that promise a reality.

Kalamazoo recognized that, along with inadequate preparation in high school for the academic requirements of college, the burden of paying for college through the current patchwork system of student loans, grants and scholarships, and state and federal government subsidies is a major reason why U.S. college graduation rates have been stagnant for the last thirty years. Currently, more than a quarter of the freshmen in America's four year colleges fail to return for their second year and the percentage is twice that for those enrolled in two-year colleges. For every ten students who start high school, only five enroll in a postsecondary educational institution, and fewer than three earn a bachelor's degree, even after ten years. Less than one-quarter of Hispanics who start college leave with a bachelor's degree and almost two-thirds receive no credential at all. Even though a record 70 percent of all Millennials who graduated from high school enrolled in college in 2009, the need for postsecondary education reforms to ensure that more of them graduate is clear.

College tuition rates have grown at 3.3 times the consumer price index since 1980.The increased cost is having a direct impact on which colleges students are able to attend. Forty-three percent of incoming freshmen in the first year of the Great Recession cited the ability to get financial aid as very important or essential in their choice of a college, the highest level ever recorded. In 2009, 70 percent of high schools reported an increase in the number of students who abandoned their "dream school" in favor of a college they could afford. Eighty-five percent of those who applied for aid said they wouldn't be able to pay for college without receiving it. As a result, for the 2008-09 school year, the federal government guaranteed or made $65.2 billion in student loans, an increase of 18.6 percent from the year before.

The unwillingness of today's older generations to subsidize the higher education of younger generations has had a particularly pernicious impact on young Americans who see college education as a way of improving their future economic circumstances. In 2007-08, just about every student from a low income family attending a community college was in debt, with an average of $7,147 in unmet expenses, even after taking into account any grants or scholarships they received. As a result, three-fourths of those seeking an associate degree or certificate were forced to work, leaving less time for study. In 2009, only 38 percent of community college students earned a degree within six years of enrolling. The country and its economy cannot afford to let this situation continue.One experiment in how to address the problem started in 2005, in Kalamazoo. There, a small group of donors (who remain anonymous to this day) created the Kalamazoo Promise, which offered any graduate of the city's public schools a four year scholarship covering 100 percent of tuition and mandatory fees at any of Michigan's public colleges or universities, provided those students maintained a 2.0 grade point average in their college courses and made regular progress toward a degree. Scholarship levels varied based only on the number of grades or years in Kalamazoo schools the student had attended, not on a determination of need or merit.

The idea began as an economic development strategy. The city manager suggested the imposition of an income tax on those who worked within the city to balance Kalamazoo's books. In an attempt to increase the city's tax base without raising its taxes, community leaders, asked residents of the area surrounding the city what would persuade them to move back inside the city's boundaries. Not surprisingly, the parents of Millennials expressed the greatest interest in living in a place that would provide a good public education for their children--all the way through college. Local philanthropists translated that desire into a simple program that offered full, four-year college scholarships to the city's high school graduates, with no requirement to repay the money or reside in Kalamazoo after graduating from college. They bet the bargain would be enough to attract families back to the city and halt the annual ten-percent decline in the schools' population. Five years and $12 million later, the bet has paid off handsomely.

Since the program was announced in November 2005, Kalamazoo has experienced a 17.6 percent increase in student enrollment and the construction of three new schools for the first time in 37 years. Dropout rates have been cut in half. Ninety percent of female African-American high school graduates have gone onto college. The school district's success was noticed by President Obama, who chose to deliver the first high school commencement speech of his presidency at Kalamazoo Central High. Calling the school a model for success in the 21st century, Obama told the senior class he was there "because I think America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes a successful school in this new century." He's right.

Money to pay for four years of college is available to each recipient for up to ten years after graduation, so it will take more time before the full effect of the Kalamazoo Promise on college graduation rates can be determined, but the program's initial success has led communities across the country to search for sources of philanthropic revenue in order to make their own educational bargain with their residents. The Kalamazoo Promise created an expectation that every public school student in the city would have an opportunity to receive a postsecondary education. More than 80 percent of those who chose to enroll in a university are still attending college. The cultural shift created by the community's commitment to the Kalamazoo Promise has also created a mini-Race to the Top with surrounding school districts, which are passing bond issues and improving their schools to compete more effectively with Kalamazoo's schools.

Now it is time for the nation as a whole to make the same promise that Kalamazoo did to all young Americans. The country should completely reform the current system of federal and state subsidies of higher education with one goal in mind. In the 21st century, every Millennial-and their children--should complete their postsecondary education and graduate debt free. Kalamazoo's promise needs to become America's promise.

America’s Economy Needs to Restructure in Order to Recover

2010-08-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

The news that the growth of America's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) slowed in the second quarter to an anemic 2.7 percent, from its barely adequate first quarter performance of 3.7 percent, helps make the case for building what President Obama terms a "New Foundation" for the country's economy. The president should use NDN's analysis of the root causes of our current economic difficulties to explain to the American people why this restructuring is needed and how all of his legislative accomplishments-not just the auto company interventions he rightly touted in Detroit last Friday-- are putting in place a New Foundation for a 21st century economy, built on much more solid ground than the flawed and failed economics of the era America has just left.

The continuing high unemployment rate this far into the Great Recession should demonstrate to all but the most stubborn partisans that expecting the contours of our economy to suddenly snap back into the shape that they were in before the financial meltdown of September, 2008 is wishful thinking of the worst kind. It ignores the fundamental weaknesses of the consumer-driven economy of the last decade and leads to policy prescriptions that fail to deal with the root causes of our economic malaise. Besides, that economy, built on the sands of using the value of one's home as a personal ATM, led to a lost decade in real income growth for middle class Americans, so no one should be hoping it comes back anytime soon.

The last time the country experienced the prolonged economic pain it is experiencing now was during the Great Depression. Thanks to the decisive interventions of President Obama's economic team and the Federal Reserve the country is fortunately not experiencing anything quite that painful this time around. But the economic downturns of the 1930s and of this decade have more than just the ironic adjective "Great" in common.

Both occurred as a new, civic-oriented generation was coming of age. In the 1930s it was the GI Generation, what many now call America's Greatest Generation. Today it is the Millennial Generation, a cohort many expect to be our next great generation. The unity and size of both generations gave first President Franklin Roosevelt and then President Obama the margin of electoral victory and mandate for change that underpinned political support for long-term, structural changes in the economy. In both cases, the dire circumstances in which ordinary Americans found themselves provided the impetus for the creation of major new social programs-Social Security in Roosevelt's first term and health care reform in Obama's.

But many current observers fail to realize how similar the controversies surrounding these changes also are. Just as Republicans today, and some moderate Democrats, seek to impose a new round of austerity on the nation's economy by attempting to stop the funding for such basic programs as extended unemployment insurance, FDR, during his first term, dodged and ducked an onslaught of advice to scale back the New Deal from both the opposition and from many within his own party. The debate continued right through the 1936 election, when his Republican opponent, Alf Landon, campaigned on a platform of repealing Social Security, arguing, as those seeking to repeal health care reform do today, that it represented an unwarranted "socialist" intrusion into individual paychecks by an out-of-control federal government.

But during the entire debate, Roosevelt stuck to his guns and insisted on the need to fundamentally overturn the laissez faire economic policies of the Roaring Twenties. As Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David M. Kennedy wrote in his book Freedom from Fear:

The New Deal's premier objective, at least until 1938, and in Roosevelt's mind probably for a long time thereafter, was not the economic recovery tout court but structural reform for the long run. In the last analysis, reform, not simply recovery, was the New Deal's highest ambition and lasting legacy.

And just as President Obama's health care and financial regulatory reform efforts are not the second coming of socialism that opponents tried to make them out to be, Roosevelt's structural solutions avoided the heavy-handed notion of government control that so many in his party favored and so many Republicans accused them of being. The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) created a feeling of security among depositors, not a government bank. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) gave stockholders new information upon which to base their investment decisions, but didn't restrict their investment opportunities. The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) provided more safety to lenders and new mortgage terms for home buyers, but didn't attempt to have government build the houses people needed. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Fair Labor Standards Act set new, fairer rules for both employers and workers to follow, but didn't impose the kind of price controls and work rules that were part of the earlier, ill-fated National Industrial Recovery Act. As Kennedy correctly observes:

To be sure, Roosevelt sought to enlarge the national state as the instrument of the security and stability that he hoped to impart to American life. But legend to the contrary, much of the security that the New Deal threaded into the fabric of American society was often stitched with a remarkably delicate hand, not simply imposed by the fist of the imperious state.

It's also important to remember that, with the exception of the FDIC, none of these long-lasting, deep changes in the rules and structures by which the American economy operated were enacted in the initial year of Roosevelt's first term. Social Security, for example, didn't pass until 1935, after the 1934 midterm elections. By that chronological measurement, President Obama's New Foundation is actually being built ahead of schedule.

Nor did any of Roosevelt's structural reforms restore the country to full employment immediately. When FDR uttered his famous line "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished" in his 1937 inaugural speech, he was speaking about the progress the country had made in his first term and warning his audience not to become complacent with what had been accomplished to that point. Just as President Obama must walk a fine line between noting the positive impact his initial efforts to stop the economic bleeding have had without suggesting there is nothing more that can or should be done, so too did FDR want the country to understand that, as he put it in the same address, "Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster!"

To avoid that result this time, President Obama needs to make it clear that much more needs to be done to restructure the economy, and that a stock market recovery without a recovery in middle class incomes is not the goal of his administration. Among other things, the president must emphasize that until all American schools have won the "Race to the Top," until our economy is built on a lower carbon infrastructure, until every American worker has the skills they need to compete in the global economy for jobs with good wages and good benefits, and until America's tax structure rewards work and innovation and not financial manipulation, the New Foundation for the nation's economy will not be complete.

The restructuring of our economy is and will be painful. America's tolerance for change will be as sorely tested as it was during the Great Depression. President Obama's leadership skills will be put to the same stern test that FDR had to pass.

But Democrats should welcome the opportunity that the 2010 midterm elections present to argue for the need to undertake a fundamental restructuring of the nation's economy and to brag about the steps they have already taken to produce that transformation. Rather than ducking or attempting to explain away the economic difficulties the nation faces, it's time to build a strong foundation of political support for the economic New Foundation the President seeks to put in place. As NDN's recent survey research shows, a majority coalition already exists for just such an economic and political program. It's time to make sure the voices of America's 21st century constituencies are heard in November.

What Wave?

2010-05-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Democratic victory in the special election in Pennsylvania 12 might not be the upset that many in Washington believe it to be. That’s because, as we have been saying in this space for the past year, 2010 is not 1994 and the chances of a Republican wave building off shore are far lower now than they were then. The country's demographics have shifted dramatically in the intervening years; the Republican brand is much more tarnished than it was in the 90s; and Democratic governing successes are gradually being recognized by the electorate.
The United States is a much different country demographically than it was in 1994. A decade and a half ago, over three quarters of Americans were white. That number has dropped to just over 60% now and is on the way to falling below 50% by the midcentury. In particular, the percentage of Latinos in the U.S. population has nearly doubled (from about 9% to 16%) over the same period. In addition, half of a new generation—Millennials (born 1982-2003), the largest and most diverse generation in American history—has joined the electorate.
All of these changes have worked to the advantage of the Democratic Party and are should continue to do so in the future. In NDN’s February survey of the 21st century American electorate, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by a 2:1 margin (42% vs. 21%) and non-Caucasians did so by over 4:1 (57% vs. 14%). Women also strongly identified as Democrats (44% vs. 24% Republicans). By the way, the other half of the Millennial Generation, all those now under 18, already live in a world where whites are in the minority, promising an even larger Democratic edge in the future.
At least in part as a result of these major demographic changes, the Democratic Party now holds a clear lead among voters in party identification, something it did not have in 1994. In the most recent Pew national survey released earlier this week, the Democrats enjoy a nine-percentage edge over the Republicans in party ID (45% vs. 36%).In 1994, the two parties were tied at 44% each and in 1995, the year after the GOP won control of Congress, more Americans identified with or leaned to the Republican Party than the Democrats (46% vs. 43%).
Moreover, while it is true that attitudes toward the Democratic Party have declined during 2010, contrary to 1994 the Republican Party is not seen as a viable alternative by most voters. In 1994 favorable ratings of the Democratic Party fell in Pew’s surveys from 61% when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 to 50% by the time of the midterm election. In that same time period, positive perceptions of the Republican Party increased dramatically from 46% to 67%. While Pew’s March, 2010 survey showed Democrats with only a 40% favorable rating, down from 57% in the fall of 2008, positive attitudes toward the GOP also declined since President Barack Obama’s election from 40% to 37%, still leaving the Democrats with a slight advantage.
These demographic changes and attitudinal configurations have put the Democratic Party in a stronger position now than in 1994 to hold off a possible Republican wave. Furthermore, as they have enacted major portions of the Obama agenda, Congressional Democrats have improved their standing in comparison to Republicans on the generic ballot since earlier this year. All of the public surveys conducted during the past week show the Democrats with at least a modest lead. Over the last few months there has been a net shift of six-points toward the Democratic Party.

	March/April Democratic Preference	March/April Republican Preference	May Democratic Preference	May Republican Preference
Gallup	44%	48%	47%	46%
CNN	45%	49%	47%	46%
Quinnipiac	39%	44%	42%	36%
Average	43%	47%	45%	43%

An examination of a few key findings from some recent polls shows why that shift has occurred.
First, while voters do not yet believe that America has returned yet to prosperity, there is a clear perception of progress. In the Quinnipiac survey, the number believing that the nation’s economy is getting better rose from 19% in April 2009 and 28% last December to 32% now. The belief that the economy is worsening is down from 32% to 24% over the same period. President Obama is getting some of the credit for the perceived improvement in the economy. His approval score for handling the economy is up from 39% in March 2010 to 44% currently. More specifically, the percentage approving of President Obama’s performance in creating jobs has risen from a low of 34% last January to 40% in May.
Second, after a year of rancor, voters are increasingly positive about the Democratic health care reform plan that passed Congress and was signed by the president in March. According to a recent CBS News poll, approval of the plan rose from only 32% in early March to 43% in May.
As a result, the president’s approval rating for handling health care in the Quinnipiac poll has risen from a low of 35% in January and February to 45% now.
As proof that nothing succeeds like success, the perception of an improving economy and the increasingly positive reactions to the newly enacted health care reform law have led to the most favorable job approval scores for both the president and congressional Democrats this year. For most of 2010, in the Quinnipiac poll, a slightly greater percentage of voters disapproved than approved of the way President Obama was handling his job. But in May, for the first time since early February the president’s approval score was in positive ground (48% approve vs. 43% disapprove). Over the same time frame, the job performance approval of congressional Democrats has gone up from 28% to 34%. By contrast, the approval score for congressional Republicans is down from a high of 34% in March to only 26% in May.
As a result,the forecast of another Democratic election disaster like that of 1994 seems premature and unlikely in today’s changed demographic and political environment. Those expecting a wave may well be left standing on the shore vainly waiting for a high tide that will never come.

21st Century Electorate's Heart is in the Suburbs

2010-05-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Even as the nation conducts its critically important decennial census, a demographic picture of the rapidly changing population of the United States is emerging. It underlines how suburban living has become the dominant experience for all key groups in America’s 21st Century Electorate.
While suburban living was once seen as the almost exclusive preserve of the white upper-middle class, a majority of all major American racial and ethnic groups now live in suburbia, according to the newest report on the state of metropolitan America from the Brookings Institute. Slightly more than half of African-Americans now live in large metropolitan suburbs, as do 59% of Hispanics, almost 62% of Asian-Americans, and 78% of whites. As a result the country is closer than ever to achieving a goal that many thought would never be achieved—city/suburban racial/ethnic integration. This is particularly so in the faster growing metropolitan areas of the South and West.

The trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. A majority of Millennials live in the suburbs and 43% of them, a portion higher than for any other generation, describe suburbs as their “ideal place to live.”

The nation’s one hundred largest metropolitan areas have grown twice as fast as the rest of the country in the last decade. That growth was heavily concentrated in lower density suburbs, which grew at three times the rate of cities or inner ring suburbs. At the same time, one third of the nation’s overall population growth was due to immigration. As a result about one-quarter of all children in the United States have at least one immigrant parent. In 2008, non whites became a majority of Americans less than eighteen years old, a demographic milestone that underlines just how fast and how dramatically the country is changing. Any political party that wants to build a lasting electoral majority must align its policy prescriptions with these new demographic realities to attract the votes of a younger, more ethnically diverse population, most of which now lives in the suburbs.

Economic opportunity continues to be the major driver in determining where people want to live and work. Five of the six fastest growing metropolitan areas in the last decade were also among the top six in job growth according to data from the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by the Praxis Strategy Group. The same five metropolitan areas--Phoenix, Riverside (CA), Dallas, Houston and Washington, D.C-- also ranked high in the diversity of their population, differing only in the degree of educational attainment their residents have achieved. With America experiencing the first decade since the 1930s in which inflation adjusted median income declined and job creation slowed to levels not seen in decades, this movement to where the jobs are is hardly surprising. Yet this crucial factor is often overlooked by urban planners who argue that cultural amenities and sport complexes are the key to attracting new residents. In fact, metropolitan areas that focus on job creation for Millennials (young Americans born 1982-2003) and minorities have the best chance of gaining population in the next decade.

Clearly providing higher quality public education experiences is a key part of any such economic strategy. The arrival of stealth fighter parents at local school district meetings across the country only underlines how passionate young families are about the quality of education their children receive and their unwillingness to let Boomer ideological debates delay the changes needed to properly prepare their children for a higher educational experience that increases the odds of economic success. The traditional separation between municipal partisan politics and non-partisan school policy making is increasingly outdated when so much of a city’s economic success depends on the quality of the education its residents receive. In this environment, the educational policies of the Obama administration that focus on results and outcomes and not on process or previous practices should serve as a template for elected officials at every level to follow.

Safe neighborhoods of single family dwellings with a surrounding patch of land continue to attract families of every background to the nation’s suburbs. Metropolitan areas that provide such an environment to all of their residents are the furthest along in achieving a more integrated society. Los Angeles, for instance, which is often decried by non-residents as simply an aggregation of suburbs with no central core, has a suburban population whose demographic profile almost exactly matches the city’s population. The fact that most of its housing reflects the tract developments of the 50s and 60s, and that former Los Angeles police chief William Bratton used his COMPSTAT crime fighting techniques to bring the city’s crime rates down to levels not seen in five decades, are two key reasons for this polyglot profile.

Rather than fighting this desire on the part of America’s 21st Century Electorate to live comfortably in the suburbs, politicians of all stripes should find ways to embrace it and advocate policies that reflect our new economic realities. For instance, rather than insisting on higher density housing and light rail systems as the only answer to the nation’s appetite for foreign oil, the federal government should adopt tax incentives that encourage telecommuting. If all Americans worked from home, as many Millennials prefer to do, just two days a week, it would cut that portion of our nation’s gas consumption by more than a third. The FCC’s recently announced broadband policy will help put in place the infrastructure required to make such a lifestyle possible and even more productive.

Three out of four commuting trips involve a single individual driving their car to work and this isn’t likely to change with the increased growth in suburban living. But putting as much emphasis on making our nation’s highways “smart” as in creating a smart electrical grid would make it possible for the existing highway system to shorten commuting time and reduce the quantity of fuel used in such trips. Recent developments in mobile technology makes this a practical, near term solution if state and local governments are prepared to invest in upgrading an infrastructure that is already designed and deployed to connect people’s homes to their workplace.

Aligning the message at the heart of a party’s programs with the values and behaviors of America’s 21st Century Electorate is the best way to guarantee victory this year and for years to come. As Simon Rosenberg has stated, Democrats need to “embrace the coalition” based on the country’s new demographic realities that Barack Obama used so effectively in 2008. That embrace requires not only focusing the party’s efforts on the growing demographic groups that now make up a majority of Americans, but also rethinking many of the policies it advocates to make them more friendly to the suburban lifestyle that so many members of the coalition desire. As he points out, “crossing the chasm” from the old coalition to the new will “be hard, but it is in the best interests of the country and the best interests of the Democratic Party.”

Email is so over

2010-05-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

In the 1980s a powerful new communication tool invaded corporate life. It undermined hierarchy, expanded communication channels and enabled huge gains in productivity. The technology was email and its arrival aroused great concerns about security and authority in C suites everywhere. Older leaders refused to use the technology, or at best, told their secretaries to treat it like regular mail, handing it to them printed on paper in their daily inbox.

Younger workers, from the Baby Boom Generation, judged the skill of their bosses based upon their willingness to communicate in email. Boomers also used the technology to create peer networks where they exchanged information about job opportunities and plotted how best to make over organizations they found hide bound and hopelessly out of touch with modern technology. Today, Boomers are in charge, email is a ubiquitous part of corporate life, even following workers home on their smart phones, and no one questions its effectiveness and efficiency.

No one that is except Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, who are now entering the workforce in numbers greater than even the Baby Boom Generation did three and four decades ago. The comfort and facility of Millennials in the use of Internet communication technologies has led many to call people of their age“digital natives,” ready to text or tweet each moment of their young lives. Turning the libertarian, individual autonomy values of the Internet’s creators upside down, Millennials have used social networks to bring their friends, and the rest of the world, closer in communities bound together by common interests, not geography. Having transformed educational and entertainment institutions by insisting on the primacy of peer-to-peer communications, the first wave of Millennials is now entering the workforce and bringing their communication technology revolution with them.

For Millennials, email is a slow, old-fashioned way of communicating, lacking the immediacy and transparency of Instant Messaging (IM). Facebook provides a much more robust way to organize Millennial’s daily dialogue and life (which are the same thing for this generation), than MS Outlook even when its on a Blackberry. Facebook also has the weakest functionality of any email system in the market, which hasn’t stopped it from becoming the de facto contact management system for most Millennials. The generation uses social networks to explore ideas on how to solve any problem presented to them with all of their friends and can’t imagine limiting those questions to only those working in the same company, any more than they can abide China attempting to censor Google searches.

So what has been the reaction of most corporate CIOs to this phenomenon? Much of it resembles the response to email by corporate executives thirty years ago. Citing security risks and the need to protect corporate intellectual property, the use of social networks is routinely restricted or prohibited out right. Older bosses sneer at anyone on Facebook, suggesting it is a drain on productivity and a threat to personal privacy. IMing is permitted, so long as it is done within corporate guidelines, but its inability to convey Microsoft Office attachments makes it less likely to be used in decision-making discussions. Meanwhile, the potential gains in creativity and innovation that would come from having each employee incorporate the ideas of hundreds of their friends in actively solving the company’s problems are ignored. Cut off from the constant chatter of texts and homemade video, corporate hierarchies are as clueless about what this generation is thinking as Boomer bosses were decades ago.

But this kind of outmoded behavior will also fade away. Over the next decade, all of the Millennial generation will come of age. Members of the generation will represent one out of every three adult Americans by 2020. Corporations that wish to survive, let alone succeed, will have to align their governance practices and technology architectures to accommodate the way this emerging generation works.

In a decade or so, CIO’s will look back at this time of transition and smile at the antiquated way business was transacted before mobile computing and social networks became commonplace. For those old enough to remember, it will seem very similar to the way business was transformed by another, now obsolete, technology, email. Millennials and their Internet based communication technologies will have disrupted corporate life, devolving power to the edges of the organization and creating a more group-oriented, transparent culture in tune with the generation’s beliefs. As a result, companies will be much more successful than they are today and the country’s economy will be a lot better than it is now.

Millennials Will Lead an LA Renaissance

2010-04-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly, despite the real challenges Los Angeles faces today, the city is out in front of many of its urban competitors in transforming its capacity to provide a safe place to raise and properly educate children, exactly the criteria Millennials use in deciding where to settle down and start a family. It is the kind of challenge that cities around the country must meet if they wish to thrive in the coming decade.

