Interview with Justin Krane of Weoped

While attending the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum in NYC the other week, I had the pleasure of listening to an enlightening and motivating talk by Morley Winograd, who along with Michael D. Hais co-authored Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American P.... The book is a illuminating and detailed study of American generations and how each one has redefined the political and cultural landscape of our history.

Mr. Winograd was kind enough to speak with me at length after his lecture and both he and Mr. Hais agreed to an interview for Weoped, which was conducted over email and is published below. On behalf of the Weoped community, Geoffrey, and myself, I want to thank both Mr. Winograd and Mr. Hais for their time and for building a case for the potential of my generation to effect some real change around here. What's a-matter with kids today? Absolutely nothing!

Q. What is your definition of the Millennial Generation?

A. Millennials are young Americans born 1982-2003. The Millennial Generation is the largest in American history. There are nearly 100 million Millennials living today, about 40-percent of whom will be eligible to vote in the 2008 presidential general election. This means that the Millennial Generation has the potential to be as large a voting bloc this year as senior citizens (persons 65+). The power of Millennials will only increase in the future as more of them join the electorate and members of older generations inevitably pass from the population.

In addition to being America's largest generation, the Millennials are also the most ethnically diverse. About 40-percent of Millennials are non-white: African-American, Latino, Asian American, or of mixed race. One in five Millennials has at least one immigrant parent. The Millennial Generation also has a less pronounced sense of gender-role distinctions than any previous American generation. In fact, if anything, the Millennial Generation may be the first female-dominant generation in U.S. history. Certainly this is the first time a majority of college undergraduate and professional school students are female rather than male.

Q. In your book, Millennial Makeover, you note that Millennials vote more Democratic than previous generations. Since much of the Democratic Party platform--not to mention Obama's recent trending toward centrist positions--appears to be maintaining the status quo, in what ways would you characterize Millennials as "progressive" and not just "Democratic?"

A. In effect, these are two different questions. The political attitudes and behavior of Millennials are separate and distinct from whatever tactical positions the Democratic Party and Barack Obama may take in contesting the 2008 election. Specifically, at least at this point, the Millennial Generation is both Democratic and "liberal" or "progressive." They identify as Democrats over Republicans by a 2:1 ratio and they are the first generation in at least four decades in which more people consider themselves to be liberals rather than conservatives.

The "liberalism" or "progressivism" of the Millennial Generation is reflected in its attitudes on a range of specific issues. On economic matters, Millennials are "liberal interventionists," favoring governmental activity to deal with matters such as economic inequality and health care. Upwards of seven in ten Millennials agree that "government should take care of people who can't take care of themselves," favor "a bigger government that provides more services," and believe that "government should guarantee health insurance for all even if this requires raising taxes." Two-thirds of them favor increased environmental protection even at the cost of higher prices.

On social issues, Millennials may be characterized as "tolerant non-meddlers." Six in ten of them have no objections to gay marriage and reject the idea of women returning to traditional roles in society. Nine in ten white Millennials believe that interracial dating is acceptable.

In foreign affairs, they are "activist multilateralists." Like other generations, a majority of Millennials (six in ten) perceives that the Iraq war has hindered the overall battle against terrorism. This rejection of the Iraq war and the way it is being managed should not be interpreted as isolationism, however. A solid majority of Millennials believes that it is necessary for the United States to be highly involved in international affairs Specifically, two-thirds of them favor an American foreign policy focused on building international ties rather than relying on U.S. military strength.

Q. Why did the "idealist" efforts of the 60s generation (Baby Boomers) appear futile in retrospect. How will the Millennial Generation succeed in its "civic" agenda?

A. The Baby Boomer and Millennial generations represent two unique and distinctive generational archetypes. It is necessary to understand the differences between these two types of generations to know why the Millennial Generation will succeed in achieving its goals while the Baby Boomers failed.

As an "idealist" generation, the Baby Boomers are driven by deeply held values that they attempt to enact through the political process and on which they are unwilling to compromise. While idealist generations want to use the political process to achieve their values, they tend to regard institutions, including government, as incompetent and morally bankrupt. As a result, they attack and weaken those institutions, thereby lessening the chances they will succeed in accomplishing their aims.

