Walker Awakens a Sleeping Giant

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.