LA’s biggest win in this respect derives from the political courage of former Mayor James Hahn. It was Hahn who appointed Bill Bratton as police chief, who then deployed his COMPSTAT process for continuously reducing crime. During his tenure as the city’s Police Commissioner under both Mayor Hahn and his successor, Antonio Villaraigosa, Bratton achieved the same improvement in LA as he did previously in New York,– in a city with many of the same societal problems but about one-fourth the police resources and a much larger area to patrol. Even as unemployment soared in 2009 during the Great Recession to 12.3 percent in Los Angeles County, the city saw a 17 percent drop in homicides, an 8 percent reduction in property crime and a 10 percent drop in violent crime. This is a first great step in restoring Los Angeles, once the destination for families, back to its historic promise. Today, Angelinos feel safer than they have in decades.

COMPSTAT is above all a vehicle for changing bureaucratic cultures. In his initial dialogue with the brass of the New York Police Department (NYPD) Bratton told his management team that he planned on holding them accountable for the crime reductions he had promised Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Citing the FBI’s national crime reports, they responded by telling Bratton that since crime “is largely a societal problem which is beyond the control of the police,” it was completely unfair to hold them accountable for reducing it. Since the police department was not responsible for the city’s economic vitality, its housing stock, its school system, and certainly not its racial and ethnic tensions, all of which were the root causes of crime, the managers felt it was unreasonable to expect them to actually reduce crime.

When Bratton asked them what they could be held accountable for, the leadership replied that they were prepared to accept responsibility for the “perception of crime in New York City” and that their existing tactics of high profile drug busts, neighborhood sweeps, and the like were effective ways to manage that perception. Bratton adamantly refused to accept this definition of accountability from his team and went about creating a system that placed accountability for crime reduction on the NYPD’s leadership, something that also worked its way down through the ranks of every precinct in the city and into the fabric of the department’s culture.

This fully captures the type of cultural change that every part of any city’s bureaucracy must undergo to become a Millennial city.

During Mayor Hahn’s tenure in Los Angeles, for example, he expanded the COMPSTAT process to all departments in order to hold General Managers accountable for their performance under a program called “CITISTATS.” Some departments, such as Street Services, Sanitation, and Street Lighting, are still using the lessons learned in that experience to continuously improve the cost and quality of their services.

But Los Angeles’s recovery has often been blocked by the City Council which has proven reluctant to cede its traditional right to intervene in department operations and to direct resources to specific projects or programs in their Councilmanic districts regardless of the overall city’s needs. When Villaraigosa ascended to the Mayor’s office he removed the potential irritant to his relationship with the Council by disbanding CITISTATS. That decision has deprived Los Angeles of key insights that could have been used to help deal with its current budget challenges.

It also removed one of the more promising vehicles for Neighborhood Councils to hold city bureaucrats accountable for the services they deliver. The Councils, although far from perfect, remain one of the city’s best hopes for fulfilling Millennials’ desire for direct, locally-oriented involvement.

In contrast, Mayor Villaraigosa’s determination to hold the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) accountable for the performance of its students has begun to pay dividends. Recently the board voted 6-1 to adopt a policy mandating competitive bids eventually be issued for the management of all 250 “demonstrably failing schools” as defined by federal education law. The parent revolution that spurred this new approach would not have been successful without the support of LAUSD board members that the Mayor had helped to elect.

Including parents armed with new information on student performance in the process of reforming LAUSD’s schools promises to produce schools that deliver superior results at lower costs and to create a new, decentralized, parent-controlled, educational decision-making system that will be especially attractive to Millennials and their parents.

Now that the Great Recession has brought single family housing back to affordable levels in many parts of Los Angeles, the building blocks of safer streets and better schools give the metropolitan area an opportunity to establish an environment that can attract large numbers of Millennials just as they enter young adulthood. To take advantage of this opportunity, however, all members of the city’s leadership will need to learn one more Millennial lesson.

Unlike the Baby Boomers running the Los Angeles City Hall today, Millennials aren’t interested in confrontation and debilitating debates focused on making sure one side wins and the other loses. They want what business people term “win-win” solutions that take into account everyone’s needs and produce outcomes that benefit the group or community as a whole. Los Angeles, a city built on the expectations of the last civic GI Generation that came to LA in the 1940s, must realign itself to the tastes of the emerging next civic generation, the Millennials.

Finding such solutions, given the many challenges LA faces, will not be easy. LA continues to be run by Boomer politicians, like those in Congress, who know how to play up divisive issues, but haven’t demonstrated an ability to get results.

But if today’s leaders in cities like Los Angeles aren’t up to the task, it won’t be long before a new generation of leaders who have grown up believing in such an approach will emerge to take their place. As Ryan Munoz, a politically active high school senior put it, “With all the technology at our disposal, our approach is different. We can be less partisan, less confrontational and work better together.”

Rachel Lester, who at 15 years old just won election as the youngest member of any Los Angeles Neighborhood Council by campaigning with her Facebook friends, captured the potential power of the generation. “When a few teenagers do something, a lot of teenagers do something.” When cities develop leaders as great as America’s newest civic generation, the Millennials, those cities will once again take their rightful place in the pantheon of America’s most desired places to live. Los Angeles would be an ideal place to start that movement.

honoring millennial's service

2010-04-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

One year ago today President Obama signed the Kennedy Serve America Act fulfilling one of his most important campaign promises to the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003). The legislation represented the biggest expansion of national service since FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

Among other provisions, the bill
• established programs to involve middle and high school students in community service, including its innovative Summer of Service programs;
• expanded AmeriCorps openings over 8 years, allowing for up to 250,000 AmeriCorps volunteers by fiscal year 2017;
• expanded the National Civilian Community Corps’ mission to include projects on energy conservation, environmental stewardship or conservation, infrastructure improvement, urban and rural development, or disaster preparedness needs; and
• established new volunteer Corps to engage Millennial’s enthusiasm for such efforts including the Education Corps to improve schools, the Healthy Futures Corps to serve unmet health needs within communities, the Clean Energy Corps to work on energy projects, the Opportunity Corps to work with the economically disadvantaged, and the Veterans Corps to work with veterans and their families.

In return for participating in these service initiatives, the legislation raised the value of the full-time national service educational award that goes to participants in the Corporation for National Community Service’s programs to the maximum amount of a Federal Pell Grant. This will enable those who volunteer, to return to school after serving their country, just as members of the GI generation did after WWII.

In just one year the spirit of the legislation has inspired countless new initiatives among Millennials, America’s most civic-minded generation. Now Millennial led initiatives, such as myImpact.org and jumo.com are building social network sites to link their generational cohort's desire to improve the world with opportunities for doing so.
One effort that deserves special mention is the recently concluded “Beyond the Welcome Home” Veteran’s Summit hosted by one of the leading Millennial service organizations, Mobilize.org, in Carson, California. More than five dozen veterans of the Iraqi or Afghanistan wars, representing Millennial veterans from all branches of the armed services gathered for three days to identify the major problems facing returning veterans and develop service solutions to address their issues. Joined by civilian Millennials and interested non-profits, the group used the latest in interactive technologies to prioritize the issues they wanted to address.

The four most important issues facing returning veterans that the group identified did not sound very different than those facing veterans returning from earlier wars:

1. Reintegrating veterans into civilian life so they can productively interact with civilians and society again.
2. A lack of knowledge about programs and benefits post-separation for the armed forces that could help veterans with their return to civilian life.
3. Suicide prevention to deal with feelings of lack of self-worth post-deployment and post-military that many veterans experience.
4. Delays in receiving the health care and other benefits that they are entitled to due to poor communication between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

But the solutions that received the most support from the participants had a distinctly Millennial flavor. Many emphasized the group solidarity that Millennials feel so intensely. As one participant put it, “The way to deal with these issues is with veterans taking care of each other, just as we did in Iraq.” Or as another participant said, “We need to do things ourselves, not have DoD do it. We always do better ourselves.”

Millennial’s determination to overhaul the institutions their elders built or, failing that, to start new ones was also evident in the suggestions offered at the conference. “We should use the established Veteran Service Organizations, but if they don’t work, we should create new ones.” One popular way to start new institutions was to create a “Facebook for Vets” site that could link all the sites Millennial vets are using into a single place to get all the information they need.

Nor were the participants daunted by the challenge of taking on two of the federal government’s biggest bureaucracies—DoD and the VA—through their generation’s penchant for political engagement. Two comments capture the larger sentiment of the group. “We need to become active and aware of political issues that involve veterans and encourage our fellow Millennials to vote for legislators who support veterans’ issues.” “By sharing information and becoming advocates we can get DoD and VA to respond.”

Of the approximately 2 million service men and women who have served our country so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 60%, almost 1.26 million, are members of the Millennial Generation, so these sentiments are certain to find their way into this year’s political campaigns. Unlike the shunned and often reviled veterans of the Vietnam War, Millennials are returning to a society that respects their service. According to NDN’s latest survey on America’s 21st Century electorate, 64% of Millennials, as well as 78% of older generations, have a positive view of the nation’s military. But more than one in five veterans between the ages of 18 and 24 can’t find work when they return home.

The country’s appreciation needs to be translated into programs for veterans that are worthy of the honor this generation has brought to our country. Three years ago, Mobilize.org established its Democracy 2.0 declaration
which states that it is time “to act. . . to upgrade America’s unfinished project of democracy.” The organization has taken an important step along that path by hosting the summit and providing $25,000 to support the best ideas that flowed from the conference. But as the nation observes National Volunteer Week, each of us should take a moment to commit to doing whatever is needed to honor the most important volunteers this country has—the members of the United States Armed Forces.

One way to do so would be to connect to any of the groups that earned support from Mobilize.org for the work they were doing with Millennial veterans at the Summit, or to some of the other groups dedicated to helping America’s next great generation contribute as much in their civilian life as they have already done in the military. This list is a great place to start honoring our Millennial veteran’s service:

Athena Bridge

The Mission Continues

Veteran’s Green Jobs

Team Rubicon

MTV

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Democrats on Roll since Health Care Reform vote

2010-04-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

This year, the GOP has been affixing itself ever more closely to the Tea Party movement, even as that movement’s public appeal weakens. Meanwhile, the position of the Democratic Party has actually strengthened since the passage of health care reform in late March. Democrats have a lead in the generic Congressional ballot for the first time in 2010; the “enthusiasm gap” between Democratic and Republican voters is narrowing; and Obama leads all potential 2012 Republican opponents by about the margin of his 2008 victory.
A mid-April CNN Opinion Research poll ) indicated that favorable evaluations of President Barack Obama continue to hold steady at 57 percent and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have risen in popularity by eight and six percentage points respectively from what they had been about two months previously. By contrast, favorable ratings of Sarah Palin, the Republican perhaps most strongly identified with the Tea Party movement, dropped from 46 percent in December 2009 and 43 percent in January 2010 to 39 percent in April. Her unfavorable evaluations rose by nine points (from 46% to 55%) over the same period. In addition, while positive opinions of the Tea Party movement increased by five points (from 33% to 38%) since January, negative attitudes rose by 10 points (from 26% to 36%).
Also, according to the CNN survey, President Obama holds a clear lead among registered voters over four potential Republican challengers to his 2012 reelection bid—Mitt Romney (53% vs. 45%); Mike Huckabee (54% vs. 45%); Sarah Palin (55% vs. 42%); and, Newt Gingrich (55% vs. 43%). His margin against each Republican actually slightly exceeds his 2008 popular vote lead over John McCain (53% vs. 46%), indicating that in spite of all the turmoil and rancor of the first year of his presidency, Barack Obama retains as strong a position with the electorate as when he won the White House.
But, the president’s reelection campaign is still more than two years away. Of more immediate relevance, the Democratic Party leads among registered voters on the 2010 CNN/Opinion Research generic congressional ballot for the first time this year.

	Democratic Candidate	Republican Candidate	Neither	No Opinion
April 9-11	50%	46%	4%	1%
March 25-28	45%	49%	4%	2%
March 19-21	45%	48%	5%	2%
February 12-15	45%	47%	6%	2%
January 8-10	45%	48%	6%	1%

Even more important, after languishing for months,
the political enthusiasm and intensity of Democratic identifiers and the groups that together comprise the emerging 21st Century Democratic coalition rose sharply in the wake of the enactment of health care and student loan reform legislation.

	Definitely/ Likely to vote March 8-11	Definitely/ Likely to vote April 5-8	Percentage Point Increase
Democratic identifiers	40%	61%	21%
Women	41%	59%	18%
18-29 year olds	34%	46%	12%
African-Americans	29%	46%	17%
Hispanics	32%	47%	15%
Residents of Northeast	41%	60%	19%
Residents of West	42%	62%	20%

In early March, Republican identifiers were far more likely to vote than Democrats (51% vs. 40%). One month later, what had been an 11-percentage point “enthusiasm gap” separating Republican from Democratic identifiers had narrowed to four points (63% vs. 59%). In the most recent Daily Kos poll it widened again to eight points (69% vs. 61%). Still, the increased intensity of Democratic voters coupled with the Democratic Party’s party identification advantage over the Republicans (47% vs. 34% in the NDN survey) puts the Democrats in better position to compete effectively this November than they were just a month ago.
The lesson from this is clear. Like any majority political party, the Democratic Party will be rewarded by those who identify with and vote for it when it governs like the majority party that it is. The next step for congressional Democrats is to adopt financial regulatory reform over the persistent opposition of the GOP leadership and its Tea Party base. By so doing, the Democrats will prove that, “If you use it, you won’t lose it.”

The Millennial Metropolis

2010-04-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

Back in the 1950s and 60s when Baby Boomers were young, places like Los Angeles led the nation’s explosive growth in suburban living that has defined the American Dream ever since. As Kevin Roderick observed, the San Fernando Valley became, by extension, “America’s suburb” – a model which would be repeated in virtually every community across the country.

These suburbs – perfectly suited to the sun-washed car culture of Southern California – have remained the ideal for most Americans. And they remain so for the children of Boomer and Generation X parents, Millennials,(born 1982-2003), who express the same strong interest in raising their families in suburban settings.

According to the most recent generational survey research, done for Washington-based think tank, NDN, by Frank N. Magid Associates, 43 percent of Millennials describe suburbs as their “ideal place to live,” compared to just 31 percent of older generations. In the same survey, a majority of older generations (56%) expressed a preference for either small town or rural living. This may reflect the roots of many older Americans, who are more likely to have grown up outside of a major metropolis, or it may indicate a desire of older people for a presumably simpler lifestyle.

By contrast, these locations were cited by only 34 percent of Millennials as their
preferred place to live. A majority (54%) of Millennials live in suburban America and most of those who do express a preference for raising their own families in similar settings. Even though big cities are often thought of as the place where young people prefer to live and work, only 17 percent of Millennials say they want to live in one, less than a third of those expressing a preference for suburban living. Nor are they particularly anxious to spend their lives as renters in dense, urban locations. A full 64 percent of Millennials surveyed, said it was “very important” to have an opportunity to own their own home. Twenty percent of adult Millennials named owning a home as one of their most important priorities in life, right behind being a good parent and having a successful marriage.

This suggests that some of the greatest opportunities in housing will be in those metropolitan areas that can provide the same amenities of suburban life that Los Angeles did sixty years ago. In this Millennials are just like their parents who moved to the suburbs in order to buy their own home, with a front and back yard, however small, in a safe neighborhood with good schools.

Given the fact that nearly four in five Millennials express a desire to have children, cities that wish to attract Millennials for the long-term will have to offer these same benefits. These Millennial metropolises also will need to be built with the active participation of their citizens, using the most modern communication technologies, to create a community that reflects this generation’s community-oriented values and beliefs. Metropolises that wish to attract Millennials, will also need to include them in their governing institutions. Such cities will have a leg up on those run by closed, good old boy networks that don’t reflect the tolerance and transparency Millennials believe in.

The passion of Millennials for social networking and smart phones reflects their need to stay in touch with their wide circle of friends every moment of the day and night. In fact, 83 percent of this generation say that they go to sleep with their cell phone. This group-oriented behavior is reflected in the efforts of Millennials to find win-win solutions to any problem and their strong desire to strengthen civic institutions. Seventy percent of college age Millennials have performed some sort of community service and virtually every member of the generation (94%) considers volunteer service as an effective way to deal with challenges in their local community.

The other key characteristic of the Millenial metropolis will be how it carves out a safe place for children. The Boomer parents of Millennials took intense interest in every aspect of their children’s lives, earning them the sobriquet “helicopter parents” because of their constant hovering. Now the Generation X “stealth fighter parents” of younger Millennials are turning the Boomer desire to hover and talk into a push for action and better bottom line results.

This can already be seen in cities like Los Angeles where a parent revolution is successfully challenging the entrenched interests in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

The idea began with a website, www.parentrevolution.org, that offered a bargain to parents willing to participate in a grass roots effort to improve individual schools. The organizers, led by Ben Austin, a long time advocate on behalf of Los Angeles’s kids, promised that if half of the parents in a school attendance district signed an online petition indicating their willingness to participate in improving their local school, they would “give you a great school for your child to attend.”

This process has worked both in working class areas like East Los Angeles’ Garfield High School and the Mark Twain Middle School in affluent West LA. With the backing of the parents, Austin went to the Los Angeles school district and demanded that they either put the management of the school “out to bid,” or his organization would be forced to respond to the parent’s demands by starting a charter school in competition with the LAUSD school. Since each child has seven thousand dollars of potential state funding in their back pack, a newly enlightened LAUSD agreed to these demands. When 3000 parents showed up to demonstrate their support of the concept, the school district voted 6-1 to adopt a policy mandating competitive bids eventually be issued for the management of all 250 “demonstrably failing schools” as defined by federal education law.

The key to building the Millenial metropolis will be to accommodate such changes. Places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, or Raleigh-Durham that have survived the Great Recession reasonably well now are focusing on producing open, accessible communities with good schools and safe streets. These communities appear best positioned to take advantage of the next bloom of urban growth. Of course the ability to provide America’s next great generation with good jobs and a growing economy will also be required if any metropolis wants to attract Millennials. But with the right leadership and a sustained effort to focus on the basics of family living, almost any city has the opportunity to become a leader in the rebirth of America’s Millennial Era metropolises.

Shop and Make the World a Better Place

2010-04-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

Having totally disrupted American politics with the election of President Barack Obama, America’s youngest and largest generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003), are about to overturn the rules of retailing with equally dramatic implications for the country’s economy. Underpinning this shift is the deployment of broadband speed mobile services that take full advantage of the capabilities of America’s favorite new toy-- smart phones. But just as Millennials transformed the Internet from a libertarian tool for individual action to one that provides a new capability for connecting everyone through social networks, these new broadband services will be put to work in ways that reflect the values and beliefs of Millennials, especially their fondness for doing good while doing well.

Even though the FCC’s recent announcement of a national broadband plan was followed quickly by a court decision that might undermine the Commission's ability to implement it, the goals in the plan for the deployment of a faster broadband infrastructure for the country are likely to become the focus of any policies the country adopts either by administrative fiat or Congressional action. The plan’s first goal is to provide at least 100 million U.S. homes with affordable access to broadband download speeds of 100 megabits per second by 2020. But the plan’s second goal is even more ambitious, suggesting that the United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with the “fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.” This will be accomplished by freeing up vast swaths of spectrum currently owned by older media that these new broad band speed mobile networks will need to operate. Here, the Commission clearly has the authority to regulate since spectrum allocation was the original reason for its creation in the 1930s.

As NDN fellow Rob Shapiro recently pointed out,the economic benefits of this kind of infrastructure deployment can lead to the direct creation of 500,000 new jobs over the next five years. But many times more jobs will be created by the way “that a basic infrastructure such as broadband stimulates additional economic activity, much as highways and railroads once did. Building out these networks creates a platform for the development of thousands of new applications,” and that’s where Millennials’ behavior and use of technology come into play.

A recent Nielsen study of generational shopping habits found that Millennials make the fewest trips of any generation to any and all retail settings-- from big box stores to the local drugstore-- but really enjoy in-person shopping on those relatively fewer occasions when they engage in it. “On a typical mission, they know how to find what they need and are less likely to shop the entire store,” the report concluded, reflecting the generation’s penchant for going online to research their purchases before they take offline action. But once they have a smart phone in their hands, and about one out of every three Millennials already owns one, this distinction between virtual and physical buying behaviors will blur almost to the point of extinction.

About half of all mobile phones in the US today are smart phones. The iPhone alone now has eight times the number of users as AOL and is enjoying the fastest adoption rate of any Internet service, eclipsing the record set by the Netscape browser in the mid-90s by a factor of five. Almost every smart phone comes with a camera and a GPS or location identification application that, unlike PC Internet access, enables the network to know where you are at any moment in time. This combination of capabilities enables new “location-based services” or applications that takes the information about where you are and provides you with information you might find helpful based on your location. So, for instance, you will soon be able to use your phone’s camera to take a snapshot of a more square shaped looking bar code on a particular piece of merchandise and send that information to a service provider who will tell you where you could find that item for less money at a store nearby or perhaps even where to find it in the color or size you need.That rather mundane use of the technology may make the retailing industry even more efficient than it is today, but that’s not what will soon transform this key engine of economic growth.

The real dramatic changes will occur when retailers link the Millennial Generation’s constant use of its mobile phones with its equally large penchant for helping causes. Already, Millennial entrepreneurs are building social network sites to link their generational cohort’s desire to improve the world with opportunities for doing so. Chris Golden and Nick Triano’s myImpact.org website recently won $25,000 in the PepsiRefresh challenge to help them expand their beta site that connects service volunteers with each other and with local opportunities to help. Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, and the creator of MyBarackObama.com, just announced plans for his jumo.com site that will do similar things for those wanting to make a more global impact. With Facebook and YouTube becoming the preferred destinations of mobile users accessing the Net, it is only a matter of time before sites like these will attract Millennials on their cell phones in record numbers as well. This same type of connection between where you shop and what cause you want to support has just become a newly popular app on smart phones.

The capability is being accessed today by each of the three-hundred thousand iPhone users who downloaded the “CauseWorld” application in its first two months of availability. Users earn “Karma points” by visiting retailers who have registered with the service in order to get Millennials to “check in” to their store. By letting the iPhone’s GPS service know you are physically in the store, each visit generates more points that can ultimately be traded in for a contribution to one of seventeen selected charities, paid for by the service’s corporate sponsors. “Scanning for Karma” becomes a great way to multi-task for Millennials with more time than money. And for retailers it moves the decision on where someone shops away from price comparison models of services such as “ShopSavvy”
toward a more powerful generational motivation to shop at companies that support causes Millennials believe in. The application’s popularity is just the latest demonstration that, in a Millennial era, the brand is political.

The technological brilliance of the Obama presidential campaign was the way it focused its “Hope Factory” organizational efforts on moving online interest to offline action.Now that same strategy will be deployed to change shopping to an activity that helps make the world a better place. Those retailers and carriers that take advantage of the opportunity broadband internet mobile computing provides will soon be rewarded with victory in their sales campaigns by a generation committed to creating change it can believe in.

Dems, not Independents, Dominate 21st Century Electortae

2010-03-23T17:31:00.000-07:00

Now that President Obama has signed the historic health care reform legislation that pundits claim would never pass, it’s time to put to rest another DC myth —the importance of independent voters. A February 2010 survey commissioned by NDN with a far larger than normal national sample of more than 2700 American adults paints a picture of an electorate that is, in fact, far more partisan—and Democratic—than the one the D.C. punditry describes almost daily. Here are three truths the survey reveals about the American electorate in the 21st Century that everyone concerned with progressive politics should know:

• The American electorate is highly partisan. In spite of inside-the-Beltway assertions to the contrary, independent voters do not dominate U.S. politics or determine the results of most elections. No more than a fifth of Americans are completely unattached to one of the two parties. At least 80-percent identify with or lean to the either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
• The large majority of independents are partisans in their attitudes and voting behavior. About two-thirds of independents say they lean to one or the other major parties. Independents who lean to a party vote overwhelmingly for the candidates of that party. They claim adherence to the ideology normally associated with the party to which they tilt—Democratic liberalism and Republican conservatism. And, their opinions on key issues reflect those ideological leanings. Democratic leaning independents favor governmental activism in the economy and support policies promoting economic equality. Republican leaning independents oppose those things.
• The American electorate tilts strongly Democratic. Overall, nearly half (47%) of the national electorate identify with or lean to the Democratic Party as opposed to a third (34%) who identify or lean Republican. The Democratic Party’s decisive edge overall in party ID should give pause to easy acceptance of the memes that America is a “center-right” or even equally divided nation.