In addition, like other "idealist" generations, the Baby Boomers were, in the 1960s, a highly divided, even fragmented, generation, and remain so today. Because of the participation of some of its members in the civil rights, women's rights, and anti-Vietnam war movements, there is a perception that the Boomers were a liberal generation. In fact, even on the college campuses of the 1960s there were about as many conservatives as liberals and Republicans as Democrats. Among the majority of the Boomers who did not attend college, conservatives and Republicans may have actually outnumbered liberals and Democrats. Beyond this, the Baby Boomer Generation is divided along demographic lines. For example, it is this generation that gave us both the term and the persistent reality of the "gender gap" (liberal and Democratic women versus conservative and Republican men). The Boomers are also divided ethnically in their political attitudes. Virtually all African-American Baby Boomers consider themselves to be Democrats, while most white Boomers say they are Republicans. Indeed, the Boomers are so politically and demographically divided that it is really impossible to find an agenda that can be said to represent the entire generation. Given this, is it any wonder why the efforts of the "idealist" Baby Boomer generation appear futile in spite of its four-decade long domination of American elections and politics.

By contrast, the Millennials are a "civic" generation. Politically, such generations are characterized by a desire to find win-win solutions that meet the needs of and resolve the problems facing the entire group (society). Unlike idealist generations, civic generations tend to have positive attitudes toward societal institutions. This aids civic generations in achieving their goals because, rather than weakening societal institutions like their idealist parents and grandparents, they strengthen existing institutions and build new ones.

In addition, unlike the Baby Boomer Generation, the Millennial Generation is unified politically. We have already indicated that Millennials identify as Democrats and liberals by about a 2:1 ratio and that majorities of them hold "liberal" or "progressive" positions on most political issues. These attitudes and identifications cross demographic lines. A majority of both white and non-white and male and female Millennials identify as Democrats. In the just concluded contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, clear majorities of Millennials, regardless of gender and race, voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

In sum, because of their numbers, their group-oriented desire to find win-win solutions to America's problems, their support for and willingness to enhance societal institutions and their attitudinal and behavioral unity and cohesion, Millennials will likely succeed, where Baby Boomers failed, in achieving their political goals.

Q. How sweeping a change do you believe us capable of? What other generations would you compare us to in this regard? Will ours be a revolution or merely a reformation of the current bureaucratic system?

A. As just detailed, Millennials belong to a generational archetype labeled “civic” because of their intense interest in rebuilding society’s governmental and political institutions. Prior civic generations in American history created our republican form of government at the Constitutional Convention that delivered on the promise of political independence of the American Revolution, at least for white males. Eighty years later, the next civic generation provided the political support for Lincoln to abolish slavery and extend and guarantee those freedoms while asserting the primacy of the federal government over State’s Rights when it came to matters of constitutional principles. The next and most recent civic generation was the GI Generation, whose support of FDR’s New Deal allowed the federal government to become the arbiter of economic and social justice. That generation’s liberalism made progressive government possible in America after thirty years of debate about the wisdom of a strong central government.

Given this historical track record and the characteristics of America's next civic generation, we believe that Millennials have both the numbers and the attitudes to once again transform American government. The changes will be sweeping because, as indicated, Millennials are more unified than other recent generations in their beliefs about what needs to be done. They will demand the federal government take the lead in finding solutions to America’s broken health care and educational systems, while lessening the degree of economic inequality. The programmatic solutions Millennials will favor will be a synthesis between the federal government establishing new systems and priorities and local, individual action to accomplish the desired results within the new systems. Millennial era government will represent just as much of a change from today’s Progressive Era bureaucratic form of government as FDR’s New Deal was from the laissez-faire policies of his predecessors.

Q. Millennial Makeover emphasizes the potential of the Internet to enable us to organize and communicate for political and civic action. During this election, we have seen the candidacy of Ron Paul receive overwhelming, fervent support on the Internet, but it translated into less than 1% of the popular vote in the Republican Primaries. How do you account for this discrepancy? Does a candidate's support on FaceBook or MySpace actually have political currency?

A. There are many studies, many of which have been cited on the daily TechPresident blog, which have demonstrated a corollary this year between social network activity/support and votes for both Democratic and Republican candidates. The case of Ron Paul, however, demonstrates that just having an online presence doesn’t mean a political campaign can count on that activity to translate into a significant amount of political support. Instead, as we point out in discussing the four Ms of politics in our book, Millennial Makeover, a campaign needs to make sure the Media of social networking, is aligned with its Message. If that is done with the right kind of Messenger, then Money will flow to the campaign. Ron Paul’s message is an intensely libertarian, anti-government message. It is not a Message that appeals to civic-oriented Millennials. So while the Messenger (Paul) could raise surprising quantities of Money on the Media of the Internet, he was not able to build the kind of communities on social networks that Obama’s Message of unity and hope was able to do. And so he also failed to generate the level of support and Money that Barack Obama (or for that matter, Hillary Clinton) was able to do. In sum, all four Ms have to be in alignment for the power of the Net to be truly transformative.

