Sunday, November 4, 2012

The 2012 Election: Whither America?

For some time, even before Barack Obama's election, I had thought of the 2012 election as being guaranteed to be a pivotal point in American political history.  That is because I believe all politics to be not only local, but generational as well.

From the 1930s until midway into the 1960s, politics in America had a somewhat leftward drift, shaped by the experiences of the Greatest Generation in the Depression, the New Deal era and World War II.  Even in the 1950s, the most conservative period of this era, the combined efforts of Nixon, McCarthy and other Congressional Republicans could only push this drift back so far.  And even Eisenhower, a nominally Republican President, launched his one major government initiative:  the Interstate Highway System, based on his wartime experience with European highways.

Beginning in the late 1960s, however, the Baby Boomers began to enter the voting cohort.  And, despite the hippie-yippee image of this group, the Boomers were anything but flaming liberals as a voting block.  After all, they had grown up with more creature comforts than any generation in American history.  They consequently came of age expecting more such comforts in their adulthood, which had the effect of making them economic royalists at heart.  As a consequence, they gave their hearts and their votes to Republicans.  It should have therefore surprised no one that the next three decades saw Republican dominance in national politics, and that the only two Democratic Presidents in this period, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, came from the moderate-to-conservative wing of their party.

The turn of the century and millennium, however, revealed the beginning of another generational shift, one that was overlooked in the controversy over the 2000 Florida fiasco and the horror of 9/11.  In 2000, between Al Gore and Ralph Nader, liberalism won a majority of the popular vote.  In 2004, despite campaigning as a wartime President, George Bush barely won re-election--and his party lost control of Congress.  And, of course, 2008 saw the election of the first African-American President in history, along with huge majorities of Democrats in Congress.

Why did this happen?  I think it can be explained by not one, but two generational shifts.

The most obvious of these shifts is the rise of the Echo Boom generation.  They came of age with less economic security than their parents, the Boomers, enjoyed.  Consequently, they came to value the need for shared economic strength, which drew them into the Democratic fold.  But the less obvious shift involves the Boomers themselves.  By and large, they have consumed without saving, leaving them more vulnerable in old age to the need for government services.  And 2012 will be the first Presidential election held since the Boomers started to reach eligibility for Social Security benefits.

I tend to think that 2010 was an electoral anomaly, brought about solely by disillusioned Echo Boomers staying home because Obama was less of a miracle worker than they expected.  (A side note to them:  change has always been slow and difficult, but that just make your involvement all the more necessary.)  I tend to agree with this analysis, as a consequence.

So, whither America after Tuesday?  On the congressional side of the ledger, I think Democrats will gain seats in both houses of Congress--between 1 and 3 in the Senate, and between 10 and 12 in the House, leaving them solidly in control of the Senate, and not quite yet able to pick up a House majority due to gerrymandering (another side-note to Echo Boomers:  be especially sure to show up in election years ending in 0, or you risk diluting the power of everyone's vote).

The Presidential race?  Jump ball.  I hope Obama will win, and I think (knock on wood and pu! pu! pu!) that he will.

But, even if Romney wins, he will not be able to stop America's leftward drift.  He will either find a way to take his party with it, or he will be a one-term President.  Period.

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