Using a seven-point scale developed by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, that first formulated the concept of party identification in the 1950s, to more fully capture the actual complexity of party identification, the NDN February survey reveals that almost two-thirds of those who call themselves independent lean to either the Democratic or Republican Party. This leaves no more than one in five American voters completely unattached to a party. This is more than a statistical quirk or a matter of academic importance: independents who lean to one of the parties are far closer demographically, attitudinally, and behaviorally to those who identify outright with that party than they are to independents who lean to the opposite party or do not lean to either the Democrats or Republicans.

Strong Democrat	18%
Not strong Democrat	12%
Independent, lean Democrat	17%
Independent, not lean	20%
Independent, lean Republican	13%
Not strong Republican	8%
Strong Republican	13%

Democratic identifiers and leaners are clearly different demographically from their GOP counterparts. A majority of those who identify with or lean to the Democrats are female and drawn from the two youngest generations of voters: Millennials (18-28 years old) and Gen-Xers (29-45). Also, upwards of one-fifth of the Democratic groups (and one-third of the Strong Democrats) is minority. By contrast, a majority of those identify with or lean Republican is male and comes from the two oldest generations—Baby Boomers (46-64 years old) and Silents (65+ years old). About nine in ten Republican identifiers and leaners are white and a disproportionately large share resides in the South.

	Strong Democrat	Not strong Democrat	Independent, lean Democrat	Independent, not lean	Independent, lean Republican	Not strong Republican	Strong Republican
Gender
Male	48%	38%	46%	53%	60%	56%	53%
Female	52%	62%	54%	47%	40%	44%	47%
Generation
Millennial	19%	22%	23%	21%	14%	16%	12%
Gen X	34%	34%	29%	31%	26%	22%	29%
Boomer	32%	31%	32%	34%	34%	38%	35%
Silent	14%	14%	16%	15%	27%	24%	24%
Race
White	61%	68%	76%	83%	93%	85%	87%
African-American	21%	12%	7%	4%	1%	2%	2%
Latino	11%	12%	10%	8%	3%	7%	9%
Region
Northeast	21%	22%	18%	19%	13%	21%	14%
Midwest	22%	19%	26%	25%	30%	17%	17%
South	31%	37%	26%	32%	37%	38%	44%
West	27%	22%	30%	24%	20%	24%	25%

Not only do the independent leaners look like those who identify outright with the two parties demographically, they also think like them. Within the more ideologically cohesive GOP, a majority of Strong Republicans (75%), Not strong Republicans (55%), and Republican-leaning independents (53%) perceive themselves as conservatives. Among Democrats, a majority of strong identifiers (55%) and a plurality of independents that lean to the party (41%) say they are liberals or progressives. In fact, the independent Democrats are significantly more likely to label themselves as liberals or progressives than are weakly-attached Democrats.

	Strong Democrat	Not strong Democrat	Independent, lean Democrat	Independent, not lean	Independent, lean Republican	Not strong Republican	Strong Republican
Liberal/progressive	55%	33%	41%	21%	7%	13%	7%
Conservative	10%	16%	11%	23%	53%	55%	75%
Moderate	26%	37%	39%	33%	33%	25%	15%
Not sure	9%	13%	8%	18%	5%	7%	3%

These ideological preferences are clearly reflected in the positions on issues held by party identifiers and leaners. Along with those who identify as Democrats, independents that lean Democratic decisively favor activist government (74%) and policies designed to promote economic equality (72%). Like outright Republican identifiers, those that tilt to the GOP overwhelmingly prefer a laissez faire approach to economic and societal concerns (66%) and rugged individualism (73%). In fact, Democratic-leaning independents are more “liberal” and Republican-leaning independents are more “conservative” than those who identify only weakly with either party.

	Strong Democrat	Not strong Democrat	Independent, lean Democrat	Independent, not lean	Independent, lean Republican	Not strong Republican	Strong Republican
Government Economic/Societal Activism
Favor government attempting to solve economic/societal problems	81%	71%	74%	50%	25%	42%	24%
Favor government staying out of economy/society	11%	15%	15%	36%	66%	47%	67%
No opinion	8%	14%	11%	14%	9%	10%	9%
Economic Equality
Favor government guaranteeing living standard & income	75%	61%	72%	48%	19%	30%	23%
Favor government letting each person getting ahead on their own	14%	23%	15%	34%	73%	60%	64%
No opinion	11%	17%	13%	18%	8%	10%	13%

Ultimately, the clearest indicator of partisanship is the party for which one votes and, by this measure, independents that lean to a party clearly pass the test. In 2008 upwards of eight in ten independent Democrats and independent Republicans voted for both the presidential and congressional candidates of the party to which they lean. In fact, those who lean to one or the other of the parties were as likely to vote for those candidates as were weak identifiers.
At this early date, vote intentions in the 2010 congressional midterm elections are less clear. More than a third of independent leaners and a quarter of weak identifiers say they have not yet decided how they will vote in November. Even so, a majority of independents that lean Democratic (56%) or Republican (55%) still expect to vote for the congressional candidate of the party to which they tilt. Only two-percent of each party’s independent leaners expects to cross party lines. If past history is any indicator, most of those who say their congressional vote is not yet determined will vote for the congressional candidate of the party to which they now lean.

	Strong Democrat	Not strong Democrat	Independent, lean Democrat	Independent, not lean	Independent, lean Republican	Not strong Republican	Strong Republican
Presidential vote in 2008
Obama	96%	82%	87%	45%	9%	19%	6%
McCain	3%	16%	8%	40%	85%	75%	93%
Other candidate	0%	1%	3%	8%	4%	5%	0%
Congressional vote in 2008
Democratic candidate	97%	80%	78%	29%	7%	9%	3%
Republican candidate	1%	9%	4%	26%	83%	85%	94%
Other candidate	0%	1%	3%	16%	2%	1%	0%
Did not vote for Congress	3%	25%	6%	8%	3%	0%	0%
Congressional vote intention 2010
Democratic candidate	90%	60%	56%	9%	2%	5%	2%
Republican candidate	1%	5%	2%	11%	55%	65%	90%
Other candidate	1%	4%	5%	21%	11%	3%	1%
Undecided	9%	30%	37%	58%	34%	27%	7%
Certain to vote in 2010	76%	51%	61%	52%	74%	67%	83%
Believe result of 2010 election is very important	75%	32%	37%	19%	48%	41%	81%

These numbers indicate that the biggest problem facing the Democrats in the 2010 elections is not that those who identify with or lean to the Democratic Party are about to desert it. Nor is it the possibility that non-leaning independents are going to vote overwhelmingly for GOP candidates. Neither of these outcomes appears likely. Rather the major concern for Democratic candidates is a relative lack of intensity among Democratic voters as compared with Republicans. All three Democratic subgroups (Strong Democrats, Not strong Democrats, and Democratic-leaning independents) are substantially less likely to be certain voters or to have great concern for the outcome of the 2010 voting than are their GOP counterparts.
The Democratic Party’s large advantage in party ID puts it in position to dominate U.S. elections and shape public policy for decades to come. Attempting to rally the support of an elusive—and small—bloc of unaffiliated independents will not accomplish that. Inspiring and enlisting Democrats will. President Obama’s signing last week of the HIRE Act jobs bill, the passage of health care reform legislation this past weekend, and the major overhaul of the college loan system passed by the House and contained in the budget reconciliation package that the Senate will approve are all important first steps in rallying Democratic voters to the majority party’s banner this fall and in the years to come.

raising quality, lowering cost of education

2010-03-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

Millennials (young Americans born 1982-2003) rate the quality of education and the cost of college near the top of the list of issues about which they are most concerned, just behind jobs and the economy. President Barack Obama responded to those concerns with the release of his plan to fix the No Child Left Behind Law and focus the federal government’s efforts even more on ensuring school’s deliver the results and outcomes that Millennials and their parents expect from America’s institutions. The announcement capped a remarkable series of events that saw Democrats joining parents and educators across the country in taking important steps to address those educational needs, providing Millennials new hope that their investments in politics and civic engagement will finally pay off.

NDN’s newest survey research indicates that Millennials, unlike all other generations, rate education generally, and the cost of a college education specifically, as two of the top four critical problems they believe government must address and fix. Clearly, Millennials, like older generations, see a need to improve public education in America. And, in fact, Millennials perceive this need from a very personal perspective. While the Millennial Generation is slightly more positive about the overall quality of education in the United States (41% positive/50% negative) than older generations (32%/62%), they give significantly lower grades to the education they have personally received than older generations. Seventy percent of Millennials believe that the poor quality of public education stems from a lack of money and the way schools are managed and organized. Unlike the majority of older generations, Millennials are about evenly split on whether or not unions and work rules are a major problem in our system of public education. In response to attitudes like these, an increasing number of urban school districts are beginning to abandon the strategy of incremental reform and adopting more radical and dramatic changes to address the concerns of Millennials and their parents.

In Rhode Island, the Central Falls school board fired all the teachers, the principle and the administrators in an underperforming high school where half the 800 students were failing every subject and only seven percent were proficient in math. Unable to reach agreement with the teachers on how to pay for the changes needed to break this cycle of mediocrity, the board invoked the “turnaround option” sanctioned by the Obama administration’s school reform initiative, which allows school boards to start over at failing schools with a brand new set of teachers and administrators. Given the President’s unwavering support for systemic reform of schools that fail to educate children embodied in his Race to the Top initiative, the White House’s support of the school board’s actions should not have come as a surprise to those still trying to protect the status quo.

In Kansas City, Missouri the school board, that previously had stood in the vanguard of those believing primarily in racial integration and increased per pupil spending as the solution to the problems of education in urban environments, decided to try a completely different approach. Less than third of Kansas City elementary school students are now reading at or above grade level and no more than a quarter of most of their schools’ students have achieved the levels of proficiency required for the skills they will need in life. Faced with these results, and the prospect of running out of money by next year, the board voted to close about half of the district’s schools in order to “dramatically enhance education for each of our students by combining our very best teachers and very best resources in fewer schools,” as Kansas City’s School Superintendent put it.

But perhaps the most dramatic news of the week came from Detroit where a coalition of nonprofit organizations, Excellent Schools Detroit,
announced its plan to replace Detroit’s failing public schools with 70 new ones and make a $200-million investment over the next ten years in order to achieve its goal of graduating 90% of Detroit kids from high school by 2020 and having 90% of graduates go on to college. Currently, about 58% of students in Detroit’s school system and 78% of those enrolled in charter schools in the city graduate from high school, while fewer than 25% enroll in college.
The plan includes a push for mayoral control of Detroit Public Schools, but more importantly the establishment of an independent commission to grade every school in the city, including charters, every year against a uniform set of standards and outcomes focused on achieving educational excellence. The new Standards and Accountability Commission will establish a competitive public education marketplace complete with report cards grading each school’s progress against an agreed upon set of standards that will enable parents to become smart shoppers for their child’s education. The commission will also suggest closures in order to weed out failing schools, half of which, under the plan, would be closed or replaced with schools under new management by 2015. Like the Kansas City solution, the plan does not rely on increased funding from the state but rather the commitment of Detroiters to the future of their children. The idea was greeted with cheers from everyone except the members of the current school board.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Senate, a flurry of phone calls and emails from Millennials across the nation,convinced a majority of Democratic Senators to join in an effort to rescue Pell grants for students attending college from dramatic cuts that would have reduced payments by 60% for eight million students and eliminated the money altogether for another half a million. The House had already passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which would reform the student loan program by eliminating the current subsidies to private lenders who make student loans guaranteed by the federal government and invest the money saved in increasing the size and availability of Pell Grants. But six Democratic Senators, who should know better, had argued that the nation couldn’t afford to continue to make these investments in its future and should instead continue to underwrite the bank’s profits, even as students on campuses across the nation demonstrated to protest increases in tuition at cash strapped state universities.

Since Republicans were united in defending the interests of banks over Millennials, the only way to enact President Obama’s student aid reform proposal was to include the concept in the budget reconciliation package, central to efforts to finally pass health care reform, which only requires a simple majority in the Senate for passage. After hearing from their House colleagues on the political benefits and policy importance of the concept, even budget hawks like North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, agreed to find a way to bundle the two items by adjusting the education portion to account for a revised Congressional Budget Office cost analysis. The principle driver of the increased costs of the program is the popularity of this type of college financial aid among Millennials struggling to stay out of debt and still get the education they need to get a good paying job. By combining ways to reduce the cost of college with a major expansion of health care in the reconciliation package, Democrats have taken a major step forward in solidifying the support of all elements of the Democratic Party’s 21st Century majority coalition—from young voters to minorities.

This new coalition presents the best opportunity for Democrats to solidify a dominant majority coalition since FDR and the New Deal. But key members of the coalition, especially Millennials, are currently not convinced that voting in 2010 will make much of a difference, given the results they have seen from Congress in the first year of the Obama administration in the election of which they played such a significant role. But these recent events suggest the country is finally beginning to listen to the voice of this new generation and address its concerns. As educators and parents at the grass roots of this revolution
begin to have an impact in cities across the nation, the best thing that Democrats in Congress could do before this week is out is pass both health care and student aid reform as part of their budget reconciliation process. Doing so would finally begin to align the nation’s budgetary priorities with its future and bring hope for Millennials that changes they can believe in will continue to flow from their investment in the country’s political process.

Democrats Rock, the Vote on Campus

2010-02-22T16:10:00.001-08:00

More than twice as many 18-29 year olds voted for President Barack Obama as for John McCain in 2008, and one year later the party preferences of college students remain similarly lopsided in favor of the Democratic Party and its political point of view.

The most recent data from communication research company Frank N. Magid Associates' show an equal percentage of students, 18 and older, call themselves liberals or progressives (31%) as describe their political philosophy as moderate (30%). By contrast, only 20% describe themselves as conservative, while another 20% haven't learned enough in college yet to say just what their ideological orientation is. Survey research data from 2008 and 2009 actually showed self-described moderates as the most common philosophical designation by Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, with liberalism in second place. But those studies included Millennials who were not on campus, which suggests either that college students are a more liberal bunch than non-students by nature or there has been further movement toward liberalism among Millennials during the first year of Obama's presidency.

Almost all students on campus today are members of the Millennial Generation and bring that generation's commitment to civic engagement and consensus decision making to the political process. Unlike many members of Generation X or Baby Boomers who preceded them, a majority of Millennials believes in using government to help address societal problems and economic inequality. These philosophic touchstones form the basis of their political identification and belief system.

Millennials were inclined to be Democrats before Obama ran for presidency and both his campaign and his presidency have solidified that tendency. Beginning in 2006 as Millennials made their presence known among 18-29 year old voters, partisan identification among this age group moved from a roughly 50/50 split to a clear preference for the Democratic Party. In 2008, Millennials voted more than 2:1 for Obama over McCain (66% vs. 32%) and by roughly the same percentage (63% vs. 34%) for Democratic congressional candidates. Magid's 2010 data shows this same level of Democratic identification persisting among Millennials who are attending college. Twice as many college students call themselves Democrats as Republicans (47% vs. 24%). Only 15% are independents, with a similar percentage unwilling to identify with any of those three choices.

These numbers suggest the Young Republicans have a lot of work to do just to break even, while Young Democrats should have a rockin' good time of it on college campuses across America.

Democrats Should Act Like the Majority They Are

2010-02-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

As the first article in this series, pointed out, the two chief demographic components of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition that enabled the Democratic Party to dominate American national politics from the early 1930s to the mid-1960s—the white South and the northern white working class—have been drifting away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans for the past four decades. But, America is a dynamic country with a growing, changing, and increasingly diverse population. And, the Democratic Party is in position to once again dominate U.S. politics around the same core values, but now with a far different voter coalition than the one assembled by FDR eight decades ago.
Recent Gallup and Pew polls indicate that the Democratic Party has a national party identification advantage of about ten percentage points over the Republicans.
The voter coalition that underpins the Democratic Party’s current party identification advantage—and which also elected Barack Obama President of the United States in 2008—reflects the America of today fully as much as FDR’s coalition reflected the America of its era. While some of the components of the emerging Democratic coalition were a part of the New Deal coalition, others are brand new. If the white South and white working class have left the Democrats, other groups, some of which were decades from birth and others of which comprised only a negligible portion of the American electorate during the previous era of Democratic dominance, have joined. The major components of the new 21st Century Democratic coalition are:
• Young voters. Political scientists have long maintained that political realignments result from the emergence of new large generations of young Americans. The coming of age of the GI Generation (born 1901-1924) produced the New Deal realignment in the 1930s. The emergence of the sharply divided Baby Boomer Generation (born 1946-1964) ended that Democratic era in 1968 leading to forty years during which the Republican Party won the presidency in seven of ten elections. Today it is the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) and, to a lesser extent, younger members of Generation X (born 1965-1981) that are bringing about major political change. In 2008, Millennials voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). Millennials also preferred Democratic congressional candidates to Republicans by about the same ratio (63% vs. 34%). A narrower majority of Gen-Xers (52% vs. 46%) also voted for Obama. By contrast, the forever-divided Boomers split their votes almost evenly between Obama and McCain, while the Silent Generation (born 1925-1945) opted for the Republican nominee (53% vs. 45%). The Democratic loyalties of America’s youngest voters have persisted since Obama’s election: in a mid-November 2009 Pew survey, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by 58% to 19%. Gen-Xers did so by 51% to 38%. And, unlike older generations, Millennials are not sharply divided by gender and race: most male and white Millennials say they are Democrats, as do an overwhelming majority of the female and minority group members of the cohort.
• African-Americans. Blacks became charter members of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition after seven decades of solid loyalty to the party of Lincoln. Black support for the Democrats became virtually unanimous in 1964, when the GOP nominated Senator Barry Goldwater, who earlier that year had voted against a civil rights bill that opened public accommodations to people of all races, as its presidential nominee. In 2008, not surprisingly, virtually all blacks (95%) voted for Barack Obama. But this was not much higher than black support for white Democratic presidential candidates had been in every election since the mid-1960s. Pew also indicates that African-Americans identify as Democrats over Republicans by an overwhelming 78% to 9% margin.
• Hispanics. Except for scattered regional pockets in places like Tampa, along the Rio Grande border, and New Mexico, Latinos were a negligible component of the American population both when FDR assembled the New Deal coalition and during the forty years afterward when the Democratic Party dominated U.S. politics. That is no longer the case. Hispanics now comprise 15% of the American population, a percentage expected to double within forty years. Latinos are now an increasingly crucial component of the new Democratic coalition. While a majority of them have voted for Democratic presidential candidates in every election since 1972, more than two-thirds (67%) voted for Barack Obama in 2008. With one exception (Bill Clinton’s reelection in 1996), this was the largest percentage in any election since Latinos became a large enough component in the U.S. population to tabulate separately in presidential election exit polls. The support of Latinos for the Democratic Party is likely to be of long duration, a matter of increasing importance as the Latino share of the American electorate grows. According to Pew, more than six in ten Latinos (62%) identify as or lean to the Democrats; only 15% are Republicans.
• Women. Women gained the vote in 1920 and, for most of the time since then, there was virtually no difference in the partisanship of men and women. Most people married and most husbands and wives voted alike. However, as the divided Baby Boomer Generation became an increasing share of the electorate, a partisan “gender gap” developed in U.S. politics. Starting in 1980, the Democratic presidential vote of women was, on average, eight percentage points higher than that of men. The gap has only grown in recent elections as older, less divided, generations pass from the scene. Starting in 1996, a majority of women voted for Democratic presidential candidates while at least a plurality of men voted for Republicans. In 2008, Barack Obama enjoyed a 13-percentage point advantage among women (56% vs. 43%). Men divided their votes evenly between Obama and John McCain. This difference is reflected in party identification. Overall, according to Pew a clear majority of women are self-perceived Democrats (55% vs. 39% who claim to be Republican). By contrast, males are about evenly divided between the parties (41% Democrats and 38% Republicans). The narrow Democratic advantage among men is entirely a function of minority group males: a clear plurality of white males is Republican (44%, as compared to 38% who say they are Democrats). White women, by contrast, identify as Democrats over Republicans by ten percentage points (49% vs. 39%).
• The Northeast and West. American party coalitions have always contained a distinct regional component. Throughout most of U.S. history it was the Republican (or Whig) Northeast opposing the Democratic South. Today, as always, the South and Northeast continue to be pitted against one another, but the partisan leanings of each region have been reversed. The South has not given even a plurality of its presidential votes to a Democratic candidate since 1976 and white Southerners have not done so since at least 1964. By contrast, in 1984 the Northeast became the most Democratic region in presidential elections. It has given Democratic presidential candidates at least a plurality of its votes since 1992 and a majority since 1996. The West follows the Northeast in its Democratic loyalties. Since 1992 the West has given at least a plurality to Democratic candidates and in 2008 preferred Barack Obama against John McCain by 57% vs. 40%. The Northeast (56%) and West (47%) also contain the greatest percentages of Democratic party identifiers according to Pew.
• Highly educated Americans. In 1930, on the eve of the creation of the New Deal coalition, not even 5-percent of American adults were college graduates and an infinitesimal number had received any postgraduate education. By 1960, as that coalition entered its final years, the percentage of U.S. college graduates had crept up to nearly 8-percent. During the 1932-1968 era of Democratic dominance most of America’s relatively few college graduates voted for and identified as Republicans. As recently as 1964, Gallup showed that a plurality (38%) of college graduates identified as Republicans, well above the percentages of those with high school (22%) or grade school (20%) education who did so. But things have changed. Now more than a quarter of Americans are college graduates and the New York Times exit poll indicated that 45% of those who voted for president in 2008 were college graduates, with 17% having at least some postgraduate education. More and more of these college graduates are Democrats. The percentage of college grads voting for a Democratic presidential candidate has steadily increased in each election since 1988 (from 37% to 50% in 2008) and those with postgraduate training have become the most strongly Democratic educational component in the electorate save for the now tiny number with less than a high school education. In 2008 college postgraduates voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by 58% to 40% and have remained Obama’s strongest supporters during his presidency. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125423/Americans-Postgraduate-Education-Back-Obama.aspx) In addition, a majority of college grads (51%) now identify with or lean to the Democratic Party in contrast to 37% who call themselves Republicans.
America is a much different nation now than it was 80 years ago when the New Deal coalition was first assembled. The Democratic Party has changed along with America and has put together a new voter coalition, one that is very different from the New Deal coalition, but also one with the potential to become the dominant force in U.S. politics just as FDR’s coalition did so many decades ago.
The groups within the emerging Democratic coalition have clear political values. Most crucially they all favor an activist government that moves forcefully to resolve economic and societal problems in a way that protects and advances middle class Americans. These core Democratic values energized and held together the groups that comprised FDR’s New Deal coalition. These same values will energize and bond the disparate groups that now comprise a new 21st Century Democratic coalition.
But while a new coalition that can underpin renewed Democratic dominance has come into place, Democratic success in using it is by no means guaranteed. To do that, Democrats will have to have both the vision and the courage to see things as they are now and as they will be in the years ahead, not as they once were. If DC Democratic leaders and Democratic candidates across the nation are timid and fail to inspire and mobilize the emerging Democratic coalition by appealing to core Democratic values, the Democratic Party will manage to lose elections even in solidly Democratic places like Massachusetts. Democrats have a choice. They can either use their new majority coalition or they will lose it.

Time to Reward and Reform Education in America

2010-02-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

America has always recognized the link between education and economic success--from the mandate for free public education in the Northwest Ordinance through Lincoln's support for the Morrill Land Grant College Act to the GI Bill of Rights legislation after World War II. In each of these previous civic eras, governments at all levels have invested heavily in education based on the belief that these expenditures would return much more in the future earnings capacity of its citizenry than the short term costs incurred. Now new research indicates the best way to bring good jobs and rising wages to our newest civic generation, Millennials, is by breaking down the barriers to post-secondary educational success.