For further analysis and information, please pick up a copy of the book Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics

Obama's vs. McCain's strategy for Victory

Now that pundits have exhausted themselves asking and answering the question, "Why did Hillary lose?" it's time to turn to the much more important question, "Why did Obama win?" Asking that question encourages a look beyond the tactics of the just concluded primary campaign to the broader strategic and historical trends that made him victorious. Examining those trends, which we did for our book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics, demonstrates that the 2008 election is a realigning event marking the end of one political era and the start of another.

Historically, when these types of realignments or makeovers occur, they produce changes in the voting coalitions that support the two parties, and this year’s political transition is no exception. For example, the previous realignment in 1968 shifted the South from the Democratic bastion that it had been for well over a century to a solidly Republican region, while at the same time former GOP strongholds in New England, the upper Midwest, and the Pacific Coast moved toward the Democrats.

Despite the clear historical evidence that these makeovers, which occur regularly about every forty years, are as American and normal as apple pie and baseball, many observers seem unable to recognize the changes in party coalitions that are a part of this year’s political dynamic. As New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, perceptively noted, this sometimes leads commentators to ignore their own polling data. NBC did this recently when it emphasized the unwillingness of most white males to support Democrat Barack Obama--in spite of the fact that the last time a majority of white men had voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was in 1964, prior to the last political realignment.

What NBC and others seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge is that the Democratic coalition (indeed that of both parties) continues to evolve. As the title of a recent article by Alan Abramowitz put it, "This is Not Your Father's (Or Mother's) Democratic Party." The Democratic coalition is no longer the New Deal coalition of the Deep South and urban white blue-collar workers assembled by Franklin Roosevelt. It is now a coalition heavily comprised of both the most downscale and upscale ("gentry liberal") voters; ethnic minorities, not only African-Americans, but also the rapidly growing Latino and Asian populations; and young people. Geographically, at this early point in the general election campaign, Barack Obama has a solid lead in the East and Pacific Coast blue states, more than hold his own in the "swing states" of the Midwest and Florida, and is even competitive in a number of formerly red states in the upper South (Virginia and North Carolina) and West (Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Nevada and Alaska).

What is underpinning the newly emerging Democratic coalition and propelling the unfolding political makeover are the same two elements that have produced all of America’s earlier realignments: a new generation of voters and a new communication technology that mobilizes that emerging generation. The 2008 realignment is being fueled by the Millennial Generation, born 1982-2003, and the social networking communications Millennials use so well. The Millennial Generation is the largest in American history. There are nearly 100 hundred million Millennials, about 40-percent of whom will be eligible to vote in November. This will give the Millennial Generation the capacity to have as much impact in 2008 as that of the more frequently touted senior citizens (those age 65 and older).

Like their GI Generation forbearers who fueled FDR’s New Deal realignment, the Millennials are a "civic" generation, focused on basic economic and foreign policy matters, rather than the cultural wars of the Baby Boomers. In the economy, Millennials are "liberal interventionists." In foreign affairs, they are "activist multilateralists."

Upwards of seven in ten Millennials agree that "government should take care of people who can't take care of themselves," favor "a bigger government that provides more services," and believe that "government should guarantee health insurance for all even if this requires raising taxes." Two-thirds of them favor increased environmental protection even at the cost of higher prices. While, like other generations, most Millennials have now come to believe that the Iraq war has hurt the fight against terror, virtually all favor active American participation in world affairs. However, they believe that such activism should be based on building international ties rather than relying primarily on U.S. military strength.

As a result of these attitudes, Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by a greater than 2:1 margin according to a March 2008 Pew survey Barack Obama led John McCain among Millennials nationally by a similar ratio (54% vs. 34%) in a June 2008 Rasmussen Survey.

Obama and the Democrats may be assembling a new majority voting coalition, but recent surveys indicate that important numbers of some groups important in recent Democratic victories, such as white suburban women, have not yet fully warmed to the Obama candidacy. And while Obama and the Democrats hold the advantage on most issues, national security and John McCain's military and governmental experience offer McCain opportunities to win over the Millennial Generation--if he can break decisively with current Republican Party orthodoxy. His Vice Presidential choice and the role George W. Bush will play at the Republican national convention in September will reveal just how much political courage this war hero will bring to the fall campaign.

Focusing on the broader historical and societal trends that helped propel Obama to victory in the primaries also makes clear the strategic path that he must take to be victorious in November. Who he chooses for Vice President and how he orchestrates the Democratic National Convention will reveal whether his own campaign understands, and is willing to ride, the wave of change that has lifted his candidacy so far. A new political tide is rising. Whichever side takes advantage of the changing tide will claim victory in November--and political dominance in America for the next four decades.

Will the Democrats Look Forward or Backward in 2008…and Beyond?

Makeovers or realignments occur about every four decades in American politics, resulting in forty years of partisan advantage for the party that catches the next wave of generational and technological change. For the other party, it means spending forty years in the minority. Whether a party prospers or loses ground at the time of a realignment depends, in large part, on whether it is willing to embrace a new coalition of voters that is aligned with the larger changes taking place in society or whether it remains locked in the divisions and debates of the past.

In 1896, the Democrats and William Jennings Bryan looked back to an agrarian America and to Jefferson's and Jackson's "yeoman farmer", leaving it to Republicans William McKinley and Mark Hanna, the Carl Rove of his era, to appeal to an emerging urban America. The result was GOP dominance of U.S. politics for the next forty years.

The Democrats got it right in 1932. That year, spurred by the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt built a coalition based on the economic egalitarianism of the GI Generation, many of whom were blue-collar workers and the children and grandchildren of the last great wave of European immigrants to the United States.

But as late as 1968, many Democrats still wanted to rely on the New Deal coalition even as a young idealist generation, Baby Boomers, attempted to get the party to focus on a different set of concerns including civil rights, women's rights, and opposition to the Vietnam war. The resulting divisions presented an opportunity that the Republicans have exploited ever since.

Now, forty years later, American politics is undergoing another period of political and generational change just as it did in 1896, 1932, and 1968. If the Democratic Party has the courage to embrace a new generation of young voters and the group-oriented values it favors, it can once again recapture the political advantage for the next four decades.

Unfortunately, most of the advice the party is getting on what constitutes a winning coalition in 2008, is being provided by pundits and candidates who seem locked in the politics and divisions of the past. Some tell the party to focus on the "white working class," or "hardworking white people." On the other hand, a recent Wall Street Journal article suggested that the focus should be on "senior citizens," virtually all of whom vote and who, together, comprise about 20-percent of the electorate. But these approaches to coalition building neither recognize the major demographic changes continuing to take place in America nor the factors that lead to political makeovers or realignments.

Throughout history, realignments have been produced by the political coming-of-age of a large, dynamic generation and its use of a new communication technology that mobilizes the opinions and votes of that generation. Today's realignment stems from the emergence of the Millennial Generation (Americans born 1982-2003) and its use of Internet based social networking technologies.

The Millennial Generation is the largest in American history. There are over 90 million Millennials, about four in ten of whom are of voting age, making them just as powerful a force in the 2008 election as the much more frequently touted senior citizen cohort.

The Millennial Generation is also the most diverse in our history. Four in ten are non-white and about 20-percent are the children of at least one immigrant parent. Reflecting their gender-neutral behavior, a majority of college undergraduates are women, for the first time in U.S. history. Solid majorities of Millennials are tolerant on social and racial issues, favorable to governmental intervention and egalitarian policies in the economy, and an activist, but multilateral, approach in foreign affairs. With few exceptions, Millennials have overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama in this year's presidential primaries and caucuses.

At the same time, changes in America's economy and the composition of its population serve to continue the half-century long trend, noted recently by Alan Abramowitz in the Rasmussen Report, of the diminishing contribution of "white working class voters" to the American workforce overall and to the Democratic electorate specifically:

"In the 1950s, manual workers made up 47 percent of the white electorate in the United States while sales and clerical workers made up 21 percent and professional and managerial workers made up 32 percent. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, manual workers made up only 24 percent of the white electorate, while sales and clerical workers made up 33 percent and professional and managerial workers made up 43 percent. Since the 1960s, however, Democratic identification among both white manual workers and white sales and clerical workers has declined sharply while Democratic identification among white professional and managerial workers has risen. Today, white professional and managerial workers are actually more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than either white manual workers or white clerical and sales workers."

As Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel wrote recently, the Democratic Party is rapidly becoming a party of "gentry liberals", minorities and youth with little resemblance to the working class-based party coalition assembled by FDR almost eighty years ago.

This shift in America's economic dynamics and demographics, coupled with the generational and technological changes the country is experiencing, produces an historic opportunity for the Democratic Party in 2008. In a March 2008 Pew Survey, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by a greater than 2:1 margin. Millennials are the first generation in more than forty years in which a larger number say they are liberal rather than conservative. In contrast to older generations that are sharply divided by sex and race in their ideology and party identification Millennials are united in their political leanings, a fact that serves to enhance the potential decisiveness of this powerful new generation.

All of this gives the Democrats a clear leg-up in the Millennial makeover that's under way. Whether the Democratic Party takes advantage of this historical opportunity largely depends on the choices it makes in building its electoral coalition. Will it look backward, as it did to its detriment in 1896, or forward, as it did in 1932, to its benefit? The consequences of that choice will shape the fate of the party and the nation, not just in 2008, but also for the coming four decades.