According to a recent study by Louis Jacobson and Christine Mokher, "Pathways to Boosting the Earnings of Low Income Students by Increasing their Educational Attainment," the key to future earnings potential is COMPLETION of whatever course of study is undertaken. "Course for course the returns to community colleges and four year college attendance are comparable. However students who complete a community college credential tend to have higher earnings than four-year college students who do not graduate." Those who earned an associate degree at a community college earned 27% more than those who failed to get a degree of any kind and those with a certificate, even if for only one year of post high school education, still earned on average 8% more a year than those who failed to complete their higher education studies.

The two major obstacles to postsecondary success identified in the study were the need to finance education and living expenses by working while attending school and the lack of adequate preparation in academic subjects such as math and science while in high school. Given the documented importance of completing a post-secondary field of study, the report's identification of these two principal barriers to students finishing what they start gives policy makers a clear path to improve both educational attainment and the acquisition of good jobs with decent salaries and benefits for Millennials.

Financing Post-secondary Education

The Jacobson and Mokher study found that in 2007-2008 just about every one of the lowest income students attending community colleges was in debt, with an average of $7,147 in unmet expenses after taking into account all the grants or scholarships they received. Student per class tuition rates are even higher at private one or two year "career colleges," which enroll only about 10% of the number of students that attend government subsidized community colleges. As a result, three-fourths of associate degree or certificate seekers end up working to help cover their educational and living expenses. The burden of needing to work is a major reason why only 26% of community college students get a degree or certificate within three years of starting their studies and only 38% get their degree within six years.

Meanwhile federal support for higher education has failed to keep up with rising costs so that more and more students find themselves financing their education with student loans of one type or another. In Indiana, for instance, 62 percent of those who do manage to graduate carry student loan debt averaging $23,264 per student. The loan burden in that state is even higher for graduates of for-profit colleges who leave school with an average debt burden of $32,650.

In addition to the steps Democrats have already taken to increase the maximum amount available from Pell Grants and the value of tax deductions for parents able to afford to pay their child's tuition, Congress should follow the President's lead in addressing this debilitating burden on students who are required to finance their education while attending school. One important step would be to increase support for community colleges along the lines advocated by NDN. Congress should also eliminate the current subsidy to banks that provide risk free private student loans guaranteed by the government and redirect the money saved to expanding the federal loan program that allows students to borrow directly, at lower costs, from the government. This Obama Administration initiative was part of the student loan reform bill the House passed last year, but it appears to be stymied in the Senate with sponsors hard to come by. Finally, whatever entity is eventually charged with protecting consumers from deceptive marketing of loans and other credit instruments as part of reforming our nation's financial regulatory structure, should also be given oversight of the student loan market and the power to set strong rules for fairer private student loan marketing and terms.

Fixing our nation's high schools

Among the brightest success stories of the Obama Administration are its educational reform policies under the leadership of Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan. Its Race to the Top grant program designed to reward performance is already having transformative impact on educational policy in many states even as the program's first grants are awarded. Focused on providing more money to schools that are turning out students able and willing to learn, this program should be expanded in line with the administration's budget requests and supported by Democrats at all levels of government, from school districts to state legislatures. Now its time to bring the Gen X parents of Millennial students into the game as well and get them engaged in making sure their kids get the education they will need to succeed when they graduate from high school.

Already successful charter schools, such as UPrep in Detroit, have demonstrated that any child of any background can graduate from high school and get accepted into a post-secondary educational experience if provided with the right learning environment, one that sets expectations of success right from the start. Bringing parents into the process of establishing such learning environments, as California's recent "parent trigger" legislation does, represents the cutting edge of educational reform in this Millennial Era.

As Neil Howe, co-author of Generations, wrote in the most recent edition of School Administrator magazine, "when these Gen-X "security moms" and "committed dads" are fully roused, they can be even more attached, protective and interventionist than Boomer [parents] ever were. . .They will juggle schedules to monitor their kids' activities in person. . . [and] will quickly switch their kids into - or take them out of - any situation according to their assessment of their youngsters' interests." Congress could take a big step toward improving America's high schools by empowering these Gen-X "stealth-fighter parents" to take over failing schools as part of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Howe writes that "Gen Xers believe their children's education should be a fair and open transaction with complete and accurate information and unconstrained consumer choice" and Congress should use its funding leverage to give them just what they are looking for.

Winning the hearts and minds of both Millennials and their parents is an achievable political goal for Democrats. Furthermore, as the latest research reveals, knocking down the barriers to obtaining a certificate or degree after high school is the key to economic success for both students and the country, making the idea good public policy as well as good politics. Making higher education more affordable and fixing our nation's high schools should be at the top of Democrats economic policy priorities now and throughout the decade ahead.

Millennials Need to Stand Up and be Counted

2010-02-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

As the campaign to ensure a complete and accurate count of every American in this year's census gets off the ground, a new survey of American attitudes toward participating in the census shows that young Americans, members of the Millennial Generation, born 1982-2003, may prove least likely to stand up and be counted. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that roughly one-third of 18-29 year olds hadn't heard of the census, and even after having the process described to them, 17 percent were still unaware of just what the census involved. This lack of knowledge translated directly into this key demographic segment’s unwillingness to participate, with only 36 percent of 18-29 year olds indicating that they “definitely” would respond to the form when it arrives, compared to large majorities in all other age segments who said they would do so.

The Census Bureau has a plan to address this lack of knowledge, but it's not clear yet if its approach will successfully reach, let alone motivate, this generation. This month the Bureau launched the first ad about the census as part of an overall $340 million public awareness campaign, $133 million of which will be spent on television advertising.

The new ad features one of Hollywood's best-known environmentalists, Ed Begley, Jr. in another of his satirical roles portraying a clueless corporate executive. In the Census Bureau ads he plays a Hollywood director pitching the idea of taking a literal snapshot of everyone in American all at once, even as others in the spot point out that the Census Bureau already has a plan to "get the shot." All the actors in this humorous spot are white Baby Boomers, two generations older than Millennials and not exactly the demographic most needing to be educated about the census. Maybe even more serious, broadcast television is not the Millennials' favorite way to absorb information.

More promising is the allocation of much of the rest of the awareness campaign's budget for social networking and appearances at major crowd events like the Super Bowl and Daytona 500. In addition, information on the need to respond to the census will be translated into 27 different languages, which will help with the very multi-ethnic Millennial generation as well as Latinos and Asian of all ages. You can help the Census spread the word by linking to their Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites or adding a Census Countdown widget to your own page. Still, the campaign needs to go beyond awareness if it wants to convince Millennials to participate.

Those who know what the census is used for, and that participation is required by law, are much more likely to say they will definitely participate. But the survey found that only 15 percent of Millennials knew that the law requires their participation. Only about half knew that the final count will be used to allocate government money to their community and determine its level of representation in Congress. They also represented the smallest group to know that the census will not be used to locate illegal immigrants. Millennials are more than willing to participate in civic activities and follow social rules, but right now they are dangerously uninformed about why they need to be a part of the nation’s most important decennial civic undertaking.

Millennials continually share information with each other to reach a group consensus on what they should do next. Someone other than those with strictly Boomer sensibilities needs to engage the generation in a conversation about the census. If that happens, America will have gone a long way toward ensuring a complete and accurate snapshot of its increasingly diverse, and youthful, population.

Millennials Will Take Over American Music Next

2010-01-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

The first Grammy Awards of the new decade are just around the corner. On Jan. 31, the voting committee may crown a new queen of pop music, crossover country star Taylor Swift, and with it signal the musical coming-of-age of the Millennial Generation.

Nominated for eight 2010 Grammy Awards, including record and album of the year, Ms. Swift has already beaten out Michael Jackson for the American Music Award's top trophy in 2009 and won three more at November's Country Music Association (CMA) Awards in Nashville. She's also the youngest person to be named CMA Entertainer of the Year.

Unlike the shocking Gen-X behavior of former headliners like Britney Spears or rappers Eminem and 50 Cent, Swift's personal life is as wholesome as her lyrics.

Her songs have Millennial-like happy endings. "Fifteen," for example, gives advice on how to handle the pressures of being a freshman in high school, a message she wrote with her best friend and her younger brother in mind. It's a change of direction that is speaking to 95 million Millennials, many of whom are already in their 20s.

Millennials were born between 1982 and 2003. In contrast to most baby boomers and Gen-Xers, they love their parents, who are known for boosting the self-esteem of their children and instilling a can-do attitude in each of their special, trophy-winning kids. Swift personifies the Millennial Generation in both her music and her social-networking approach to winning fans.

Tweens and teenage Millennials absorbed the rap and hip-hop music produced by their Gen-X elders during the 1990s, just as the GI Generation during the 1920s initially fell in love with the jazz music so intimately linked to the older Lost Generation. Similarly, boomers first found their rebellious voice in the 1950s in the early rock 'n' roll that came from the Silent Generation that preceded them.

But in each case, as a new generation came into adulthood, it put its own unique stamp on a musical genre that then retained its popularity for two decades as the musical tastes of both the older and younger members of that generation were united. Swift's rise to fame is an early signal that a new musical genre is about to take over America's popular music culture again.

The transition from the Lost Generation's small combo jazz to the GI Generation's big band swing music came with a major slowdown in tempo. Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey delivered a sweeter musical sound that their adoring crowds could dance to, rather than the jarring, syncopated rhythms of early jazz greats like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong.

The Silent Generation fell in love with the brand-new up-tempo backbeat of Elvis Presley's and Jerry Lee Lewis's rock 'n' roll, but baby boomers put their generational stamp on the genre a decade later with the love-drenched lyrics of guitar groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

We will know a Millennial musical genre has arrived when the songs at the top of the charts represent both a fusion of earlier styles and something completely different.

The Academy Award for best song from a movie has already moved toward this Millennial sensibility. The 2005 winner was the rap song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from the movie Hustle and Flow. But last year's Oscar winner, "Jai Ho" from Slumdog Millionaire, combined Indian rhythms with upbeat exhortations celebrating victory throughout the world. Instead of bemoaning the fact that they "done seen people killed, done seen people deal, done seen people live in poverty with no meals," as the group Three 6 Mafia did in that 2005 song, the Bollywood movie looked at very similar conditions and made a hit out of a tune (originally sung in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and even Spanish) whose English translation focused on a love affair that promised to make everything better.

The end of an musical era is near when its proponents pronounce its eternal life the loudest. In their 1970s reprise of a 1950s Danny and the Juniors classic, Sha Na Na told "all of you hippies out there in the audience," that "Rock 'n' roll is here to stay. It will never die." In 1979, Neil Young said the same thing just about the time that rap emerged to take rock 'n' roll's place on Top 40 radio play charts.

When Kanye West jumped on stage to protest Swift's victory over Beyoncé for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards last September, he was foreshadowing just how shocked Gen-Xers will be when their signature genre, rap, drops from the top of the charts as fast as you can say "Napster."

According to the Record Industry Association of America's official tally of music sales by genre, rap's popularity peaked in 2002, just as the first Millennials entered adulthood, and has now fallen to third place behind country and rock in America's musical purchases.

Most members of Mr. West's generation, now in their 30s and 40s, will not react kindly to the mantle of youth being placed on the Millennial Generation, whose optimism and group-oriented behavior represents a sharp break from the alienated cynicism and individual entrepreneurship of Gen-X. They may even manage to deny Swift her crown in this weekend's Recording Academy voting for Grammy Awards in a last gesture of generational hostility.

But having already been named the new queen of pop by millions of fans on social networks throughout the world, it's only a matter of time before Swift and her generation make over America's music as triumphantly as they did its politics with the election of President Obama.

When that moment occurs, it will be the latest and perhaps most definitive sign that the Millennial Era has arrived.

A Millennial State of the Union

2010-01-29T10:40:00.000-08:00

President Obama's focus on the economy is exactly what Millennials (Americans born between 1982-2003) want to hear. Their generation is experiencing Depression levels of unemployment, higher than any other generation. They deeply believe that the path to a better job leads through a better education. That’s why any Millennial jobs program must begin with the steps outlined in the President’s speech—a revitalization of community colleges, increased Pell Grants and a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college. Those who have graduated from college with unprecedented debt will particularly welcome the President's call to limit the amount they have to repay in any given year based on their income with complete forgiveness after twenty years or only half that time if the engage in public service. And the President's call for a small business hiring tax credit should help give Millennials a chance to earn some money as they enter the toughest job market any generation has faced in twenty-five years. Equally important are his administration’s K-12 education reforms that have attracted bi-partisan support from the parents of Millennials all across the country.

Now the Congress needs to step up to the plate and deliver on Obama's proposals. If Republicans continue to follow their "just say no" approach, they risk losing an entire generation of voters. But Democrats must prove they can govern, and deal with Millennial concerns when they do, if they hope to generate enough enthusiasm from young voters in 2010 to provide Democrats the type of victory Barack Obama enjoyed in 2008. Like First Lady Michelle Obama did during the State of the Union speech, they should put Millennials in the best seats in the House and keep their future uppermost in their minds as they fashion a new economy for these young Americans. It’s time to answer President Obama’s call to do “what’s best for the next generation.”

Use It or Lose It

2010-01-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

In spite of incorrect explanations like those of New York Times political columnist Matt Bai that the election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate resulted from the actions of a fickle electorate dominated by political independents, the loss by Democrats of a long-held Senate seat is really a clear example of the old adage, "If you don't use it, you lose it." That is the lesson that Democrats should draw from last week's special election. The admittedly shocking event in Massachusetts notwithstanding, during the past decade the Democratic Party has assembled a new, and potentially majority, voter coalition. If the Democrats have the awareness and courage to use that coalition in New England and elsewhere across the United States they could dominate American politics and policy making for decades to come.

According to Bai, the American electorate, represented most recently by Massachusetts voters, seems to suffer from political ADD, flitting between "the latest offer" or "the newest best deal" in a society that is constantly "hitting the reset button." But, the victory of Scott Brown was not a matter of a fickle electorate alternating between the two parties in search of something new and different, or even a change in voting preference by Massachusetts independents. Rather, the outcome of last week's special election in Massachusetts stemmed primarily from reduced voter turnout among the state's Democrats. Bai and the Washington punditry might have known this had they even briefly reviewed the survey and election data that is freely and easily available on the Internet.

A posting by Charles Franklin on Pollster.com demonstrated the likelihood that reduced turnout among Massachusetts Democrats led to the victory of Republican Scott Brown and the defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley. Franklin indicates that Brown matched or exceeded John McCain's 2008 vote total in every jurisdiction while Coakley fell below Barack Obama's vote everywhere in the state. Overall, Brown's 1.17 million votes were 106% greater than McCain's 1.1 million in 2008. By contrast, Coakley's 1.06 million votes were only 56% of Obama's nearly 1.9 million votes in 2008. Franklin summarizes what happened this way: "... this doesn't mean that Brown got exactly McCain's voters since lots of individual switching could add up to these totals. But in the aggregate, Massachusetts looks exactly like it did in 2008 on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, a whole lot fewer voters."

Franklin is properly cautious about over-interpreting the aggregate election data. But a post-election poll (pdf) conducted by Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health confirms Franklin's aggregate level conclusions. The Post survey makes clear that the Massachusetts outcome was not the result of a wholesale flow of voters between the parties. The large majority of voters preferred the Senate candidate of the party for which they had voted in the 2008 presidential election. Virtually all Coakley voters (96%) chose Barack Obama and nearly seven in ten Brown supporters (68%) voted for John McCain in 2008.

But, the most unique and interesting aspect of the Post survey is that it interviewed a subsample of Senate race non-voters. While the non-voters fell between the Brown and Coakley voters in their attitudes, they were consistently much closer to the latter than the former on all items. Most tellingly, a large majority of non-voters who had voted in the 2008 presidential election (70%) voted for Barack Obama. Their attitudes toward the president have not declined significantly since his election. A large majority of non-voters (69%) approves of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. A majority (54%) also said they were either enthusiastic or satisfied with the policies of the Obama administration. By contrast, a majority of non-voters (56%) were dissatisfied or angry with the policies offered by congressional Republicans.

A clear majority of non-voters prefer a government that does more to solve problems rather than believing government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals (58% vs. 37%). This preference for activist government is reflected in the attitudes of non-voters about the proposed health care reforms developed by Congress and the Obama administration: a plurality of them supported rather than opposed that legislation (49% vs. 39%). Solid majorities of non-voters believed that the health care reform proposals would either leave themselves and their families, Massachusetts, and the country as a whole either better off or, at least, in the same condition as they are now. Only about one in five non-voters felt that the proposed health care reform program would hurt any of those groups.

The Post survey did not release demographic information and there were no media-sponsored exit polls last week in Massachusetts. Consequently, there is no foolproof empirical way to determine the exact demographic and political composition of those who voted in the special Senate election. But, a survey of likely voters (pdf) taken by Public Policy Polling (PPP) in the last weekend before the election provides a reasonable surrogate.

Of all pre-election surveys, the PPP poll most closely forecast the election outcome. It clearly indicated that the Massachusetts electorate last week contained significantly fewer young voters, minorities, Democratic identifiers and self-perceived liberals than it did in November 2008. All of these were groups that underpinned the president's 62% majority in Massachusetts.

In 2008, according to CNN's exit poll, 17% of the electorate was 18-29 years old and an additional 26% were 30-44. In the 2010 special election those numbers dropped to 8% and 20% respectively. In 2008, more than one in five Massachusetts voters (21%) were minority; last week only 13% were. In the 2008 presidential election, Democrats comprised a plurality of voters (43%). In 2010, just 39% of the electorate identified as Democrats. Finally, in 2008 about one in three voters (32%) was a self-perceived liberal; in 2010 less than a quarter (23%) were.

In reporting on its poll, PPP realized the difficulty that these numbers presented to Democratic candidate Martha Coakley: "Brown has a small advantage right now but special elections are volatile and Martha Coakley is still in this. She just needs to get more Democrats out to the polls." She didn't, and Scott Brown is now a Senator-elect.

What happened in Massachusetts has clear implications for Democrats across the United States. Martha Coakley and her out-of-touch strategists lost touch with what Barack Obama and his creative campaign did to rally a new winning coalition in 2008 and, as a result, lost an election in a state Democrats believed they could not possibly lose. Coakley lost not because the groups in that coalition turned against Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, but because turnout among those groups fell precipitously. If you don't use it, you lose it.

Lost Generation

2010-01-21T15:56:00.001-08:00

this is a brilliant statement by a Millennial who is actually NOT a member of a lost generation. But on point nevertheless. It finished second in the AARP contest. can't imagine what beat it.
Morley

Three Strikes and You're Out

2010-01-21T14:45:00.000-08:00

The Democrats’ loss in Tuesday’s special election for U.S. senator in the dark blue state of Massachusetts, after losses in Virginia and New Jersey last year, should finally make it clear to all but the party’s most out-of-touch campaign strategists that the only route to victory is to follow the path President Barack Obama took to win in 2008 and quit trying to recreate the politics of the Clinton era. All four Ms — messenger, message, media and money — of the party’s campaign plans must change if it is to win in 2010.

Martha Coakley was the kind of messenger that Democrats used to look for in the 1990s — tough on crime, connected to the party establishment, and with elective experience to command respect. But that formula didn’t work for Hillary Clinton in 2008 and it didn’t work so well this time either. Her background prevented her from running as an anti-establishment candidate and her disconnect from the average voter in Massachusetts can be summed up in one name — Curt Schilling. Future Democratic messengers, like Obama in 2008, will have to have demonstrated their ability to lead change in their community and not take any vote for granted.

That is the only way they will be able to deliver Obama’s message of change and transformation with any credibility. Instead of defending programs or arguing policy, Democrats will need a message that captures the anger and frustration of the electorate and channels that passion into job creation and reform of the existing economic power structure.

Coakley, just like the Democratic gubernatorial candidates who lost last year, also let the technological superiority of Obama’s 2008 campaign flip over to the Republican side. Unlike Democratic campaign strategists still wrapped up in old media tactics and television, the Republicans studied what Obama did to bring the power of online campaigning into the center of a campaign’s strategy, and won the “Internet/Twitter” wars hands down. The TV ads that Coakley did run were off-target, featuring older white voters rather than the young Millennials, African-Americans, and Latinos who were so crucial to Barack Obama’s winning coalition in 2008. Meanwhile Brown put his Millennial daughters front and center in his media.

All of these advantages led to Brown’s ability to raise money at a million dollars a day pace in the final days of the campaign. Obama, indeed Howard Dean before him, showed how to use the Net to raise lots of money from lots of people but only Republicans seem to have learned the lesson.

Perhaps the Democrats should bring David Plouffe back and have him conduct some “re-education camps” for Democratic strategists where they can learn the new four Ms of politics and erase their old ways of doing business from their minds for good.

California's Educational Earthquake

2010-01-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

The tectonic plates of the nation's educational debate shifted dramatically in California when its supposedly dysfunctional, lopsidedly Democratic legislature passed the most far reaching educational reform program in the nation, and California's "post-partisan" Republican Governor happily signed it. Going beyond other states' efforts to respond to President Obama's "Race to the Top" competitive grant process, the state pulled the "Parent Trigger" in its legislation. This allows a majority of parents whose kids are attending a "demonstrably failing school" to, in effect, take over that school and change its governance, administration and teaching staff. In so doing, California placed itself in the vanguard of the transformation of America's K-12 education system that will put parents, not teachers or administrators, in the driver's seat in determining the kind of education that their special Millennial children will receive.

Just as we predicted in our book, Millennial Makeover: "Social networks, 'mommy blogs', and other forms of peer-to-peer communications" were the vehicle by which this parent led, bottom-up revolt overturned the power of some of California's most powerful unions to pass what Sacramento insiders considered a hopeless cause. Every time labor and its allies attempted to water down the impact of the Parent Trigger, the opposition melted in the face of thousands of parents asking a simple question, with only one good answer: "Why shouldn't parents get to decide what kind of school their kids go to?" A final compromise limited the number of schools that parents can pull the trigger on to just 75 initially. However, the future of this idea is just as bright as the state's Charter School movement, which started with similar limitations yet today is the governance model for more than 160 schools in Los Angeles alone and with enrollments rising almost 20% in the last year.

The organization behind the Parent Trigger concept, Parent Revolution, gives full credit to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama administration for creating the incentives that forced the state to consider this reform. Tucked inside the so-called stimulus bill passed last February, was over $4 billion for states and school districts to transform the performance of their schools. States that prohibit linking data on student achievement to principal and teacher evaluations, as California did before it passed this latest round of educational reform laws, were disqualified from even applying for these grants. In addition, those states that capped charter schools or limited alternative certification processes for teachers lose points in the competitive rankings for receipt of the grants. Most importantly, the program established a January, 2010 deadline for state laws to meet four conditions or "assurances" in order to be considered for the largest amount of reform incentive dollars in the last three decades:

1. Adoption of common, internationally benchmarked, standards based on rigorous state assessments.
2. Establishment of systems to track achievement and growth in student learning that identify effective instructional practices.
3. Implementation of a process that rewards and retains top teachers and improves or replaces bad ones.
4. Adoption of a policy on how to replace staff and change the culture of a demonstrably failing school (one whose test scores show no improvement over three years).
The need for money as well as the fourth and final assurance were the drivers behind the legislature's consideration of the idea of a Parent Trigger, but it was the grass roots organization that pushed the legislature into turning back pleas from their usual union allies and enacting this earth-shattering reform. Beginning in Los Angeles, whose "unified school district" (LAUSD) has been a poster child for bureaucratic stubbornness and urban educational woes, the Parents Revolution won the right to fire the principal and half the teachers of a failing school, or, in the alternative, to establish a charter school of their design for their children to attend. Recognizing that each child has $7,000 of potential state funding in their backpack, LAUSD was the first to agree to these demands by parents at both a mostly Latino high school and a more upscale, suburban area middle school. With those successes in their pocket, the group was able to rally parents of all types, from every part of the state, to lobby for the same rights in their district.