Democratic Convention Faces Historic Choice

As the results from North Carolina and Indiana began to come in on election night, and before the final results were known, two accomplished Democratic campaign operatives and astute political observers, Paul Begala and Donna Brazile, got into a heated argument on CNN about just what the Democratic Party’s general election coalition should be if the party is to compete effectively against John McCain. Begala, who is both a strong supporter of Senator Clinton and a fair-minded media commentator, argued that the Democratic Party could not afford another Democratic nominee, like Michael Dukakis, whose constituency consisted of “eggheads and African Americans.” Using that phrase to contrast Hillary’s support from “Hispanics and working class whites” Begala argued that Obama’s lack of support among more traditional Democratic constituencies would cost the Democratic Party victory in November. With more passion than she has dared to display on other primary nights, Brazile argued that no Democratic presidential nominee could hope to win without the support of African Americans and any attempt to exclude them, and by extension, her, from the Party would be the end of the Democratic Party as we know it. Both Begala and Brazile were right, and, at the same time, both were incredibly myopic about the changes in American politics that are about to occur in this year of a Millennial makeover or realignment.

Clearly, demography continues to be destiny for the Democratic Party. What’s different now is an entirely new demographic development that these two otherwise perceptive observers seemed to have completely missed. Despite some gains in Indiana and North Carolina among working class voters by Obama, the split pitting Barack Obama's support from African-Americans, and upscale, highly educated city dwellers and suburbanites against Hillary Clinton's base of white Baby Boomer women, residents of small towns and rural areas, and working class voters remained as deep as ever on Tuesday.

However, "African-Americans and eggheads" are not the sum total of Barack Obama’s coalition. Much of his electoral strength throughout the 2008 campaign has come from his more than two-to-one advantage among Millennial voters, those 26 and under. In Indiana, his margin in college towns—even in very Catholic South Bend, home of Notre Dame—helped offset some of his losses in the more rural areas of the state. Overall, in Indiana Obama carried young voters by a 62%-38% margin, while in North Carolina his edge among Millennials was an even more convincing 74% to 25%. Obama's strength within this generation extended across racial lines and included white Millennials, from whom he received solid majorities in both states. It is Obama’s ability to add this important, new, large portion of the electorate to the “eggheads and African Americans,” of which Begala was so dismissive, that has made Obama the presumptive Democratic nominee.

While it is not critical that Begala and Brazile acknowledge this new element of the Democratic Party’s coalition in the heat of a primary night debate, it is essential that the superdelegates who, at some point between June 4 and the August Democratic National Convention in August, will determine the party's 2008 presidential nominee understand the importance of this emerging new generation. The decision made by the superdelegates, only three of whom are Millennials, must embrace this new generation, recognize its enthusiastic support for the Democratic party, and acknowledge its importance to the party's future. The superdelegates must realize that the decision they are about to make will determine the fate of the Democratic Party, not just in 2008, but for decades to come.

America is on the verge of another of the electoral makeovers, or realignments, which have reshaped U.S. politics about every forty years throughout history, and the divisions within the Democratic party must be healed if it is to take advantage of this critical opportunity. All realignments are produced by the political coming-of-age of a new, large dynamic generation of voters and the communication technology it uses so well. The last realignment came from the rise of the ideological and sharply divided, television obsessed Baby Boomer generation in 1968. The result was an era of partisan gridlock, a constant debate about divisive social issues, and electoral domination by the Republican Party. The realignment before that, in 1932, resulted from the emergence of the cohesive, radio addicted, G.I. Generation and produced nearly four decades of governmental activism and Democratic election victories.

The realignment that's just ahead will stem from the rise of the Millennial Generation, Americans born 1982-2003, more than a third of whom will be eligible to vote in 2008. Millennials are the largest, most ethnically diverse, and least gender bound generation in U.S. history. Millennials currently identify as Democrats by a margin of nearly 2:1 and are the first generation in many decades to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives. Their opinions, on issues ranging from health care and the environment to economic inequality and the Iraq war, are compatible with positions normally associated with the Democratic Party.

But, even with all of these advantages, the Democrats could still lose both this year's election and the long-term loyalty of this new generation. Transitions between one political era and another, such as the one the country is now experiencing, are usually characterized by intergenerational conflict. In some previous transitions those conflicts have had dire consequences for the political parties and American society. The inability of the Democratic Party to accommodate sharp generational and sectional differences in the mid-19th century ultimately led to civil war. Less violently, the cultural wars of the Boomer generation, which dramatically spilled into the streets of Chicago in 1968, led to the political gridlock the country has experienced during the four decades that followed. At other times, however, the parties and society have been able to successfully integrate a new generation's perspective, leading to periods of growth and civic renewal. Halting the ravages of the Depression and victories in World War II and the Cold War are examples of such successful transitions.

This year it will be the task of the superdelegates to find an acceptable solution to the generational conflict embroiling the Democrats. That won't be easy, especially since many of those in that position of power are members of the older, “idealist” Baby Boom generation. Historically, the members of idealist generations have been unable and unwilling to compromise their strongly held beliefs. They will have to do so this year if the Democratic Party is to avoid disaster. At the same time, members of the rising Millennial Generation, like “civic” generations before them, will have to open up their "group” to those who disagree with them and find the kind of “win-win” solutions that they were taught to value. If both sides can find a way to reach across this generational divide and nominate a ticket that unites the party by focusing on the goals and welfare of the larger group, the Democratic Party will be able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the arrival of the new generation. Failure to find that unifying presidential ticket will almost certainly result in the loss of the emerging generation, leaving the Democrats to wander in the political wilderness for at least another forty years.

Is the GENder Gap becoming a GENeration Gap?

While the gender gap in U.S. politics is narrowing, exit poll results in recent primary elections suggest that a generation gap, in which younger and older Americans vote against one another, seems to be emerging, especially among Democrats. Thanks to the strong social tolerance and lack of gender role differentiation of the Millennial Generation (young Americans born 1982-2003), pluralities of both Millennial males and females now identify themselves as both Democrats and liberals, while Baby Boomer males and females remain as divided as ever along partisan and ideological lines.

But even as the new generation’s increasing presence in the electorate holds out the promise of the end of the gender gap in American politics, the strains of the Democratic primary contest threaten to pit this new “civic” generation’s inclusive and optimistic attitudes and beliefs against the more divisive political behavior of older generations, especially Boomers.

In the March 4 Ohio primary, Hillary Clinton carried the votes of those 60 and over by an overwhelming 69% to 28% over Barack Obama. By contrast, Obama led among those 17-29 by a similarly wide margin (61% vs. 35%). That same day in Texas, Senator Clinton led 62% vs. 35% among those 60 and over, while Obama carried 17-29 year olds, 59% to 40%. Two weeks earlier, in a Wisconsin primary won solidly by Barack Obama, he led among those 18-29 by nearly a 3:1 margin (70%-26%), while Clinton received a majority of support from those 60+ (54% vs. 45%). In Maryland, on February 12, Obama carried 17-29 year olds, 64% to 33%, while Clinton won a narrow plurality of those 60 and over (48% vs. 47%). This pattern has been repeated in state after state throughout the entire presidential primary season.

Of course, generational conflict is nothing new in U.S. elections. In fact, in our book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, we point out that the rise of new, large and dynamic generations, which vote against the established patterns of older generations, is one of the primary causes of the political realignments that have transformed American politics every four decades throughout our country's history.

The impact of these realignments on the political system and the country depends on the kind of generation that produces the realignment. The last previous generation gap in 1968 featured the ideological, moralistic, and highly divided Baby Boomer generation vs. the gung ho, institution building beliefs of their parents--members of the GI generation, the nation’s previous “civic” generation. It split the Democratic Party apart in that year's presidential election and created the cultural wars that the country has endured for 40 years since. This year's generation gap (and resulting political realignment) is caused by the rise of a civic, unified Millennial Generation with its penchant for win-win, group-oriented solutions to the country's challenges.

All other things being equal, the coming Millennialist realignment should benefit the Democratic Party and make it America's majority governing party for at least four decades. Millennials identify as Democrats by a nearly 2:1 majority and are the first generation in the last three or four to contain a greater number of self-perceived liberals than conservatives. They favor governmentally based policies to deal with issues such as economic inequality, health care, and the environment. Millennials support a multilateral approach to U.S. foreign policy. And, they place little importance on divisive social issues and hold "liberal" positions on such matters as gay rights and abortion.