Ben Austin, the executive director of Parent Revolution and a long-time political activist on behalf of children, believes it will not be long before the same rights are given to every parent in the country, possibly as part of Congress's reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind legislation next year. As he points out, "the old coalitions don't apply here, it's a cause that unites parents from upper middle class and working class backgrounds-white, black and Latino alike." Or, as we said in Millennial Makeover, parents will learn about and demand:

Models that produce superior results at lower costs and provide the aggregating mechanism for a new, decentralized, parent-controlled, educational decision-making system. Armed with new information on graduation and college acceptance rates of America's high schools, parents will choose the type of education they want for their child, with the money following the child to the school they have selected, not to the school district they live in...The result will be a system of public education that mirrors the egalitarian and community orientation of a Millennial civic era.

For the parents of students attending one of the 5000 lowest performing schools in the country, the changes can't come too soon. With an administration ready to play a critical role in providing the incentives to reform our schools, students, parents, administrators and teachers throughout the nation will soon be feeling the aftershocks of California's educational earthquake.

Happy New Year, Democrats

2009-12-30T17:31:00.000-08:00

As the first year of the Obama administration draws to a close, Democrats would do well to celebrate their successes this year and look to the future, rather than dwell on the funk that seems to embrace many of its supporters these days.

While the numbers have fluctuated within normal statistical margins, throughout 2009 Pew research has indicated that the Democrats have held around a 1.5:1 party identification lead over the Republicans. During the course of the year between 48% and 53% of Americans identified with or leaned to the Democrats while between 35% and 40% identified with or leaned to the GOP. This Democratic advantage is significantly higher than it was in the Clinton years of the 1990s, when the Democrats' lead averaged about five percentage points. It is particularly large compared with 1994, the year the Democrats lost their congressional majority to the Gingrich revolution, when the two parties were tied in party ID at 44% each.

In fact, the competitive position of the Democratic Party now approaches what it was in the mid-1960s, when it was the unquestioned dominant force in U.S. politics. In a 1964 Gallup survey, conducted just prior to Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the Democrats' party identification lead over the GOP was 49% to 24%.

Underpinning this rebound in the Democratic Party's competitive position is a major generational and ethnic transformation of America. It is a very different looking America now than it was in 1964, but the Democratic Party is once again far better positioned to benefit in the future from the opportunities presented by our changing nation.

--In 1964, about ninety percent of Americans were white as were more than eight in ten (82%) of those who identified as Democrats. Today the "minority" contribution to America's population has nearly tripled and non-Caucasians comprise about four in ten Democratic identifiers. By mid-century the United States will become a "majority-minority" country, however, as in the mid-1960s, more than 95% of Republicans are white.

--In 1964, only a minority of women worked outside the home and almost all women married by the time they were 25. Now women, many of whom are unmarried or minority, comprise more than six in ten Democratic identifiers. Virtually all of the women who do call themselves Republican are white and most are married.

--In 1964, nearly half of the electorate had only a high school education. An additional third had gone no further than grade school. Just one in five were college graduates. Now, a majority of Americans have at least some college exposure and nearly three in ten are college graduates. While, as in 1964, about 30% of Republican identifiers are college graduates, the percentage of college graduates among Democrats has doubled from 14% to 28%.

--the 1964 electorate was dominated by the GI Generation (born 1901-1924), the generation of the New Deal and World War II, and the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900), that primarily came of age around World War I and in the 1920s. About half of the 1964 Democrats were members of the GI Generation, who identified with that party by a 2:1 margin. Half of 1964 Republican identifiers were from the Lost Generation which by then was a generation of senior citizens. Today, with a completely different generational configuration than in 1964, the GOP still skews relatively old and the Democrats young. Like the GI Generation before them, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, overwhelmingly identify as Democrats over Republicans (58% vs. 19% in a November 2009 Pew survey).

In 2008, only 40% of Millennials were eligible to vote and they comprised about 17% of the American electorate. When Barack Obama runs for reelection in 2012, about 60% of Millennials will be of voting age and one in four voters will be a Millennial. By 2020, when virtually all of them will be able to vote, more than a third of the electorate (36%) will come from the Millennial Generation. As the largest (95 million) and most ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history (40% of Millennials are non-white) the Democratic Party should benefit from their loyalty at least as much over the next three or four decades as did the attachment of the GI Generation to the Democrats in the middle-third of the 20th Century.

The United States is a changed and continually changing nation. Taken together, these changes have made America a more diverse and more open nation. This should let the Democratic Party face the future with confidence and courage. But, the Democratic Party's opportunities cannot be taken for granted. The first step in taking advantage of these opportunities for Democrats would be to start building a future for America built on this reality and letting go of the timidity and tentativeness that seems to have been their governing motif in 2009.

Author Jeff Gordinier Discusses X Saves the World

2009-12-04T15:20:00.001-08:00

great summary of inter-generational tensions from a Gen X perspective.

A Generation's Loyalty is at Stake

2009-12-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

As Congress returns from its holiday vacation, it and President Barack Obama need to address a number of challenges facing the country from health care reform to jobs and what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. How the Democratic leadership deals with these issues may well determine the future loyalty of an entire generation of new voters, and with it the future of the Democratic Party.

A recent study by two economists, Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilembergo, entitled “Growing Up in a Recession,” suggests that experiencing an economic recession during the impressionable ages of 18-25 can have lifelong effects on a person’s attitude toward government and its role in the economy.The Democratic Party’s most enthusiastic and loyal new constituency, Millennials (born 1982- 2003), have had their young lives thoroughly disrupted by the current economic downturn. With their level of unemployment exceeding 25%, what is for other generations a Great Recession is for Millennials their very own Great Depression. Such an experience is likely, according to the new study, to increase Millennial support for policies that favor government redistribution of income and other liberal economic ideas.

However, Giuliano and Spilembergo also demonstrate that this same experience often makes young people less trusting of government institutions. Conservative columnist, Ross Douthat suggested recently that the difference between the Democratic New Deal loyalties of the GI Generation that came of age during the Great Depression and the greater Republican orientation of Generation X that experienced Jimmy Carter’s stagflation economy in the 1970s is the degree to which government dealt effectively with the economic crisis of their youth. “When liberal interventions seem to be effective, a downturn can help midwife an enduring Democratic majority. But if they don’t seem to be working — or worse, if they seem to be working for insiders and favored constituencies, rather than for the common man — then suspicion of state power can trump disillusionment with free markets.”

This raises the stakes for what Congress does in the next six months to new heights. Millennials, more than one-third of whom lack health insurance, will be watching closely to see if their needs are addressed in the final version of health care reform, something Millennials support to a far greater extent than any other generation. Of course, failure to pass meaningful reform may well deal a death knell to the emerging Democratic majority that the Obama campaign created last year.

But Millennials care even more about jobs and the health of the economy. A recent poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that the economy is unquestionably young people's leading concern, with 48 percent of respondents saying it was their top national priority. (That was more than twice the number of those who rated health care their top priority, 21 percent,with the war garnering mention by 10 percent of respondents.)With record unemployment among members of this generation, any jobs package the Congress puts forward must specifically meet the concerns and needs of Millennials. In particular, Congress must deal with the high cost of education,something Millennials still see as the ticket to future economic success; the lack of job opportunities even at the intern level for those just entering the work force; and the lack of access to fundamental job skills training that community colleges can provide to those ready to go to work soon.
While the Democratic leadership often believes that s today’s youth thinks about issues of war and peace in the same reflexive way that young Baby Boomers did four decades ago, Millennials are more likely to want to understand the mission and strategy for success in Afghanistan before making up their mind on whether or not to support a deepening American involvement in that conflict. With Millennials providing the overwhelming majority of front line troops, however Congress chooses to pay for that campaign, it must ensure that those who do go to fight are better equipped than the military force George W. Bush initially sent to Iraq.

The effectiveness of any legislation Congress adopts over the next six months will not be known for years but the way Congressional Democrats approach their policy decisions will be clear enough to Millennials. The stakes are large and will have long-reaching impact. If the decisions are made by cutting deals with special interest groups, none of which represent this generation and its financial concerns, or by compromising Millennial principles of equity and social justice, members of the generation are likely to sit out the 2010 midterm elections and wait for their favorite messenger, Barack Obama, to return to the ballot in 2012 before making their future preferences known. If that happens, the results in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey last month will only be a prelude for a much bigger Democratic disaster next November. ) If, instead, Democratic leaders take off their generational blinders and recognize that the base of their party is now made up of an overlapping core of Millennials, minorities, and women and respond accordingly, they will help to solidify the Democratic loyalties of America’s largest generation for decades to come.

For Millennials, Its Still the Economy Stupid

2009-11-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

This month’s off year elections sent one message to Washington that has been heard loud and clear. Voters expect Congress to focus on the economy, especially employment, and take decisive and affirmative steps to deal with both the causes and ravages of the greatest economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression. As the Obama administration considers a variety of new proposals to help bring down the unemployment rate, one key constituency is raising its voice and asking for a return on the investment it made in his presidency.

Members of the Millennial generation, born between 1982-2003, who were eligible to vote in 2008 went for Barack Obama over John McCain by a 2:1 margin and made up over 80% of the President’s winning margin. They continue to support his presidency and identify as Democrats by similar margins. A late October Pew survey indicates that Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by almost 20 percentage points (52% vs. 34%), well above the 8-point Democratic advantage among older generations. In the latest Daily Kos tracking survey, 80% of Millennials had a favorable opinion of the president; only 14% of everyone in this generation viewed him unfavorably. This compares with a 55% vs. 39% favorable/unfavorable ratio among the entire electorate in a series of November surveys conducted by organizations ranging from ABC News and the Washington Post to Fox.

But despite the clearly stronger support the President has among their generation, Millennials are increasingly restive about the lack of action in Congress to address the economic problems they face – both now and in the future.

Recent Pew research studies underline the major impact that the recession has had on individual Americans and their families. Thirteen percent of parents with grown children told Pew researchers that one of their adult sons or daughters had moved back home in the past year. Pew found that of all grown children living with their parents, 2 in 10 were full-time students, one-quarter were unemployed and about one-third had lived on their own before returning home. According to the census, 56 percent of men 18 to 24 years old and 48 percent of women were either still under the same roof as their parents or had moved back home.

The lack of jobs was particularly acute among adult members of the Millennial Generation (18-27 year olds), 61% of whom said that they or someone close to them was jobless recently. A clear plurality (46%) says that the “job situation” rather than rising prices (27%), problems in the financial markets (14%) and declining real estate values (7%) is their major economic worry.

As a result, the number one concern among Millennials is the state of the economy and the need for jobs, but they have a unique perspective on how to deal with this issue.

Millennials believe there is a clear link between education and employment and are increasingly concerned that the pathway through the educational system into the world of work is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to navigate. Recently, about one hundred of the nation’s top private sector and government leaders gathered for the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council also identified education as the nation’s top economic priority.

For Millennials, the problem is personal. A smaller share of 16-to-24-year-olds – 46 percent – is currently employed than at any time since the government began collecting that data in 1948. A job market with Depression-level youth unemployment (18.5%) and a wrenching transformation in the types of jobs America needs and produces makes the implicit bargain of education in return for future economic success harder for Millennials to believe in every day.

Recently Matt Segal, Executive Director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and Founder and National Co-Chair of the “80 Million Strong for Young Americans Job Coalition” presented some ideas to the House Education and Labor Committee on what Congress could do to address this challenge. He advocated increased entrepreneurial resources be made available to youth; more access to public service careers through internships and loan forgiveness programs; and the creation of “mission critical” jobs in such fields as health care, cyber-security and the environment that would tap the unique talents of this generation. Since two-thirds of Millennials who graduate from a four-year college do so with over $20,000 in debt, debt, his testimony also urged immediate Senate approval of the student debt reform bill recently passed by the House.

There is more that can be done beyond these excellent recommendations. This summer, the President's Council of Economic Advisors released a report outlining the importance of community colleges in making America's workforce more competitive in the global economy. "We believe it's time to reform our community colleges so that they provide Americans of all ages a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future." The report urged Congress to pass House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larsen’s bill, The Community College Technology Access Act of 2009, in order to help meet President Obama’s goal of graduating five million more Americans from community colleges by 2020.

Millennials, like their GI Generation great grandparents in the 1930s, are facing economic challenges that caught them by surprise and for which no one prepared them. But Millennials aren’t looking for a handout or sympathy. Instead, in the “can do” spirit of their generation, they are organizing to overcome the challenges created for them by their elders. It’s time for the Democrats who control Congress to recognize these concerns and to act decisively on their behalf.

Who Needs Critical Thinking when I have Facebook?

2009-11-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

One of the most often expressed criticisms of the Millennial Generation (born 1982 –2003), is that it seems to have lost all ability to analyze data, examine the logic and wisdom of a proposition, or read a blog and sort out the good and the bad in the argument being advanced.
Usually described as “critical thinking,” this type of skill seems to be absent from a generation focused on sharing, communicating and finding group consensus.
Often, the lack of critical thinking skills is attributed to the generation’s constant use of social media. Indeed, one of the traits older generations find most annoying about Millennials is their constant “pinging” of their friends to find out what the group thinks rather than making a prompt and decisive choice on their own.
As Millennials begin to assume positions of authority within society, many people, particularly those in the Baby Boomer generation, are increasingly concerned about this missing skill and determined to find ways to teach it to a generation raised on the Net.

But the very same Boomers who deride Net-based group decision-making would quickly agree that the most effective way to learn is through trial and error.

Nature and society evolve using this simple technique and Chaos theory suggests the perfection of the most incredibly complex systems occurs through this simple process of continuing what works and discarding what doesn’t.
Yet, to a large extent, the use of critical thinking as a means to solve problems contradicts this truth about natural selection and evolution. Rather than having expert thinkers come up with the right solution to a problem, the process of trial and error creates multiple experiments that attempt to solve the problem and uses objective empirical results to determine the best solution.
With this approach, more trials – and errors – produce better results. This concept is used every day on a range of problems, from the creation and maintenance of complex operating systems to a simple search on Google.
Since individual effort is normally contributed cost free to the process, this method provides an incredibly inexpensive way to conduct trials and sort out errors from valid solutions.
That is the type of problem solving approach Millennials have used almost since birth.
They use it every day on social networks such as Facebook or YouTube to decide what movie to go to, at which restaurant to eat, and even for which candidates to vote. Rather than insisting on solving society’s challenges using the inherited, but inevitably limited wisdom of experts, Millennials would prefer to share their ideas and let the group find the right answer through their combined experiences.
Given how far astray critical thinking has often taken us, maybe it’s time to embrace the Millennial Generation’s approach and see if it leads to even better results than the preferred methods of older generations have given us. In so doing, we may find another proof of the old Biblical adage that out of the mouths, or in this case the text messages, of babes comes wisdom.

Four Ms of Millennial Politics

2009-11-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

Pundits were quick to point out that the percentage of Millennial voters (those 29 and younger ) in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections last week were roughly half of what they were in 2008. This led the voice of what passes for wisdom inside the Beltway, Charlie Cook, to proclaim, “we knew that young and minority voters who had never cast a ballot before they did for Barack Obama last year were very unlikely to show up at the polls this year or next.”

His extrapolation of two state’s unique odd year election results into a guaranteed outcome in the 2010 general election is breathtaking for what it reveals about Cook’s own biases and those of his peers. It’s reminiscent of James Carville’s comments prior to Barack Obama’s 2008 primary triumph that “we have a word in politics for those who are counting on the youth vote to win. We call them losers.” But at least Carville saw the light after looking at the surge in young voters for Democrats in 2008 and recognizing that a new generation, with different attitudes toward political participation than the preceding generation, Generation X, had arrived in the American electorate.

Unfortunately, too many of those operating as if the world didn’t change in 2008 are Democrats, whose misreading of last week’s results could cost the party dearly in 2010. The two gubernatorial losses cannot simply be dismissed, as the White House tried to do, as merely a reflection of circumstances unique to New Jersey and Virginia, unrelated to national campaign strategy. In reality, the 2009 election returns once again demonstrated the importance of aligning all four Ms of political campaigns--Messenger, Message, Media and Money—with Millennial Generation attitudes and behavior if any campaign, Democrat or Republican, hopes to be as successful in winning the votes of young people as Barack Obama was in 2008.

A year ago Obama won 60% of the vote in Virginia among 18-29 year olds. In New Jersey his margin was even greater, 67%. Even after taking into account Obama’s overwhelming support among minorities and considering only white Millennials, the appeal of this particular messenger to this cohort is clear. Nationally, Obama won 54% of all white Millennial Generation voters. He won 42% of white Millennials in Virginia, reflecting that Southern state’s relatively conservative views. But even this was well above the support Obama received from older white voters. He also carried 58% of New Jersey white Millennials, reflecting the overall partisan and ideological orientation of that state.

Neither Democratic gubernatorial candidate in last week’s election had a biography that matched the bi-racial, community organizer, outsider image of the President. Jon Corzine’s Wall Street riches and political insider image hardly matches the selfless, socially concerned profile of Obama. Corzine’s lesser appeal to Millennials is partially a reflection of that difference. While Millennials were the only generational cohort to prefer Corzine over the Republican winner, Chris Christie, Corzine’s support fell to 57% among all Millennials and 42% among white Millennials. Coupled with the decline in the Millennial Generation’s contribution to the electorate, from 17% to 9%, even this level of support wasn’t enough to re-elect Corzine.

Creigh Deeds’ bio was even less like Obama’s, with a political career focused on playing the inside game in the State Capitol and appealing to the good old boys in rural Virginia. This was one reason he became one of the first Democrats to actually lose the Millennial vote to a Republican, 44% for Deeds vs. 54% for McDonnell. And despite his focus on attempting to win over more conservative Democrats, Deeds actually lost white Millennials to McDonnell by 2:1 margin.

But the President’s appeal to Millennials went beyond his unique personal qualities. He also had a message that helped engage and motivate young people from its overall theme of change to his specific call to help young people pay for college by expanding opportunities to serve their community. By contrast, Corzine’s record contained nothing that was particularly appealing to Millennials. And Deeds’ attempt to run a campaign based on social issues ran directly counter to the Millennial Generation’s greater interest in pressing economic issues like jobs. McDonnell’s campaign, by contrast was focused like a laser, as President Bill Clinton used to say, on the state’s need to improve economic opportunity for all of its citizens.

Still, having the right messenger and message will not win over Millennials unless a campaign reaches out to them by using the media to which they pay attention, expending sufficient resources to break through the daily chatter that is also a part of the generation’s unique behavior. Corzine certainly spent plenty of his personal money on his campaign, but most of that money was devoted to television commercials, the least effective way to reach Millennials. By contrast, in Virginia, McDonnell used the Internet extensively, including a major Google ad buy late in the campaign, to make sure his message of social issue moderation and economic opportunity was heard by Millennials.

There are many things that are different about this newest generation of Americans. At this point, Millennials identify as Democrats by nearly 2:1 and are the first generation in forty years to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives. Millennials are positioned to make the Democrats the majority party for decades. But Democrats cannot take them for granted because in one very fundamental way Millennials are no different than any older generation.

Like all voters, Millennials are more likely to participate in elections and vote for candidates who appeal to their concerns with a convincing and credible message that is heard often enough to make an impact. Democrats should take a lesson from their President’s successful campaign in 2008 that used that formula to win two out of three Millennial votes. Or, they could spend some more time analyzing and explaining away last week’s two gubernatorial defeats only to discover that Republicans have already completed their analysis and are ready to launch a campaign with just the right four Ms to appeal to Millennials and give the GOP victory in 2010.

Deeds Done

2009-11-03T17:28:00.000-08:00

The likely defeat today of Democrat Creigh Deeds by Republican Bob McDonnell in Virginia's gubernatorial election sends an important message to both political parties, but it's not clear either one will listen to it. McDonnell's win will give Republicans something to crow about after three straight losing elections in the formerly dark red state, but his path to victory didn't follow the route currently being touted by conservatives in his party. Democrats are inclined to dismiss Deeds likely defeat as an isolated incident that reflects more of Virginia's tradition to vote for the out party in the off year or the result of a lackluster campaign on Deeds' part. For example, the Deeds campaign was nowhere to be found on the Net, even as McDonnell's campaign finished with a Google Ad blast, targeted at both voters spending the day in Virginia and those many Virginians who spend their days working in DC. (http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/importance-being-everywhere-vas-mcdonnell-and-nycs-bloomberg-go-full-google) The resulting failure of Democratic voters to turn out in sufficient numbers to make the election even close, however, sends an important message that Democratic leaders across America should not ignore.

Deeds began the general election campaign by using McDonnell's master's thesis at Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University in an attempt to paint his opponent as a right wing ideologue on social issues. In effect, Deeds adopted the traditional Republican campaign strategy of emphasizing social issues. But that approach lost its punch when American politics entered a new, civic-oriented era. In times like the present, broader societal concerns, not the politics of polarization carry the day. Just as the hot topics of the 1920s-Prohibition and the teaching of evolution -disappeared from the political debates of the 1930s, the favorite wedge issues of the 1990s-abortion, gay rights, and, once again, evolution or creationism--have fallen to the bottom of voter priority lists.

As a result, the initial success of Deed's attack was thwarted as McDonnell turned the electorate's attention to the more pressing question of jobs and the economy. His campaign themes were job creation, sound fiscal governance and bipartisanship-with no emphasis on the social issues that Republicans, like former Senator George Allen, had previously used in the state to define their party. Yet Deeds didn't seem to get the message, manifesting ambivalence about embracing President Obama and his domestic policies throughout the general election campaign.

Nor did Deeds put forward an alternative plan to provide a positive vision for the economic future of Virginia that would engage young voters and minorities. One self-described "Obama fanatic," who decided not to cast a vote for either candidate this year, put it best when she said, "I wanted to hear more from him [Deeds] about his plan to create jobs and address our taxes." Some polls during the campaign even indicated that between a quarter and a third of African-Americans (a group that is normally 90%+ Democratic) contemplated voting for the GOP candidate.

As American politics enters a new era driven by the civic-orientation of the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) and the rising number of minority voters, each party must rethink the composition of the ideological and demographic coalition on which it will build to ensure future success. One clear lesson that can be drawn from the results in Virginia is the need for both parties to base all four Ms (message, messenger, media and money) of their campaigns in the years ahead to reflect the new civic era America has entered. Candidates with a demonstrated desire to serve will need to deliver a message focused on greater economic equality and ethnic inclusiveness using all of today's new media in order to win.

The results in Virginia are likely to provide a good example of how that winning formula can be used not just by Democrats, but also by Republicans who are able to unshackle their campaigns from the ideological straight jacket their party's base is normally so intent on imposing. The outcome will also demonstrate that for Democrats to simply raise the party banner without embracing Barack Obama's formula for victory will not be enough to carry the day. The political equivalent of Darwin's law of "adapt or die," remains the fundamental truth of American politics in this new civic era.

Engergizing Millennials: Key to Dem Victory in 2010

2009-10-11T16:17:00.001-07:00

The latest unemployment numbers and poll results have led most observers to predict a major setback for Democrats in the 2010 Congressional elections. But a year is a lifetime in politics and much can change between now and then to influence next year’s vote. As Ron Brownstein recently pointed out, the demographic makeup of the electorate is likely to be a key factor in whether or not the Democrats can maintain their current majority margins in 2010. While traditionally Democrats have focused on turning out African-American and Hispanic voters to offset Republican strength among white male voters that equation is no longer the only calculation Democratic strategists need to make.
Today the level and intensity of interest among Millennials young voters 18-28, is equally important in ensuring Democratic victories. But for that group of voters to turn out in large numbers, Congressional Democrats will have to make a much more concerted effort than they have to date to deliver on a series of policy issues of major concern to Millennials, the generation that provided Barack Obama 80% of his popular vote margin over John McCain in 2008.
As with most other Americans, the number one concern among Millennials is the state of the economy and the need for jobs. But Millennials have a unique perspective on this issue, one that Congress must understand and address. Millennials believe there is a clear link between education and employment and are increasingly concerned that the pathway through the educational system into the world of work is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to navigate. Two-thirds of Millennials who graduate from a four-year college do so with over $20,000 in debt. A job market with Depression-level youth unemployment (18.5%) and a wrenching transformation of the types of jobs America needs and produces makes the implicit bargain of education in return for future economic success harder for Millennials to believe in every day.
Recently Matt Segal, Executive Director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and Founder and National Co-Chair of the “80 Million Strong for Young Americans Job Coalition” presented some ideas to the House Education and Labor Committee on what Congress could do to address this challenge.

He advocated increased entrepreneurial resources be made available to youth; Senate action on the student debt reform bill recently passed by the House; more access to public service careers through internships and loan forgiveness programs; and the creation of “mission critical” jobs in such fields as health care, cyber-security and the environment that would tap the unique talents of this generation. Coupled with the recent passage of the Kennedy Serve America Act, enacting these initiatives would demonstrate that Democrats are serious about improving the economic situation of Millennials and, at the same time, provide organizing ammunition in the 2010 campaign.
Of course no economic program can ignore the impact of health care on this generation’s—and America’s—economic well being. Many of the entry-level jobs young people seek and obtain come from employers who simply can’t afford to provide health care coverage under today’s system. Young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 represent nearly a third of all uninsured Americans, and two-thirds of those uninsured young people reported going without necessary medical care in 2007 because they could not afford to pay for it. As a result, polling has consistently indicated that a majority of young people support President Obama’s health care proposal, especially if it contains a public option to control costs. One of the more compelling components of the president’s plan for Millennials is that it would allow parents to cover their children through the family’s health insurance up to the age of 26 instead of the current limit of 19. And Millennials expect Congress to act. Only a third of Millennials, as compared with half of older generations, are concerned that the government will become too involved in health care.
Yet many pundits continue to perceive health care reform as an “old people’s issue,” likely to increase the turnout of seniors, but not Millennials, in the 2010 elections. Some have even suggested that Millennials will object to a health care system that limits the differential in premiums insurance companies can charge relatively healthy young people vs. older, less well adults. But this theoretical inter-generational transfer of wealth is not likely to stir up much opposition among Millennials. Unlike the Baby Boomers of four decades ago, Millennials do not speak to their elders across a generation gap, but have actually formed strong and enduring bonds with their parents and come to the public arena determined to find solutions that work for people of all ages. Already, Young Americans for Health Care Reform has accumulated 1200 fans on Facebook since the group was formed less than a month ago.
If Congressional Democrats can successfully negotiate passage of a health care reform bill that provides cost-effective coverage for the 30% of Millennials who currently are not insured, Democrats will have another major arrow in their quiver going into the 2010 election.
Millennials, like their GI Generation great grandparents in the 1930s, are facing economic challenges that caught them by surprise and for which no one prepared them. But Millennials aren’t looking for a handout or sympathy. Instead, in the “can do” spirit of their generation, they are organizing to overcome the challenges created for them by their elders. It’s time for Democrats in Congress to recognize these concerns and the loyalty of a generation that identifies as Democrats over Republicans by a 2:1 margin. One way to accomplish this is by passing meaningful health care reform while helping to create new pathways to economic opportunity, especially for young people who are just entering the work force. Doing so now, as the battle for 2010 shapes up, will help energize the newest and most loyal element of the Democratic Party’s 21st Century coalition, the Millennial Generation.

The Civility Crisis and How to Cure It

2009-10-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

While the nation has been right to focus on the most recent outbreak of incivility, if not downright hostility, directed toward President Obama generally and his health care proposal specifically, the diagnosis of what ails the country and what must be done to end this type of behavior has been way off target.
Republicans, who were quick to compare the actions of their party’s fringe elements to harsh, sometimes over the top Democratic criticism of former President George W. Bush missed the qualitative difference between expressing strong policy disagreement with the opposition, which is fair game in any political season, and taking guns to Presidential appearances. Ironically, Republicans are guilty of the same “moral equivalency” judgment error that they accused Democrats who minimized Communist war crimes in Vietnam and the actions of urban rioters of in the 1960s of committing. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was closer to the truth when she likened today’s vitriolic rhetoric to the hate speech directed toward gays in San Francisco in the 1970s, but she failed to pursue the historical analogy far enough.
This kind of anger, born out of a sense of fear of a rapidly changing world, and directed at those that seem to be causing the world to move both too fast and in the wrong direction, has erupted regularly whenever America has gone through the type of generational change it’s now experiencing.
As generational theorists, William Strauss and Neil Howe pointed out, an idealist generation animated by moral beliefs, such as today’s Baby Boomers, have, in their youth, regularly shaken American society by confronting the cultural values of older generations. Such generations have always been followed by an alienated, individualistic generational archetype, which tends to be rude and disrespectful, especially toward its elders. The most recent historical examples of this archetype are the Lost Generation who came of age in the 1920s and Generation X, born 1965-1981. As members of these two types of generations mature and assume positions of leadership, society coarsens and rhetoric escalates from being merely confrontational to speech that is deliberately designed to provoke and incite. It’s the difference between Boomer rock n’ roll and Gen X rap--or between Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.
But inevitably, this harsh cultural style engenders a backlash from an emerging civic-oriented generation. The most recent civic generations are Millennials (born 1982-2003) and, in the 1930s and 1940s, the GI Generation. Historically, the type of generational alignment we see now is associated with the most traumatic and significant crises in American history: the American Revolution and adoption of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and World War II. The way this generational confrontation has been resolved in American history should give pause to those who encourage incivility, either by their silence or their direct involvement.
Popular opinion was sharply divided during the Revolutionary War. Between a fifth and a third of the population of the Thirteen Colonies supported the British. Estimates are that after the war, between sixty and one hundred thousand Loyalists fled the newly born United States. Nor did the Constitution’s ratification end our divisions. In spite of George Washington’s warning against the “partisan spirit” and the intentional failure of the Constitution to mention them, nascent political parties— Republicans and Federalists —formed by the end of his administration to confront one another on the issue of the proper role and size of the federal government.
Roughly eighty years later, seemingly irreconcilable differences between generations and regions led to the Civil War. Once Lincoln assumed the presidency, he faced opposition from all sides. The words, if not the deed, of his assassin, John Wilkes Booth, “Sic semper tyrannus” (“Thus always to tyrants”) succinctly expressed the thoughts of most white Southerners about Lincoln. In the North, much of the criticism was intensely personal: Lincoln was called an “ape,” a “baboon” or worse. Many opposed what they perceived to be a war sacrificing the blood of white men to free blacks. Riots protesting the military draft broke out in Northern cities. In New York blacks were lynched and the city’s Negro orphanage burned. Even within his own Republican party, a faction called him timid for failing to emancipate the slaves sooner than he did or to pursue a more vindictive policy against the secessionist states.
When the generational archetypes were again aligned in a similar way in the early 1930s, the country was confronted by the greatest economic crisis in its history. While a hero to many, a month before his inauguration, Roosevelt was nearly the victim of an assassination. Giuseppe Zangara, an unemployed bricklayer with anarchist leanings, fired at FDR but hit Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago instead and killed him. Once in office, Roosevelt was personally criticized from the right for being a “traitor to his class.” In shrill language that is once again being tossed cavalierly around Washington today, FDR’s policies and programs were labeled “foreign,” “socialist,” “communist” and “fascist.” His Social Security proposal was derided as a severe invasion of privacy. At the same time, from the other side of the political spectrum, Roosevelt was criticized for not doing enough to dismantle the capitalist system and, in the words of Huey Long, “Share the Wealth.”
History demonstrates that the first years of a transition from an ideological era, such as the one Boomers and Xers dominated from 1968 to 2008, to an era dominated by civic generations, like the GI Generation and Millennials, are initially among the most rancorous, contentious, and sometimes violent, of any in American history. But history also provides valuable lessons for how to deal with these tensions in order to increase civic unity.
The Founding Fathers worked hard to promote an “era of good feelings,” admonishing citizens to maintain decorum in their public debates, even as they privately excoriated their opponents. Lincoln confronted his detractors directly, most famously with his principled stance that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And FDR condemned “economic royalists” intent on defending their privileged position to the detriment of the “forgotten man.”
As the newest civic era begins, both Republican and Democrats must, in President Obama’s phrase, “call out,” those who engage in lies and demagoguery or threaten physical violence toward governmental institutions and leaders. Both sides need to brand such actions, not just wrong-headed, but a threat to the nation’s ability to successfully sail through the troubled waters of our current generational alignment. History suggests that a true sense of national solidarity will return when the nation successfully confronts the major challenges it will continue to face. But in the interim the least that must be done is to denounce actions and behavior that will make future unity more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Obama Gets an A, Cong. Dems an Incomplete

2009-09-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Back to school week was a good one for President Obama, but Congress still has some lessons to learn. After telling the nation’s schoolchildren to study hard, stay in school, get good grades, and be unwilling to accept failure, the President directed a very similar message to Congress as he lectured them on the need to pass health care reform in this session. The end result was a significant rise in Obama’s poll numbers. CNN
and Democracy Corps questioned voters before the president’s congressional address and then again immediately afterward. There is little doubt that Democrats are simply glad that the president is sounding like the man they put in the White House last November.
CNN found that three-quarters (77%) of those who watched the speech had a positive reaction to it overall, with 56% being very positive. Nearly as many (72%) believed that Obama clearly stated the goals for his health care plan in his speech. After the address, 70% believed that Barack Obama’s policies would move the country in the right direction as compared with 60% who felt that way before. Most important, the number favoring the president’s health care reform plan rose sharply to 67% from 53%.
The Democracy Corps used electronic dials to gauge the perceptions of 50 “independent and weak partisan” voters in Denver before, during, and immediately after President Obama’s speech. Those who participated in the Democracy Corps research were about evenly divided among those who initially supported and opposed the president’s health care reform plan and McCain and Obama voters. Among these swing voters, support for Obama’s plan rose 20 points (from 46% before the address to 66% after). Moreover, attitudes toward specific aspects of the plan improved sharply following the address.

Health Care Reform Description:	Agree Pre-Speech	Disagree Pre-Speech	Agree Post-Speech	Disagree Post-Speech	Change
Will get health care costs under control	42%	46%	64%	36%	+22
Allows you to keep your current insurance and doctor if you choose	54%	32%	80%	18%	+26
Will increase competition and lower prices for health care	44%	42%	74%	24%	+30
Will give individuals and families more choice and control	36%	58%	60%	36%	+24
Government-run health care	60%	32%	46%	54%	-14
Will increase the deficit and raise taxes	62%	26%	40%	44%	-22
Will hurt seniors by cutting Medicare	40%	32%	20%	66%	-20

But the biggest jump in Barack Obama’s poll ratings came in the Daily Kos weekly tracking survey.
In just one week, the president’s overall favorable to unfavorable margin improved by eight percentage points (favorable up 4 points and unfavorable down 4). Obama’s favorable marks week-to-week improved in virtually every demographic and political group except among Republicans. However, the biggest gains came within Democratic core groups including Millennials (young people born 1982-2003), Latinos, residents of the Northeast, and Democratic identifiers. This suggests that, after a period of drift during the summer, what President Obama said last week, especially in his health care reform address, reinforced his base.

	Favorable 8/31-9/3	Favorable 9/7-10	Week-to-week Change
Total electorate	52%	56%	+4
Sex
Male	44%	50%	+6
Female	60%	62%	+2
Age
18-29	74%	80%	+6
30-44	42%	44%	+2
45-59	58%	64%	+6
60+	40%	42%	+2
Party ID
Democrat	77%	85%	+8
Republican	4%	4%	—
Independent	57%	60%	+3
Region
Northeast	76%	83%	+7
South	26%	28%	+2
Midwest	59%	63%	+4
West	56%	60%	+4

Unfortunately, President Obama’s Democratic colleagues in Congress did not share in the week’s polling upswing. The Daily Kos survey indicates that the favorable ratings of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and congressional Democrats overall were essentially unchanged during a week in which the president registered significant gains. Perhaps it is for this reason that GOP consultants are telling Republican candidates to attack congressional Democrats, rather than President Obama, in the 2010-midterm elections.
It seems clear that the public, even the Democratic base, is taking a wait and see attitude about inside-the-Beltway Democrats other than President Obama. The coming months will determine whether or not the Democratic majority in Congress is prepared to do the job that it was sent to Washington to do and, among other things, at long last enact meaningful health care reform. This week’s polling numbers suggest that would not only be good for America, but also for congressional Democrats. Let’s hope they’re paying attention to Obama’s message.

Its Time for Washington Dems to Break Groundhog Cycle

2009-08-30T06:24:00.000-07:00

In the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day, self-centered TV weathercaster, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is doomed to continuously repeat the events of his life. He finally ends the never-ending cycle and wins the love of his life when he finds the courage to break free of the personal limitations of his past. Like Phil Connors, many Washington pundits and politicians act as if they and the country are destined to keep on reliving the battle over health care from the Clinton era. But it’s not 1993 and it’s finally time to break the Groundhog Day pattern of American politics.
The United States has moved to a new political era driven by the emergence of America’s next civic generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003), and marked by a new pattern of partisan identification and changed attitudes. Strategies that may have been useful nearly two decades ago are not likely to be effective now. Failure to recognize these changes by adhering to old and worn out approaches, in fact, will be counterproductive.
One thing that has changed since the early 1990s is that the American electorate is no longer evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. In 1994, according to the Pew Research Center, an equal number of voters identified as or leaned to the Democrats and Republicans (44% each). Now Pew shows an electorate in which half of the electorate, or slightly more call themselves or lean to the Democrats and only a third identify as or lean to the Republicans. Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by an even larger margin (56% vs. 30%).Moreover, the U.S. electorate is now more open to governmental activity and economic intervention, more positive toward government, and less driven by moralistic fears on social issues than it was on the eve of the Gingrich revolution in 1994.

Unfortunately, many inside the Beltway seem intent on reliving 1993 rather than moving to the new Millennial civic era. For Republicans and conservatives, who see resistance to change and derailing Obama administration initiatives as the way back to political power, this isn’t surprising. After all, failure to pass health care reform in the first two years of the Clinton administration contributed to the GOP sweep in the 1994-midterm elections. Republicans are hoping that, as in Groundhog Day, history will repeat itself. But for Democrats to act like it’s 1993 is truly surprising. The results of this behavior are already worrisome and could soon become disastrous.
Recent Gallup Poll data suggests Obama’s job approval levels among 18-29 year olds (primarily Millennials) has fallen from 71% to 60%. Given the solidly Democratic party identification and liberal political attitudes of Millennials, this decline most likely stems from disappointment that the president and congressional Democrats have not yet delivered on a campaign message built around change and reform. Certainly the decline is not based on distress that the president is pushing change too far or too fast.
This increased disappointment with the outcome of the first seven months of the Obama administration among Millennials (and other Democratically-oriented groups) is reflected in changes in the Daily Kos tracking poll’s generic congressional vote. Since June the Democratic lead over the Republicans has declined from a high of 14-percentage points to just 6. Almost none of this decline in the Democratic margin has come from an increased preference for the GOP. In fact, the overall percentage favoring the Republicans is actually down a point or two since May and June. Instead, virtually all of the change has come because of a decline in support for the Democrats and an increase in the percentage saying they are not sure. And, in turn, most of that is produced by increased indecision among Democratic identifiers and within demographic groups inclined toward the Democrats. In all, it appears that the biggest threat facing the Democrats is not from Republicans, but from disenchanted and disaffected voters within the groups that gave Barack Obama the presidency and Democrats a large congressional majority in the last two elections.

In the new civic era that America is entering, suggestions by conservatives that Barack Obama and the Democrats move to the right or appeal to seniors rather than the rising Millennial Generation are at best misguided and at worst dangerous. Instead, it’s time for Washington Democrats to leave Groundhog Day 1993 behind, start acting like Democrats, and redeem the promises that made them the majority party.
One way to do that is to pass meaningful healthcare reform legislation. That would be a fitting memorial to Edward M. Kennedy, the Democratic Lion of the Senate. It would also advance the fortunes of the party he so dearly loved.

Have Patience-Republicans Just Going through 5 Stages of Grief

2009-08-17T13:00:00.001-07:00

In 1969, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published a groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying, suggesting that people facing death went through five emotional stages before they could accept their fate. While never proven by subsequent studies, the five stages of grief have entered the realm of conventional wisdom and are often cited to explain the behavior of groups, as well as individuals, facing a life-threatening crisis. The actions of Republicans, and their conservative supporters, in attempting to disrupt Town Hall discussions of President Obama’s health care reform proposal suggests that the concept is alive and kicking in politics as well.
According to Kubler-Ross, the first stage in dealing with impending doom is to deny it’s happening. We witnessed this behavior in the immediate aftermath of the Democrats’ overwhelming victory last November. Republicans reacted almost identically to the way Democrats did after Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980. The election results were attributed to poor campaign tactics by the loser, or the failure to develop a winning message by the campaign’s media strategists, or a plot by reporters to ensure the victory of the winning candidate, if for no other reason than to give them something new to write about. In the classic words of death deniers throughout history, Republican leaders continued to insist well into January 2009 that they “felt fine” and the results had “nothing to do with me”--the Republican party and its message. The only thing that was about to die, we heard GOP leaders like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steele assert, was the muddled attempt at moderation by Senator John McCain and the failure of their party to adhere to its most conservative principles.
The second stage of grief according to On Death and Dying is anger, and this summer the Republican Party and its minions have clearly moved beyond denial to anger. Enraged mobs of extraordinarily well informed “average” citizens have descended on Democratic Town Hall meetings to demand that their Representative not follow Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s party line and instead vote against specific provisions of health care legislation that would, for instance, incent the writing of living wills, or substitute the judgment of health insurers for that of objective government entities on what treatments would be allowed based on their cost effectiveness. Above all the evil of government involvement in the health care system is to be labeled for what it is—the work of the devil, who is clearly a socialist, through his agents in the U.S. Congress. The fact that many of those most vociferous in their opposition to government supported health care are carrying their sacred Medicare card in their wallet is only ironic if you ignore the degree to which anger and denial are related emotions. In fact, Kubler-Ross points out that people often oscillate between those stages before moving on. This makes the denial of Barack Obama’s Hawaiian birth by many of these same angry protesters understandable, if not any more credible.
So what can the country expect once the Republican Party moves on to the next stage of dealing with the demise of its former electoral dominance? According to Kubler-Ross, the third stage of grief is “bargaining.” Here the individual or group hopes that it can at least postpone or delay death by promising to reform or turn over a new leaf. There are already early signs in the writings of Peggy Noonan, President Reagan’s speechwriter, that this next stage is coming to the fore. She suggests that if only President Obama would rethink the broad scope of his proposals and join in true bipartisan negotiations, Republicans in Congress would support a bill that leaves most of today’s health care system in place but without the nasty practices of denying health coverage to those with pre-existing conditions or canceling people’s insurance at the first sign that they might actually need medical treatment. The country can expect to hear more such offers from Republicans this fall when Congress returns and the real bargaining over the scope of health care reform takes place. But the party’s past misdeeds in building a majority coalition based on the racist premise of its Southern Strategy or its failure to appeal to the civic beliefs and attitudes of the emerging Millennial Generation or its most recent decision to sacrifice its future among Hispanics by voting against the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, make any such offer a fool’s bargain. The demise of GOP dominance is inevitable and Democrats should take no part in postponing the inevitable.
If congressional Democrats have the courage to use their majority to pass health care legislation and then go to the voters with an economy on the mend, the 2010 elections should serve to move Republicans to the fourth stage of grief—depression. Suffering from a series of unexpected and unexplainable defeats, Republicans are likely to go off on a prolonged period of silence, punctuated by bouts of crying over just how unfair politics has become. Kubler-Ross suggests that it is important not to try and cheer up the person in this stage of grief, but to let the individual work his or her way through the inevitable depression on their own. That way, her book says, the dying can finally come to the final stage of grief—acceptance.
This stage represents the end of the struggle and a willingness to accept one’s fate. The Republican Party as we have known it since 1968 will die for lack of political support. It may not accept that fate until after President Obama’s re-election, by a landslide, in 2012 just as the Democratic Party’s New Deal liberals did not accept their fate until after Ronald Reagan’s complete demolition of Walter Mondale’s candidacy in 1984. Still the end is inevitable, as many of today’s leading thinkers in the GOP are beginning to realize.
But Republicans can take heart in what Democrats were able to do after reaching the clarity of mind that comes with accepting one’s fate. By recognizing the death of its old ideas and rethinking their approach to the electorate after their landslide defeat in 1984, the Democrats eventually found a new road to victory—tentatively in 1992 with Bill Clinton and then more confidently with Obama’s victory in 2008. At that rate the GOP only has to wait until 2020 to have its next real shot at winning the presidency. If Republicans want to get to that goal sooner, psychologists might suggest that they move quickly out if their “summer of anger” phase, don’t bargain or obstruct too much over health care or anything else when Congress returns, and get ready for a good cry in 2010. Even better, such a course of therapy will improve the rest of the country’s mental health as well.

Dem 2010 Prospects Better Than You Think

2009-08-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

The 2010 midterm elections are still 15 months away and making political predictions this far out is risky business. History alone would point to the potential for Republican gains next year since the party that doesn’t control either the White House or Congress, almost invariably adds congressional seats in midterm elections. Only twice since 1900 has the president’s party made gains in the first midterm election of his administration—1934 and 2002. But, a continuation of economic optimism, linked to its significant advantages in demographics, party identification, and party image, may position the Democratic Party to overcome the difficulties that an incumbent majority normally confronts. If so, the Democrats could surprise a few D.C. pundits and, along the way, create a little history of their own.

The Daily Kos weekly tracking survey shows the Democrats with a 10-point margin on the so-called “generic Congressional ballot” question. The most recent NBC/WSJ poll puts the margin at seven percent. Meanwhile Stan Greenberg’s polling for NPR suggested Republicans actually had a slight edge, but that poll’s results were distorted by an oversampling of seniors (22%) as opposed to young Millennial voters (14%) when in fact the two age groups were represented equally (17%) in the electorate in 2008.

The significant changes that have occurred in the U.S. population since 2002 are often overlooked not only by survey researchers, but also by pundits attempting to make electoral predications. These demographic changes work to the advantage of the Democratic Party. The Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) is becoming an even more important part of the electorate and will represent 20% of all eligible voters in 2010. America is also increasingly diverse, with non-whites making up a quarter of the 2008 electorate, about double the percentage of just two or three decades earlier.

These newcomers to the electorate are solidly Democratic. Millennials contributed 80% of Barack Obama’s 2008 popular vote, identify as Democrats by a greater than 2:1 margin, and are the first generation in at least four to contain more self-perceive liberals than conservatives. Upwards of 90% of African-Americans and more than two-thirds of Latinos and Asians opted for Obama over John McCain last year. There is nothing to indicate that the strong Democratic loyalties of any of these expanding groups are diminishing. In the latest Daily Kos generic ballot, Millennials prefer the Democrats by 4.5:1. African-Americans do so by 8.5:1, Latinos by more than 2.6:1, and Asians by 3:1.

In 2002, when the Republicans made midterm history, the two parties were tied in party identification (43% each in Pew Research Center surveys). Now, in large part due to these demographic changes, the Democrats are clearly the majority party, with about a 16-percentage point edge. Overall, a bit more than half of the electorate identifies with or leans to the Democrats while around a third are Republicans or lean to the GOP. The Daily Kos survey indicates that about 80% of both Democratic and Republican identifiers want to see the party they prefer win Congress in 2010. The Democratic Party’s edge in party ID gives it a built-in electoral advantage that fully accounts for its 10-point lead in the Daily Kos poll.

Nothing that has occurred so far this year has done much to improve the Republican brand GOP candidates will have to defend in 2010 either. In the recent NBC/WSJ survey, voters held positive over negative impressions of the Democratic Party by a 42% vs. 37% margin. By contrast, their attitudes toward the GOP were 28% positive as opposed to 41% negative. Things were even worse for the Republicans in the Daily Kos tracker, in which Republicans trailed their Democratic counterparts in favorable evaluations by margins of between 2 and 4 to 1.
• Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s positive approval numbers beat those of her Republican counterpart, John Boehner, 34% to 13%.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s approval rating was 32% compared to only 18% for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
• Congressional Democrats positive number of 41% swamped the generic Congressional Republican positive approval number of 10%.
• And the Democratic Party’s approval rating of 45% was dramatically better than the overall Republican Party rating of 19%.