However, the close nominating contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton puts the prospects of a Democratic realignment based on the Millennial Generation in real jeopardy. A large majority of Millennials prefers Obama over Clinton. That difference in candidate preference by itself would not cost the Democrats the support of Millennials should Hillary Clinton ultimately become the Democratic presidential nominee. If anything, Millennials are more loyal to their political party than older, more independent thinking Boomers. A recent Pew Research Center survey indicated that the Boomer-based Clinton supporters would be more than twice as likely to leave the Democrats than the Millennial-based Obama supporters should their favorite candidate not win the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Millennials, raised on principles of fairness and consensus decision making, will be particularly influenced by how the end game that decides the Democratic nomination plays out Unless the rest of this year’s primaries produce a decisive outcome, the most important generational choice confronting the Democrats in the first half of this century will be made over the next several months by the party’s super-delegates. If Hillary Clinton wins "fairly" after receiving the largest number of votes and having the most pledged delegates, a large majority of Millennials will likely remain Democrats and Senator Clinton will have a very good chance to lead a Democratic political realignment. If, on the other hand, Barack Obama, the Millennials' preferred candidate, is denied the nomination in a way that Millennials see as unfair, the Democrats will almost certainly lose an historic opportunity to win the loyalty of this generation and control of American national politics for the next four decades.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, published by Rutgers University Press

Four Ms of Politics are being changed by Millennials

With the showdown primaries on March 4 over and the outcome of at least the Democratic contest still to be finally decided, it is a good time to point out what the 2008 primary campaigns have already made clear about the future of American politics. After this year, the four basic elements of any campaign—Messenger, Message, Media and Money—will never be the same. Those candidates who have adjusted all four of these dials and tuned them to Millennial Generation sensibilities and behaviors have been the most successful candidates in both party’s primaries.

Millennials, those Americans born between 1982 and 2003, are the most diverse generation in American history. Forty percent of them are African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American or of some other mix of races and ethnicities. And twenty percent come from an immigrant family. A candidate like Barack Obama, whose bi-racial family and generational roots extend from slave owners in America to Kenyan goat herders and social workers in Indonesia, is not an oddity in their minds but has the model background for an American leader.

Eighty percent of Millennials have done some sort of community service in high school. . Eighty-five percent believe that directly contributing something to the community is an important way to improve it. When Senator Obama traces his experience to his days as a community organizer in Chicago, older generations tend to dismiss it as posturing and beside the point in gaining the experience required to government work. Millennials, by contrast, consider community service just the kind of experience they would like to to put on their resume when they apply for a job. Discounting its importance sounds to them like a dismissal of their own accomplishments. Indeed an examination of the biographies of many of the winning Democratic challengers in the 2006 Congressional elections shows this same penchant on the part of new voters to value a career of service over one spent learning the inner workings of the legislative process. It's also a reason why Senator McCain’s service to his country in Vietnam and his stay in the Hanoi Hilton attracts rather than repels this new generation of voters, in spite of the attempts of a feminist icon of the 1960s to minimize the importance of that service.

Millennials have been taught since their parents first sat them down to watch Barney that the best way to approach problems is to find a solution that works for everyone in the group---since everyone is just as good and important as everyone else. The confrontational style of Baby Boomer candidates like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney strikes them as rude, enough to earn them a time out until they learn how to play nice. By contrast, the unifying message of Barack Obama who suggests, somewhat naively to the ears of older voters, that his solution to the problems of America will be to get everyone around the table to work things out for the good of the country is exactly in tune with the way Millennials have been taught to solve problems. When John McCain distanced himself from Bill Cunningham’s typical talk radio ideological rant, he earned the enmity of many of Cunningham’s colleagues. But he spoke directly to Millennials who are looking for candidates who refuse to engage in that kind of name-calling.

But McCain, like all of the 2008 Republican presidential candidates (with the possible exception of Fred Thompson), remained unable to embrace the social networking technologies that are the lifeblood of Millennials’ daily lives. . Having their children text friends sitting in the same car or “friending” people they barely know on MySpace are common Millennial behaviors that drive parents crazy. But the two most important possessions of any Millennial are their cell phone and their laptop, devices that allow them to stay connected to the Net 24/7. That type of peer-to-peer communication is the center of Barack Obama's media strategy. It has been the key to the organizational strength that Obama has demonstrated in caucuses across the country. . Political pundits who still follow the news on the television news shows or in the newspapers don’t see the enormous volume of personal communication being generated on MyBarackObama.com, built on the same operating system as FaceBook, until the electoral results once again seem to stun them on any given Tuesday night. Having ceded the lead in peer-to peer-media to the Democrats, especially Obama, rather than almost totally relying on older technologies, like talk radio and slick television commercials, the Republicans risk losing as badly in 2008 as they did to an earlier master of a new communication media, FDR, with his soothing radio voice, in 1932.

The same online engine that is generating all of the offline, grass roots enthusiasm for Obama is also raising money for his campaign in unprecedented ways and in unimaginable amounts. With one million of his friends on his website, Obama has now raised more money from more people than any candidate in American political history. Obama's use of this new media with appeals for small donations almost drove the Clinton campaign into bankruptcy and is likely to create a similar untenable disadvantage for John McCain in the general election. Ironically, it was McCain who first demonstrated the power of the Net to raise a lot of money fast in his aborted 2000 campaign. But that was long before broadband and social networks being accessed continuously all day long became the way of life for so many young voters. Now McCain and his party are forced to attempt to shame Obama into using public financing in the general election. That may be the only way they can avoid the kind of monetary deficits that Democrats and the federal government have experienced in the past.