These weaker perceptions of the GOP could limit Republican gains in 2010, especially if they run in direct opposition to President Obama who enjoys a 62% favorable rating in the same poll.

In the end, however, nothing is likely to drive the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections more than voter feelings about the economy. A CBS poll indicates that since mid-July the percentage believing that the U.S. economy is getting better has increased from 21% to 32%; the percentage saying it was declining fell from 33% to 22%. As a result, the number believing that the country is now on the right track grew from 35% to 42%. A majority (51%, up three points) now approves of Obama’s handling of the economy and by a 56% to 25% margin voters believe that the President rather than congressional Republicans is likely to make the right economic decisions. A solid majority (57%) of Americans also believe that the economic stimulus package passed into law earlier this year has or will create a substantial number of new jobs and a clear plurality (44% in the NBC/WSJ survey) expects the economy to be better in a year than it is now, a number that is up from 38% in April.
Democratic Congressional prospects in 2010 should continue to improve along with the economy as long as Democrats stay united behind President Obama and his policies. If that happens, 2010 could look more like 1934 than 1994.

Millennials Think Globally and Act Locally

2009-07-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

The phrase, “Think Globally, Act Locally” has often been used by environmentalists to sum up a strategy devoted to conserving the earth's scarce natural resources at the local level. More recently, business executives borrowed the idea to emphasize the need for building capabilities at the country or regional level even as they pursue global growth. But now the Millennial Generation, Americans born between 1982 and 2003, are giving the phrase an entirely new meaning as they pursue their efforts to change the world – one local community at a time.

In contrast to the generational stereotypes many people hold of them, Millennials are very much concerned about and connected to the world around them – more so, in fact, than many older Americans. Responding to questions on foreign policy in a recent Pew Research Center survey, only 9% of Millennials were unable to express an opinion on how President Obama is doing in working with our allies, while almost a quarter of senior citizens had no opinion on the same subject. On the knotty question of Israeli/Palestinian relations, all but 7% of Millennials could tell survey researchers what they thought of American foreign policy in this area. On the other hand, 26% of senior citizens could not (see table below).

In addition to its high level of concern with international matters, the Millennial Generation's ability to make virtual friends instantaneously on Facebook or Twitter with Iranian protesters provides a unique perspective on how to deal with America’s foreign policy challenges.

Perhaps most notable is how the Millennial Generation deals with the concept of "threats". A majority of Millennials do see Al Qaeda, and the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran as "major threats" to the United States, but by rates 15 to 20 points less than other generations. Other more intractable but less direct security concerns, such as the drug trade in Mexico, China’s emergence as a world power, or conflicts in the Mideast ranging from Pakistan to Palestine, are not considered a major threat among a majority of Millennials. To be sure, some of these attitudes may reflect the inevitable naiveté of young people, but we believe the underlying beliefs of Millennials suggest an alternative explanation.

Millennials have been taught since at least high school that the best way to solve a societal problem is act upon it locally and directly. Tired of exalted rhetoric from Boomer leaders that rarely produced results and frustrated by their older Gen-X siblings lack of interest in pursuing any collective action to address broad social problems, Millennials have embraced individual initiative linked to community action. Eighty-five percent of college age Millennials consider voluntary community service an effective way to solve the nation’s problems. Virtually everyone in the generation (94%) believes it’s an effective way to deal with challenges in their local community. No wonder one of Barack Obama’s first legislative initiatives, the Kennedy National Service Act, was in response to the desire to serve of his most loyal constituency, the Millennial Generation.

And when it comes to public service, Millennials are putting their money where their mouth is, although lack of opportunity in the private sector also could be accelerating this public service trend. Teach for America, which places new graduates in low-income schools, saw a 42% increase in applications over 2008. Around 35,000 students are now competing for about 4,000 slots. U.S. undergraduates ranked Teach for America and the Peace Corps among their top 10 "ideal employers," ahead of the likes of Nike or General Electric.

Scotty Fay, a recent University of Massachusetts graduate, typifies the continuing belief of her generation in the importance of collective action to cope with a challenging world. “If we excel and we’re able to keep ourselves working, we’ll be OK, we hope, because we haven’t experienced anything different than that,” says Fay, who worked two jobs on top of her full-time course load, and is now getting ready for her Peace Corps assignment in Guinea.

First Lady Michelle Obama, in kicking off the administration’s “summer of service” initiative, made it clear that the administration sees this belief as key to America’s future. “This new Administration doesn’t view service as separate from our national priorities, or in addition to our national priorities – we see it as the key to achieving our national priorities.” Given the likelihood of continuing employment challenges for America’s newest workers, more and more Millennials are likely to gain their first work experiences performing some type of voluntary service.

This penchant for public service shapes the beliefs of Millennials on how the United States should deal with the problems it faces around the world. In last year's contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, Millennials believed Barack Obama was right and Hillary Clinton was wrong over whether to conduct direct talks with our enemies. And they thought Sarah Palin was completely off base when she declared in her acceptance speech at the convention that “the world is not a community and it doesn’t need an organizer.” In fact, Millennials believe that what the world needs most is thousands of community organizers, working on the ground to solve their own country’s problems, linked electronically, of course, to friends around the world.

This is a trend that, appropriately, resonates outside our borders as well. Grassroots activism, led largely by young Iranians, produced protests that may yet topple one of the most autocratic regimes in the world. Activism of this type across the Mideast could result in regime changes of far greater consequence than the military conquest strategy the United States employed in Iraq. Given the distinctions Millennials make between the seriousness of direct military threats, such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation, as opposed to squabbles over power or territory, America’s foreign policy is likely to shift towards a more multi-lateral, institution-building focus as this generation assumes our country’s leadership. This will occur even as Millennials continue to express support for our military by word and deed – when that becomes the only available option.

It may take a decade or two before we know how the Millennial Generation's belief in the need to “think globally, act locally” will impact our overall foreign policy. But in the interim, the United States will surely benefit from the generation's focus on rebuilding our country, as well as the world, one community at a time.

Democrats Should Act Like the Majority They Are

2009-07-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

For the first time in decades, due largely to the emergence of the Millennial Generation (young Americans born 1982-2003), the Democratic Party holds a clear and decisive majority in party identification nationally. Whether the Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership take advantage of this historic opportunity will be determined by their success in passing during this session of Congress the type of comprehensive health care reform legislation that Democratic identifiers overwhelmingly favor.
The last time Congress considered comprehensive health care reform in the early 1990s was during an era when neither party had a party identification majority and the margin between the two parties rarely exceeded four or five percentage points. But in 2009 we are in a different era, with completely different political realities.
A mid-July Washington Post-ABC News poll found the Democrats with a clear 53% vs. 38% party ID edge over the GOP, virtually unchanged since the president was inaugurated in January or elected last November. Yet this same poll showed a decline in the president's overall job performance mark and indicated that only a bare plurality approved rather than disapproved of his handling of health care (49% vs. 44%). To preserve their current partisan advantage, the President and Congress need to pass a health care reform bill that addresses the concerns of their Democratic supporters, not Republicans in or outside of Congress.

Democrats, especially young Millennials, who identified as Democrats over Republicans by nearly a 2:1 margin in a June Pew Research Center survey (56% vs. 30%), are significantly less likely than Republicans and older Americans to even have health insurance. Nearly nine in ten Republican identifiers, but only eight of ten Democrats are now insured. That number falls to less than two in three among Millennials (63%). In stark contrast, 96% of senior citizens (who, of course, already participate in a federal health care program) have health insurance.
Because they are less often insured, and perhaps because whatever insurance coverage they do have may not be as comprehensive, Democrats have greater difficulty meeting and paying for their health care needs than Republicans. As the following table indicates, half of all Democratic identifiers (and non-aligned independents) say they have trouble paying for the cost of a major illness and for health insurance. About four in ten are concerned with having to pay a larger share of employer-provided health insurance and for routine medical care and prescription drugs.

Is each of the following a "major" problem for you and your family?	Dem/lean Dem	Independent	Rep/lean Rep
Paying cost of major illness	51%	54%	43%
Paying cost of health insurance	46%	52%	36%
Employer making you pay larger share of health insurance	38%	36%	30%
Paying for cost of routine medical care	38%	42%	27%
Paying for cost of prescription drugs	37%	42%	26%

As a result, it's hardly surprising that virtually all Democrats (91%) and 80% of Millennials, but barely half of Republican identifiers (54%) favor "changing the health care system in this country so that all Americans have health insurance that covers all medically necessary care" or that a majority of Democrats (51%) believes that the country is spending "too little" on health care while a plurality of Republicans (46%) believe we are spending "too much." Nor is it hard to understand why few Democrats, especially Millennials, are put off by the possibility of greater federal government health care activity. In a May Pew survey, 69% of Republicans, but only 28% of Democrats and 36% of Millennials, professed concern about the government becoming too involved in health care.
The same July Washington Post- ABC News survey that signaled trouble for Obama on the issue of health care indicated that a majority of all Americans (54%) favor the legislation. This includes three-quarters of Democrats and six in 10 independents, but fewer than a quarter of Republicans.
In spite of claims by Republicans such as South Carolina's Senator Jim DeMint that congressional failure to pass health care legislation could prove to be Obama's "Waterloo," the matter is really an almost entirely Democratic concern. As E.J. Dionne reminded today's congressional Democrats, they "are not living in the Republican congressional eras of 1995 or 2003…they have the strength on their own to win."
Democrats have that strength because the country has entered a new political era, driven by the emerging civic Millennial Generation, in which the Democratic Party is now clearly the majority party within the American electorate and is in position to retain that majority status for decades to come. Most of that Democratic electoral majority personally need meaningful health care reform and expect Congress to enact it. The next several weeks will tell us whether congressional Democrats will take advantage of that new reality or look backward to the old realities of the past. We will soon see if congressional Democrats have the ability and courage to choose wisely and perceptively. The stakes in that decision for the Obama presidency, the Democratic Party, and the nation couldn’t be higher.

Generational Health Care Debate

2009-07-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

Millennials, young Americans under 28, provided President Barack Obama most of his popular vote margin over John Mc Cain in 2008. Now their belief in the need to involve the federal government in comprehensive health care reform may become the President's most powerful argument in persuading Congress to deliver on that campaign promise this year. But to do so the President will have to overcome some serious differences between members of older generations in both parties, and in both houses of Congress, on just how accomplish that task.

The Senate is almost equally divided between members of the Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945 and Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964. Recent elections have raised the percentage of Boomers in the lower house to almost three fourths of all members.Of course, partisan allegiance and local politics play an important role in determining a legislator's voting decisions. But the differing perspectives of these two "leadership generations" have already influenced each house's approach to the policy debates on a number of issues so far this year and are likely to do so again on health care this summer.

Democrats in the House of Representatives, for all of their ideological posturing, are actually led by members of the Silent generation, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (1940), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (1939), Democratic Whip James Clyburn (1940), Dean of the House John Dingell (1926), and committee chairmen such as John Conyers (1929), Pete Stark (1931), Ike Skelton (1931), Charles Rangel (1932), John Murtha (1932), James Oberstar (1934), Dave Obey (1938), Henry Waxman (1939) and Norm Dicks (1940). The parents of the "adaptive" Silent Generation protected, some would say smothered, members of this generation during the traumatic childhood events of their youth-the Great Depression and World War II. As a result members of the Silent generation are often risk averse as adults and tend to prefer the of bi-partisan compromises that John McCain, a Silent born in 1936, talked about so often during his campaign.

By contrast, almost all of the House Republican leadership is from the Baby Boomer Generation. Boomers are the latest incarnation of what William Strauss and Neil Howe, the originators of generational theory, call an "idealist" generation. Members of this generational archetype tend to believe deeply in their own personal values and seek to use the political process to implement their personal ideological convictions for the whole nation to follow. Because the Boomer generation has been divided about equally between the two ideological poles and parties(half of them voted for Obama, half for McCain in 2008), America has experienced political gridlock for the past four decades.

Boomers have spent a lifetime rebelling against the Silent Generation's belief in institutional allegiance and compromise and will find themselves once again having to accommodate the older generation's sensibilities if they actually want to pass legislation such as health care reform. Democratic Boomers will need to find common cause with the Silents in their party, while Republican Boomers are likely to emphasize their ideological differences from their Democratic counterparts. Republican Boomers will want to demonstrate their ideological commitment to lower taxes and a less active federal government. Moderate Democrats from the Blue Dog and New Democratic caucuses, who share some of these concerns with Republicans, are likely to be more willing to compromise on these issues with their Silent Generation leaders than liberal Boomers might want or be willing to.

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison said that the Senate would be a "necessary fence" against the "fickleness and passion" of members of the House of Representatives. Either George Washington or Thomas Jefferson was reputed to have called the Senate a "saucer" designed to "cool" House legislation. Whether the Senate was meant to be a fence or a saucer, in this Congress it often operates as a generational bulwark against the increasingly hot passions and partisan bulldogs who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Senate has already played this role during this session of Congress. In the debate on the President's Recovery Act, Silent Generation Senate leaders forced the House to accommodate some of the demands of the Senate's most moderate members. During the course of that debate, House Democrats were able to prevail in the name of party unity on their Senate counterparts to accept a "recission rule" in the budget resolution that would allow Democrats, if they so chose, to ignore the Republican minority and pass health care reform with only 51 votes. But even after that agreement, Silent generation Montana Senator Max Baucus (1941) has been determined to find a bi-partisan bill that his Republican counterpart and Silent, Charles Grassley (1933), can support. Meanwhile, Senator Chris Dodd (1944), thrust into the health care debate due to the illness of Senator Edward Kennedy, has played the very typical role of those born on the cusp between both generations--seeking to find a solution that leans more to his ideological beliefs, but one which still contains an element of compromise for the other side.

But how this inter-generational interplay between the two houses and the two parties will actually play out in the health care debate will depend on how much President Obama uses his instinctive knowledge of what Millennials want to convince the Congress to get something done. Born in 1961, on the cusp between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, the President's generational style is hard to pin down. Liberal Boomers appreciate his idealism and commitment to economic equality.On the other hand, like many Gen Xers, Obama has sought to distance himself from the divisive, ideological debates of the recent Boomer past. At the same time, Obama's political behavior does not square with the harsh and cynical approach of clear-cut Gen Xers like Sarah Palin. Whether it's because of his unique upbringing in Indonesia and Hawaii, removed from the debilitating debates of the 1960s; or whether it's because his chief speechwriter is a precocious Millennial; or because of his intellectual tendency to search for consensus, President Obama's political style consistently seems to capture the very traits that his loyal Millennial supporters most admire.

Millennials are not interested in letting ideological posturing stand in the way of "getting stuff done," as Obama likes to say, especially in an area as crucial as health care. Like the members of other generations, virtually all Millennials (90%) believe that it is time that health care is made more accessible and affordable for all Americans. However, only a third of Millennials, in contrast to about half of those in older generations, are concerned about the impact of greater governmental involvement in the health care system (36% vs. 47%). And, Millennials are far less likely than older generations to prefer once again deferring health care reform to avoid higher taxes or larger deficits.

The fundamental question that members of Congress from each generation, and each party, will need to answer during this summer's health care debate is just how much they want to accomplish as opposed to scoring political points or pursuing ideological agendas. It's a classic question to which members of the Silent Generation are likely to respond with offers of compromise, even while Boomers on both sides of the aisle insist on what they consider to be non-negotiable principles. For Millennials, however, the answer is clear--reform the nation's health care system now as the next step in delivering on the kind of "change we can believe in" that their leader, Barack Obama, promised and now asks Congress to deliver.

Reid/Pelosi should focus on Dems

2009-07-06T06:49:00.000-07:00

Mike Hais's latest political polling blog:
As indicated in last week's posting on Daily Kos, the large majority (about 80%) of self-identified independents actually "lean" to one or the other of the two parties. Consequently, most independents (and by extension, the electorate) are far more partisan than a cursory overview of poll findings might suggest. Currently, the Democrats hold a solid and increasing lead over the Republicans among the majority of independents who lean toward a party. About six in ten "leaners" now tilt to the Democrats. Pew Research Center data for the past three months indicates that a majority of the electorate (51%) identifies with or leans to the Democratic Party. A third (34%) is Republican identifiers and leaners. Only 14% is completely unaffiliated or "pure independents." Rather than being the decisive center, non-committed voters actually comprise a small minority of the electorate.
The clear and persistent partisanship of Independent Republicans and Independent Democrats is also strikingly evident in their political opinions. The table below, containing data collected by Pew in May 2009, portrays favorable attitudes toward a number of political figures and the two parties.

* millennial makeover's diary :: ::
*

Strong Not Strong Independent Totally Indep. Not Strong Strong

Dems Dems Dems Indep. Rep. Rep. Rep.

Barack Obama 97% 94% 94% 78% 37% 58% 37%
Michelle Obama 95% 90% 87% 70% 61% 65% 59%
Joe Biden 80% 70% 65% 44% 22% 33% 30%
George W. Bush 7% 15% 15% 38% 56% 65% 83%
Dem. Party 94% 87% 79% 35% 27% 35% 13%
Rep. Party 11% 26% 34% 28% 62% 71% 88%

• Independent leaners hold strikingly partisan attitudes. Solid majorities of them have positive impressions of politicians from the party to which they lean and of that party itself. Only a minority of them express favorable opinions about the opposing party and its politicians. While the independent leaners may not be as firmly positive about "their" party as are strong identifiers, they do have a solid sense of partisan connection. They are clearly not uncommitted and easily malleable centrists.
• The non-leaning independents are indeed broadly nonpartisan in their attitudes. Fewer than half express positive opinions about any political figure other than the president and first lady or toward either party. But this is as much a matter of limited political knowledge and involvement as it is of conscious weighing of options or firmly divided opinion. This is evidenced by the fact that while almost all of the uncommitted independents were able to say whether or not they like Barack and Michelle Obama as people (or celebrities), a third were unable to rate the president's job performance in the same survey.

The Democratic Party has an historic opportunity to solidify a governing majority for the next two decades. But that will require its leaders, particularly those in Congress, to focus on the needs and attitudes of the key demographic constituencies that comprise a disproportionate share of those who think of themselves as Democrats—young people and minorities in particular—and not be seduced into chasing the chimera of "non-partisan" independent voters.

Young Iranians: Takes more than Tweets to Make a Revolution

2009-06-25T17:02:00.001-07:00

Seventy percent of Iranians are under 30.

These young people have twice the presence in the population of that country as America's largest generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003), has in ours.

In the immediate aftermath of Iran's disputed presidential election, text messages became the tool for organizing post-election protests. Hundreds of thousands of tweets provided more, if not clearer, information about what was happening each day than traditional media. Opposition and government Facebook pages poured out dueling messages on the Internet. It suddenly seemed as if not only had American democratic values erupted on the barren landscape of a theocratic society, but also that young people's technological capabilities might produce a regime change that no one anticipated. Clay Shirky announced, "This is it. This is the big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media." And the notion that this was a "Twitter Revolution" quickly became the meme for the entire series of post-election events.

But then the entrenched establishment fought back using the very same Internet-enabled technologies to isolate, spy on, and ultimately shut down the resistance. Thanks to new capabilities recently acquired from two European telecom companies-Nokia and Siemens-as part of their country's upgrade of its mobile networks, the Iranian government was able to monitor the flow of online data in and out of sites like Twitter and Facebook, from one central location. The Iranians deployed a technology called deep packet inspection, first created to put a firewall around President Clinton's emails in 1993, to deconstruct digitized packets of information flowing through the government's telecom monopoly that might contain what they considered to be seditious information before reconstructing and sending it on to destinations they were also able to track and monitor. The result was a 90% degradation in the speed of Internet communications in Iran at the height of the unrest, and a previously unseen capability to determine who the government's enemies were down to the individual IP address level.

Once again the world learned that technology does not arrive with a built-in set of values that makes it work either for good or evil. Even though Internet technology has many virtues, it is not inherently liberating or enslaving. Instead how it is used is determined by the values of those who access it. Libertarians celebrate the individual empowerment that the Internet makes possible. But even though Ron Paul supporters used the technology to take on the Republican establishment in 2008, the end result that year was the election of a group-oriented, civic-minded candidate, Barack Obama, whose campaign used the very same technology to guide millions of people to undertake a collective agenda of change that Libertarians certainly did not "believe in."

The difference between what libertarians wanted and what Obama achieved came from the generational attitudes and beliefs of Millennials, Obama's key supporters, not from the technology that generation was so adept at using.

One of the founders of generational theory, Neil Howe, points out that the under-30 population of Iran grew up during a religious awakening in the Islamic world that came later than America's "cultural revolution" of the 1960s. As a result, Iranian youth resembles Generation X, Americans now in their 30s and 40s. Like our own Gen X, these young Iranians are "pragmatic, individualistic, commercial, and anti-ideological (which is why they hate Ahmadinejad so much)."

Those values make them anti-establishment in the current crisis. We are fortunate that they feel deeply enough about the potential of democracy to risk their lives to "tear down that power structure," to paraphrase what President Ronald Reagan, Generation X's political hero, said in a different context. But now the central task of our government must be to translate that democratic impulse into a deeper belief in Millennial Generation values, such as the power of consensus, the peaceful resolution of differences and the need to find win-win solutions to our problems.

That is why the President Barack Obama's recent Cairo speech should be the bedrock on which America continues to engage large young Muslim populations throughout the world, including Iran:

"No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

This statement has the potential to become a governing creed for a new generation of young Muslims. If they come to have, as President Obama does, "an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose," then the power of 21st century technologies will be used to advance the cause of freedom in Iran, rather than suppressing it. But tweeting those words won't make it happen. Believing in them and acting upon them will.

Millennials Meet the Great Recession

2009-06-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

It’s a daunting time to be entering the workplace. Today’s young adults—like their great-grandparents eight decades earlier—are graduating from high school and college and starting careers at a time when the American economy is shedding jobs at a record pace.
This newest adult generation, dubbed The Millennials, is known for its optimism and sense of personal confidence. But will those traits survive the new economic realities? Recent survey results suggest the answer is a resounding “yes.” Millennials are demonstrating remarkable resilience in the face of an economic crisis, even though the downturn has affected them disproportionately.
Through the first quarter of 2009, employment for 16-24 years old dropped by 5%, the largest decline for any age cohort surveyed by Merrill Lynch. This produced the lowest employment rates for young people in nearly forty years. And the situation isn’t likely to get better soon. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that employers plan to hire 22% fewer graduates this spring than last, and that, so far, less than twenty-percent of 2009 graduates who applied for a job have one.
But Millennials have adopted a number of coping strategies to help them weather the economic maelstrom. An AP-mtvU poll found that nearly one-in-five undergraduates have decided to prolong their education hoping the storm will pass. Others have enthusiastically turned to the government and non-profit sectors to fulfill their generation's desire to serve. Teach for America, which places new graduates in low-income schools, saw a 42% increase in applications over 2008. And the recent enactment of the Kennedy Serve America Act will allow many more Millennials to serve at home or abroad while also providing Pell Grant level support for their future education.
One thing Millennials are not doing is losing confidence in themselves or their government. A recent Pew survey found that 56% of Millennials were fairly satisfied with the way things were going for them financially, a significantly greater degree of optimism than aging Boomers expressed in the same survey (46%). Two-thirds of Millennials told Pew survey researchers that they approved of the way President Obama was handling the economy, with only 5% saying his economic policies have made things worse. And while 32% of undergraduates at four-year colleges told Edison Media Researchers that financial worries have increased the stress they're under, 75% of Millennials expressed confidence that Obama is doing the right things to fix the economy.
This type of relentless optimism, and faith in collective action, in the face of hardship is typical of civic generations such as the Millennials. And judging by history, their attitudes will serve them well. Their great-grandparents, the GI Generation, learned to make do with less as they entered adulthood in the 1930s and then went on to defeat fascism in World War II and build the strongest economy the world has known. As young Millennials absorb the lessons of America’s greatest economic downturn since the 1930s, their determination to succeed, like that of the GI Generation before them, will be the source of the economic rejuvenation that in all likelihood will accompany their full entry into America's economic life.