The outcome of the Democratic contest, let alone the general election campaign is not pre-ordained. Events over the next eight months can cause public opinion to change direction. . But the relative ease with which Barack Obama has woven a tightly knit strategy based on a new approach to what the profile of a Presidential candidate should look like; the fundamental appeal the candidate should make to the voters; the way that appeal should be communicated to all voters, but especially young ones; and the resources such an approach can bring to a campaign, makes his candidacy the most likely to succeed, with one possible exception. Hillary Clinton’s success in most large states so far suggests that this new alignment of the four Ms of American politics has yet to be fully tested in campaigns requiring more complex organizational efforts over a longer period of time. In Silicon Valley terminology, it is not yet certain that this new configuration of the four Ms can “scale” to the size required to win a national campaign. Both the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania and the general election fight to come should provide the final test of this new approach to political campaigning and definitively establish a new formula for victory in the coming decades.

Narrowing the Gender Gap

The gender gap–the tendency of women to vote more often for Democrats and men to prefer Republicans––has been a feature of American politics for decades. On Super Tuesday pundit, David Gergen, captured what many considered a truism when he referred to the Democrats as the "mommy party" and the Republicans as the "daddy party." But by the time the Potomac primary was over this week, even that seemingly immutable feature of America’s political landscape had begun to shift. As Obama expanded his already large margin of support among Millennials, his surging support also earned him an even split with Clinton among women. Now a survey conducted last month by the Millennial Strategy Program of Frank N. Magid Associates demonstrates how the emergence of the new Millennial Generation (voters 25 years old and younger) is closing the gender gap in American politics. .

The phenomenon of a wide difference in party preferences and political attitudes by gender stemmed from the rise of the Baby Boomer Generation in the late 1960s. When idealist generations, such as the Boomers today and the Missionary Generation about eighty years ago, dominate the electorate, the political debate tends to focus on divisive social issues. The battle over women's suffrage at the turn of the 2Oth century is an early example. More recently, the debate has focused on the basic societal, familial, and economic roles of the sexes, along with educational and career opportunities for women, and reproductive issues.

Reflecting these debates, Boomer men and women early on developed very different political attitudes and preferences that persist to this day. According to the Magid study, a plurality of male Baby Boomers (39%) are self-identified Republicans, while just under a third call themselves Democrats (32%). By contrast, half of female Boomers (50%) say they're Democrats and only 20 percent are Republicans. Similarly, by a ratio of 1.75:1 Boomer males say they are conservative rather than liberal or progressive (35% vs. 20%). On the other hand, slightly more Boomer females call themselves liberal or progressive rather than conservative (25% vs. 23%). Majorities of Boomer women say they will vote for Democratic presidential (56%) and congressional (51%) candidates, while the voting preferences of Boomer men are split about evenly between the two parties.

Millennials, however, are a "civic" generation, like their GI Generation grandparents and great grandparents, so their political agenda is focused on achieving societal unity and in revitalizing political and government institutions rather than advancing moral causes and social issues. This change is reflected in the political attitudes and beliefs of Millennial males and females, whose voting behavior is much more similar than is the case with either Boomer or Gen X men and women. Among Millennials, for instance, most males and females have supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the early primaries and caucuses, while within older generations, men have tended toward Obama and women toward Clinton.

The Magid survey confirms this decreasing distinction between males and females among the Millennial generation. A solid plurality of female Millennials identifies as Democrats rather Republicans (43% vs. 14%), as do a somewhat smaller number of males (32% vs. 21%). Millennial women overwhelmingly indicate that they will vote for a Democratic rather than a Republican presidential candidate (52% vs. 16%) and a Democratic over a Republican congressional candidate (49% vs. 16%). Most Millennial men also say they would vote for Democratic over Republican presidential (42% vs. 31%) and congressional (41% vs. 29%) candidates.

Regardless of gender, most Millennials call themselves liberals or progressives rather than conservatives. Twenty-eight percent of Millennial males think of themselves as liberals and progressives compared with 20 percent who call themselves conservatives. Among females, 31 percent are liberals or progressives and 13 percent conservatives.

A new civic generation, the Millennials, is on the verge of giving American politics an extreme makeover. Unlike the Baby Boomers, who remain sharply divided by ideology and gender, the young men and women of the Millennial Generation will be working and voting together to change America and its government.