Obama's doing better than Washington thinks

2009-06-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

In Washington perception is often reality and, based on the reported results of two new surveys, one by the New York Times and CBS and the other by the Wall Street Journal and NBC, the perception du jour in DC is that President Barack Obama has lost ground because of public concern with government spending, the deficit, and, perhaps most of all, the General Motors "bailout." The New York Times story on its survey is even headlined, "In poll, Obama is seen as ineffective on the economy.

But a look beneath the headlines to the survey data itself indicates that New York Times writers, or at least their headline writer, may have misread their own poll results. Instead of condemning of the president's handling of the economy, in the New York Times/CBS survey, the public actually approves of it by a greater than twenty-percentage point margin (57% vs. 35%), statistically unchanged since the first weeks of the administration. In the aftermath of the president's recent trip to the Middle East and Europe, his marks in foreign policy have actually risen since May. And, even in health care reform, a work in progress and a relative soft spot for Obama, voters approve of his performance by 44-percent to 34-percent.

As a result, Obama's overall job approval rating is unchanged over the past month, down slightly since April, and even up marginally since February and March. To the extent that the president's performance rating has fallen, the drop has been almost totally concentrated among Republicans.

What may contribute to the expectation that Obama is standing on shaky ground, or soon will be, is another incorrect inside-the-beltway perception, this one primarily advanced by Republican commentators since the president's election, that America is "conservative," "center right" or at least "centrist." More often than not these pronouncements stem from narrowly focused interpretations of surveys suggesting that the number of "independents" in the electorate is growing and that self-perceived independents represent some amorphous, undifferentiated group of "centrists" who are decisive in U.S. politics.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The large majority (about 80%) of those who tell pollsters they are independents actually "lean" to one or the other of the two parties. Those who lean to the Democrats differ demographically and, even more importantly, behaviorally and attitudinally from those who lean to the GOP. As a result, the electorate is far more partisan than superficial analyses of survey results might suggest. Currently, the Democrats hold a substantial and growing edge over the Republicans among independents who lean toward a party. About six in ten "leaners" now tilt to the Democrats. Coupled with their large lead among those who do identify with a party, the Democrats are clearly operating as the country's decisive majority party.

John P. Avlon, who served on the policy and speech writing teams of Rudy Giuliani's abbreviated 2008 presidential campaign, is only the most recent of those professing the importance of centrist independents. Citing Pew Research Center data, Avlon claimed in an early June Wall Street Journal article that the number of self-identified independents in the electorate has risen sharply since Obama's win last November while the percentage of both Democrats and Republicans has fallen. Because of these post-election shifts, according to Avlon, "independents hold the balance of power in the Obama era."

On the surface, Avlon's description of the Pew data may be accurate. But his characterization of party identification data is shallow and incomplete. Avlon, like most of those who write about the distribution of party identifiers within the US electorate, refers to only three discrete and presumably undifferentiated categories of voters--Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

However, voting behavior analysts affiliated with the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, who first formulated the concept of party identification in the 1950s, recognized early on that those who identify with a particular political party do so with varying degrees of strength, while those who say they are independents may lean toward one or the other of the parties. As a result, the Michigan researchers developed a seven-point scale to more fully capture the actual complexity of party identification. This scale consists of Strong Democrats on one extreme and Strong Republicans on the other. In between the two extremes are Weak Democrats, Independents who lean to the Democrats, Independents who lean to the Republicans and Weak Republicans. In the very center of the scale are Independents who do not lean to either party.

All of this might only be of academic interest were it not for the crucial importance of party identification. Party identification represents a psychological attachment of voters to a political party. While it certainly is not a contractual obligation to support a party, the large majority of Americans vote for the party with which they identify or to which they lean--and they almost always adhere to its positions on issues as well . Political scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that party identification is the single most important factor shaping the choices of individual voters. In the aggregate, these numbers really do matter. The distribution of party identifiers and leaners is the clearest indicator of the relative strength of the two parties within the U.S. electorate and has now tilted heavily toward the Democrats.

Utilizing the more complete and useful seven-point scale rather than a three-point division paints a far different picture of American voters than the one that Avlon and most of those who report on trends in party identification paint. Based on April 2009 data that is the most recent cited by Pew, here is the overall distribution of party identifiers in the U.S.:

Strong Democrats

23%

Weak Democrats

13%

Democratic Leaning Independents

18%

Non-Leaning Independents

13%

Republican Leaning Independents

12%

Weak Republicans

10%

Strong Republicans

12%

* Table does not total 100% due to rounding

This table makes several points very clear. First, the Democrats are clearly the majority party holding a decisive twenty-percentage point party ID lead over the Republicans (54% to 34%). Second, barely one in ten voters is a non-leaning independent; rather than being the decisive center, non-committed voters actually comprise a small minority of the electorate.

The following table, also using Pew tracking data, displays the distribution of party identification for all election years from 1990 through 2006 and for every year since then.

Year

Republican/Lean Republican

Independents

Democrat/Lean Democrat

Overall Democratic Advantage

1990

43%

13%

44%

+1%

1992

40%

11%

49%

+9%

1994

44%

12%

44%

0

1996

42%

10%

48%

+6%

1998

39%

14%

47%

+8%

2000

39%

14%

44%

+5%

2002

43%

14%

43%

0

2004

41%

12%

47%

+6%

2006

38%

15%

47%

+9%

2007

36%

14%

50%

+14%

2008

36%

13%

51%

+15%

2009

36%

12%

52%

+16%

These results lead to a number of clear and important conclusions about the distribution of party identification across the American electorate during the past two decades.

* The Democrats have generally held the edge throughout the entire period. But, that advantage was relatively small during the 1990s and the first three election years of this century. The Democratic margin widened a bit in the two years when Bill Clinton won the presidency (1992 and 1996) and 1998, when some voters may have turned against the GOP in reaction to a politically motivated impeachment effort. By contrast, the Republicans reached parity with the Democrats in 1994, the year of the Gingrich revolution that saw the GOP gain control of Congress, and 2002, when the nation rallied to a Republican president in the aftermath of 9/11.

* The Democratic advantage has sharply and consistently widened since the 2006 midterm elections when that party regained control of Congress. A number of factors--the disastrous George W. Bush presidency, an increasingly diverse electorate, the emergence of the Millennial Generation (young Americans born 1982-2003), the election and continued appeal of Barack Obama--have all undoubtedly contributed to the Democrats' increased party identification lead. Regardless of the relative importance of these and other factors, a greater percentage of American voters now identifies as Democrats or leans Democratic than at any time since Lyndon Johnson's landslide 1964 victory over Barry Goldwater. The Democratic margin over the GOP is larger than at any time since the post-Watergate period of the mid-1970s.

* The number of completely non-affiliated voters has slightly, but consistently, declined each year since 2006. Rather than becoming more crucial, as writers such as Avlon suggest, unattached independents have actually become less important during past several years.

All of this leaves President Obama and congressional Democrats in strong position as they prepare for the major battles ahead on health care reform and energy--if they have the courage to avoid giving in to incorrect Washington perceptions and, instead, take advantage of the rare opportunity that the American electorate has given them.

Republicans Gringo Strategy

2009-06-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

In a recent posting on his Web site, Nate Silver raised the possibility that the Republican Party could more effectively compete in the 2012 and 2016 elections by turning its back on Hispanics and attempting to maximize the support of white voters in enough 2008 Midwestern and Southern blue states to flip them red. This would involve positioning the GOP as the non-Latino party by "pursuing an anti-immigrant, anti-NAFTA, 'American First' sort of platform.'" The Republican Party rode similar exclusionary strategies to dominance of U.S. politics during most of the past four decades.

But America has entered a new era. Propelled by the election of its first African-American president, an increasingly non-white and more heavily Latino population, and the emergence of a new, significantly more tolerant generation, the Millennials, America is not the same country, demographically and attitudinally, that it was in the 1960s or even the 1990s. These changes have altered the electoral environment and lessened the usefulness of divisive strategies that were once effective, but may no longer be so.

Superficially, a non-Latino strategy might seem more plausible than anything else the GOP has attempted since the election of Barack Obama. After offering significant support to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Hispanics have recently become a solidly Democratic group. Republicans may have little to lose in not courting them in the next election or two. Nationally, Hispanics voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by more than 2:1 (67% vs. 31%). They supported Democratic House candidates last year by an even greater margin (68% vs. 29%). Pew surveys indicate that four times as many Hispanics identify as Democrats than Republicans (62% vs. 15%).

Adopting a non-Hispanic strategy would certainly be compatible with strategies the GOP has been utilizing for decades. From the "Southern strategy" of Richard Nixon and Kevin Phillips in the late 1960s, through the "wedge issues" used by Lee Atwater in the 1980s, to Karl Rove's "base politics" in this decade, the Republicans effectively took advantage of white middle and working class fears of the "other" -- African-Americans, gays, feminists -- who could be positioned as being outside the American mainstream. Applying this approach to Latinos would only be doing what came naturally for the GOP during the past 40 years.

But, while ethnically exclusionary strategies may offer the possibility of short-term relief, they do little to resolve the deep difficulties now facing the Republican Party. The ethnic composition of the United States is far different now than it was in the 1960s when the GOP began to separate white southerners (and like-minded white working class voters in other regions) from their long attachment to the Democratic Party. Four decades ago, 90 percent of Americans were white, and virtually all of the remainder were African-American. Hispanics were a negligible factor within the population and the electorate. Since then, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in America has fallen to two-thirds. Hispanics now comprise about 15 percent of the population and just under 10 percent of the electorate. Moreover, Hispanics are a relatively young demographic. Even if no additional Latinos migrate to the United States, their importance will continue to increase as older whites pass from the scene.

It is this rise in the Hispanic population that prompted Silver to offer his suggested non-Latino strategy to the Republicans in the first place. But Silver's plan, which he facetiously calls "Operation Gringo," would require the GOP to pull off a rare political balancing act or "thread the needle" to use his term. In order to compensate for expected losses in the increasingly Latino Southwestern states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and, without John McCain on their ticket, Arizona, Republicans would have to win states like Pennsylvania and Michigan that they have not carried in decades. They would have to do this while not, at the same time, losing Florida and possibly Texas with their own large Hispanic electorates.

Moreover, while it is true that Hispanics are not distributed evenly across the country, Silver concedes "there are Hispanics everywhere now." Latinos were decisive in Obama's wins in closely divided "gringo territories" such as Indiana, North Carolina, and Nebraska's second congressional district and the growth rate of Hispanics is greatest in "nontraditional" areas like the South and Prairie states. This means that "America first" campaigning may ultimately have the effect of hurting Republicans even in some of the "white" states where it was intended to help.

However, the biggest barrier in running against Hispanics is that American attitudes on ethnicity have changed significantly over the past four decades. A new Pew survey indicates that Americans have become less hostile toward immigrants and more positive about policies designed to incorporate immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, into American society.

The number favoring a policy that would allow illegal immigrants (Pew's term) currently in the country to gain citizenship if they pass background checks, pay fines and have jobs has increased from 58 percent to 63 percent since 2007. While 73 percent do agree that America should restrict and control people coming to live in here more than we do now, that number is down from 80 percent in 2002 and 82 percent in 1994. Finally, support for free trade agreements like NAFTA has risen from 34 percent in 2003 and 40 percent in 2007 to 44 percent now.

The Pew findings are confirmed by the findings of a survey recently released by Pete Brodnitz of the Benenson Strategy Group. That study indicated that, across party lines, virtually all Americans (86%) favor the passage by Congress of comprehensive immigration reform when they are given full details of that plan.

Leading the way in these increasingly tolerant attitudes is the Millennial Generation (Americans born 1982-2003). Only a third of Millennials (35% vs. 55% for older generations) believe that the growing number of immigrants threatens traditional American values. Just 58 percent of Millennials (compared with 77% of older generations) agrees that the United States should increase restrictions on those coming to live in America. A large majority of Millennials (71% in contrast to 62% of older Americans) favors a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. And, 61-percent of Millennials favor free trade agreements such as NAFTA in contrast to just 40 percent of older generations.

To date America has only seen the tip of the Millennial iceberg. In 2008, just 41 percent of them were eligible to vote and they comprised only 17 percent of the electorate. By 2012, more than 60 percent of Millennials will be of voting age and they will be a quarter of the electorate. In 2020, when the youngest Millennials will be able to vote, they will make up more than a third of the electorate. Over the next decade, this will make the ethnically tolerant attitudes of the Millennial Generation the rule rather than the exception in American politics.

At this early point in the Millennial era, Republicans remain most open to the intolerance and immigrant bashing of ethnically exclusionary strategies. Pew indicates the number of Democrats and independents who favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is up 11 points and 3 points respectively since 2007. By contrast, the number of Republicans who favor that policy is down by six points. In the end, a non-Hispanic approach by Republicans would amount to a continuation of Karl Rove's base strategy. As the Republican base continues to diminish in the Millennial Era, that strategy will be a recipe for disaster for the GOP, certainly in the long term, and very likely in the short run as well.

Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio? Millennials know the answer

2009-06-01T17:52:00.001-07:00

Baseball's reputation hasn't been under such a cloud since the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919. Just as Sen. George Mitchell's report identified 104 steroid users among today's big leaguers, nine decades ago a number of players, including some of the game's biggest stars, were widely reputed to be substance abusers.

Back then, as now, team owners put so much emphasis on short-term gains that they threatened to undercut the game's viability. Players, absorbing this "every man for himself" attitude, even conspired to fix a World Series.

While we haven't quite reached that level of venality today, one of the greatest hitters of our era has been accused of helping opponents at the cost of his own team in return for their assistance in boosting his personal stats. To some observers the game currently has reached such a crisis point that baseball historian Bill James's portrayal of the players of the 1910s as "shysters, con men, drunks, and outright thieves," could also apply to many of this era's all stars.

But just as a new generation of baseball heroes emerged in the 1930s and '40s to save the game's reputation, baseball is already witnessing the emergence of a new generation of Millennial ballplayers who will lead the sport to its next golden era.

Most of the major leaguers of the 1910s and early '20s and again in the '90s and first decade of the 21st century came from a generational archetype labeled "reactive" by theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe. In the first instance it was the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900) and in the second, Generation X (born 1965-1981). In both cases, these generations were raised by relatively self-absorbed parents who left their children to fend for themselves, producing alienated, individualistic, risk-taking adults

Lost Generation players included some of the greatest names – and flawed personalities – in the history of baseball. Babe Ruth's appetites were almost as prodigious as his ability to swat home runs. Ty Cobb was one of the most combative players of his time, and also the most disliked. Rogers Hornsby was the best right-handed hitter of his era, but also a compulsive gambler and member of the Ku Klux Klan. And Shoeless Joe Jackson who, along with seven of his White Sox teammates conspired to throw the 1919 World Series, earned infamy as the object of the plaintive plea that captured fans' disappointment with the behavior of this Lost Generation star: "Say it ain't so, Joe."

Today, virtually all of those who are accused of steroid usage, including Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriquez were born within or right on the cusp of the birth years of Generation X.

While there are notable exceptions, like the nondrinking, noncursing Lost Generation pitching great, Walter Johnson, and the clean-cut Gen-Xer, Derek Jeter, it is the ill-performing members of reactive generations who have most distinctly colored the big league baseball of their eras.

But, in baseball, as in every aspect of life, one generation passes from the scene and another arrives to take its place. Reactive generations are followed by another archetype – civic generations – that are almost their polar opposite. Civic generations are raised in a revered and protected manner by their parents, which produces positive, self-confident, high achieving, team-oriented adults.

Starting in the mid-1920s, the youngest members of a rising civic generation, the GI Generation (born 1901-1924), came into baseball. James describes the ball players of the 1930s and '40s as hard-working, team players who were completely schooled in the intricacies of their craft.

Among the earliest GI Generation arrivals was the beloved Yankee first baseman, Lou Gehrig who had a quiet personal style that completely differed from that of his flamboyant Lost Generation teammate, Babe Ruth. Gehrig was followed by other iconic members of his generation including Bob Feller, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio.

Today the members of a new civic generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003), are just starting to populate big league rosters. Already talented, positive, team-oriented Millennials like Dustin Pedroia, Evan Longoria, Zack Greinke, Hanley Ramirez, Chad Billingsley, and David Wright are among baseball's biggest and most promising stars.

At this early point, we haven't seen the full impact on baseball of this generation, the youngest member of which is only 6 years old. But an anecdote about one of them suggests where baseball is headed:

While at Arizona State University, Pedroia voluntarily forfeited his scholarship to permit the recruitment of additional pitchers, thereby allowing his team to win the College World Series. It's hard to imagine many members of the individualistic Lost and X generations doing the same thing.

Nearly nine decades ago, the GI Generation came on the scene to rescue Major League Baseball. If history is any guide, a new civic generation, the Millennials, is arriving right on time to save the grand old game again. Stay tuned for baseball's next golden era.

What MTV and the GOP have in Common

2009-05-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

MTV premièred in August 1981, seven months after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as America's 40th president. It revolutionized TV and the music industry as much as Reagan changed the country's politics.

And now, just as the election of Barack Obama to the presidency signaled the end of that political era and the beginning of another, MTV is belatedly shifting gears as well.

The network, long known for cynical and vapid content, has suddenly understood the importance of being earnest. Booze and bikinis are out. Do-good singers and hard-working art students are in.

MTV acknowledged that its programming had become out of step with the progressive, service-oriented values of today's youth, the Millennial Generation. "It was very clear we were at one of those transformational moments, when this new generation of Millennials [born between 1982 and 2003] were demanding a new MTV," a channel executive explained.

After losing ground for years, MTV finally got it. But many other corporations and institutions – the Republican Party comes to mind – still don't. As a result, they risk alienating the approximately 95 million young Americans who will be defining the nation's politics and culture for decades to come.

MTV's mistake was to assume that the members of particular demographic groups, in this instance young people in their mid-teens through their mid-20s, behave the same and hold the same attitudes at all times. If only MTV's executives had gone to the movies more often, they might have recognized these generational changes much sooner.

For baby boomers (born 1946-1964), a generation of idealists driven by strong personal values, no coming-of-age-movie captured their rebellious and moralistic spirit better than "The Graduate." The protagonist, Benjamin Braddock, is a depressed loner who rejects his parents' "plastic" values. In his dalliance with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin seeks emotional attachment and deeper meaning, whereas she is in the "relationship" only for physical release.

The movie ends as Benjamin rescues his true love, Elaine (Mrs. Robinson's daughter) from an "arranged" marriage by blocking the door from the church with a cross. Benjamin and Elaine ride away on a bus, embracing a new idealistic lifestyle while forever turning their backs on the shallow and meaningless existence of their parents.

But the tone of coming-of-age movies shifted dramatically when Generation X (born 1965-1981) became teenagers and 20-somethings in the 1980s. This generation was best represented in "Risky Business."

Tom Cruise portrays Joel Goodsen, an alienated young man who, like many real-life Gen-Xers, is a latchkey kid abandoned by his vacationing parents at their suburban home.

Unlike Benjamin Braddock, Joel does not use his alienation from the grown-up world as a reason to pursue deeper values. Instead, he uses his time alone to perform an iconic dance in his underwear while lip-synching to "Old Time Rock and Roll." He wrecks the family car, hires a hooker, and, in true Gen-X entrepreneurial fashion, provides a "for hire" outlet to satisfy his friends' sexual desires, using the family home as his place of business.

Contrast those stories with the emblematic Millennial movie "The Devil Wears Prada."

Millennials are the American generation least bound by gender role expectations, so it isn't surprising that the protagonist is a young woman with an androgynous name, Andy (Sachs). Because Millennials are also the most tolerant American generation, it's not surprising that Andy's best friends are an African-American woman, a gay man, and her sensitive boyfriend who aspires to be a chef. In true Millennial fashion, Andy constantly relies on her friends and parents, whom she adores, for love, advice, and support.

Andy is temporarily attracted by the glitter of the world of high fashion. However, like others of this generation who are driven by a desire to solve society's problems, she realizes her true calling is far different.

She breaks with her boss, Miranda Priestly, at the fashion magazine where she works, so that she can take a job writing for a liberal newspaper. But, as a polite and conventional Millennial, the break is not harsh. In fact, her old boss, the devil herself, provides the crucial reference for Andy's new job.

Everyone in politics and pop culture should learn the lesson MTV belatedly has. To really understand the preferences of young people, take a look at their generation and not simply their age. That will tell you everything you need to know.

How to Lose a Generation

2009-05-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

If the Republican Party thinks it has problems now, just wait. The party's incredibly poor performance among young voters in the 2008 election raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of the GOP.

The "millennials" -- the generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2003 -- now identify as Democrats by a ratio of 2 to 1. They are the first in four generations to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

And a recent Daily Kos tracking poll should send shudders down the spine of any Republican who understands how powerful a voting bloc this generation could become over the next decade.

Only 9% of millennials polled expressed a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. Only 7% were positive about the GOP's congressional leaders. By contrast, 65% of millennials had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, and a majority also approved of congressional Democrats.

Though many people question the political sophistication of the millennials, they have been instilled with egalitarian and participatory values by their parents since birth.

This child-rearing produced a generation that was wide open to the personal appeal and message of Barack Obama and his party. Moving forward, the initial preference of millennials for President Obama and the Democrats will remain in place for a lifetime unless Republicans can quickly adapt their message and find a messenger who can speak to this powerful new force in American politics.

Only 41% of all millennials were eligible to vote in 2008, yet their overwhelming support for Obama transformed his win from what would have been a squeaker into a solid victory. Obama's popular-vote margin over John McCain was about 9.5 million nationally; millennials accounted for nearly 7.6 million of those votes.

In the 2010 off-year election, half of millennials will be eligible to vote, representing about a fifth of the overall electorate. By 2012, 60% will be eligible to vote, and they could make up about a quarter of the American electorate when Obama runs for reelection. By 2020, when virtually all millennials will be over 18, they will represent 36% of the electorate and will completely dominate elections and the political agenda of America.

And it seems likely that this civic generation, like its "Greatest Generation" great-grandparents, will vote in big numbers. Turnout among voters under 30 has been rising steadily since millennials began to replace the alienated and more cynical Gen-Xers in this age group. From a low of 37% in 1996, turnout increased to 53% of all eligible millennials, and 59% in the key battleground states in 2008.

Their unity of opinion and their numbers will make millennials' preferences for economic activism, a non-intrusive approach to social issues by government at any level and a multilateral interventionism by America in foreign affairs the policy paths to political success during the next decade.

It is simply inconceivable that the Republican Party can craft a winning strategy between now and then that doesn't accommodate these ideas.

But so far, Republicans appear to be tone-deaf on the issues that millennials care about.

Millennials have been reared with a desire to serve their community, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act provides them an opportunity to do just that, while at the same time dealing with their single biggest financial worry -- the high cost of a college education. Unfortunately, all but 25 House Republicans voted against the bill, despite its co-sponsorship by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Millennials also are experiencing higher levels of unemployment than any other generation. They expect the federal government to take an active role in fixing that problem and support redistributing income if necessary. But the almost-unanimous Republican opposition to the "recovery" act helped convince millennials that only one party actually understood their problems and was prepared to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Polls consistently show millennials are more committed to environmental protection than any generation in American history, willing to sacrifice economic growth or endure higher prices in order to save the planet. Given the millennials' overwhelming concern with the environment, House Minority Leader John Boehner's comments recently that carbon dioxide isn't a real threat because "we all breathe it out" and, besides, "cows give out a lot of gas too," went beyond inanity into the realm of political suicide.

The only tentative Republican gesture to millennial power to date is the GOP's sudden fascination with a new social network platform, Twitter. By choosing Twitter -- with its limitations on content -- to connect to millennials, Republicans are actually demonstrating how little they know about this generation's commitment to engaging in the content-rich challenges of rebuilding the nation's civic institutions and national unification.

Republicans will need to find a new message and much better messengers than their last presidential ticket or their current congressional leaders if they want to truly connect with today's young voters. Failure to do so will leave Republicans, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, locked in the dogmas of their quiet past, unable to think and therefore act anew.