Over the weekend, this graphic summarizing one of the findings of the most recent NYT/Siena poll made the rounds:
While the NYT, which is flogging the ‘young men in crisis’ crapola*, focused on the gap between GenZ women and men, the obvious takeaway is that people ages 45-64 are more conservative than those in other cohorts (this is being called by some GenX, but this age range leaves out younger GenXers and includes younger Boomers). The whole cohort is shifted to the right, but this cohort’s women are far more conservative than other women.
One obvious reason is this cohort came of age after twelve years of Republican rule. It’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there or involved in politics at the time what twelves straight years of conservative Republicans holding the executive branch did to establish a long-term conservative ideological legacy.
Imagine multiple terms of Stephen Miller (or Bannon), not to mention the Trump-administration arsonists who took over the EPA (or anti-trust policy, or labor policy, or…). It was really bad, and pretty much killed off any chance at New Deal-ish policy for decades. Despite claims to the contrary, ideological currents unfortunately follow power far more than the converse.
And the rightward 45-64 shift, especially among women was heavily influenced by Republican (publicly professed**) attitudes towards sex. Premarital sex was bad, not just for kids (though that was the gateway to the sex panic), but for adults too. There’s a reason why many feminist women in their forties and fifties have written pieces where they describe how they have to ‘unlearn’ what they were taught. Unfortunately, a lot of women (and men too) never did the unlearning.
And sex negativity is the gateway drug for anti-abortion attitudes: once sex outside of marriage is sinful, it’s not hard to blame people for being slutty (“Don’t want an abortion? Then close your legs!”), and a major correlate with Republican support is anti-abortion beliefs.
One final point on the figure: if 45-64 year-olds voted like 30-44 year-olds (never mind the elderly or under thirty), Republicans would be annihilated. Friends don’t let friends let Republicans hold the executive branch for twelve straight years. If nothing else, the left can’t let that happen again if it wants even a remote chance of enacting left-ish policies in (many of) our lifetimes.
*It’s hard for me to take this crap very seriously: thirty years ago, young men were saying much the same thing. Feeling rootless, insecure, and down and out happens to a lot of men in their twenties. It sucks, and is a problem, but it’s not a new one.
**Republicans pulled a huge con by convincing people the rhetoric applied towards teen sex also should be applied to adults–even as they didn’t follow it in their own lives. As if the attractive twenty-something Republican talking heads weren’t out there knocking boots, and that’s before you get to the gay Republicans who called themselves ‘the laissez fairies’ (former conservative David Brock wrote an entire book exposing the hypocrisy!). The hypocrisy was rank.
mikethemadbiologist
The backlash on non-marital sex (AND anti-gay attitudes, as these things are more related as it often comes down to a dislike of perceived ‘promiscuity’) also may have been influenced by the AIDS crisis and the Republican reaction to that. Not just for the 12 years of Reagan-Bush, but it carried on through Newt’s southern strategy completion when this generation in question (45-64) were having their first kids. Some aspects of legal systemic discrimination instilled because of AIDS and HIV continue to exist where they shouldn’t anymore, like gay men are still unable to donate blood.
There’s two other things of note – this generation section may have a polling bias to it, where the more liberal-leaning ones don’t bother to answer the phone and answer the polling questions.
But also within the Democratic ranks, this seems to be the most suppressed generation. The boomers won with Bill Clinton…and then never left. By the time younger Democrats (well, younger than Pelosi and Schumer) were getting attention, they were TWO generations below them – AOC for example. Obama was on the older-end of gen-x, but how many other gen-x’s have been able to make a *public* name for themselves as Democrats in Congress while he was in office, compared to the next generation? We (out in the public) were basically been told our only role models remain our parents, not our peers – everybody just get in line. I didn’t even know much of Jeffries at all until he got his current role.
By contrast, a significant number of Republicans in Congress that have made a name for themselves (for bad rather than good reasons, of course) are gen-x or in that range.
The swing, to a degree, seems representative of the two Party’s public support for that generation within its ranks.
It’s so weird because so many of the activists that I know are Gen X women (not men so much). We were such a cynical group of teens, yet pretty activist adults. But maybe the majority of people in my generation are still checked out, I dunno. I suppose that’s an empirical question.
I definitely do not answer my phone if I don’t recognize the number. I can believe polling bias.
Very interesting analysis by Joe Shelby above.
Our society intentionally puts enormous pressure on young men. They’re much easier to push into boot camp or a non-union factory line if their other options are prison or flipping burgers for min wage and dealing with six roommates.
Not sure if it was intentional originally, but the same applies to young women except they’re being pushed into finding a man to provide and protect so they’re not cleaning toilets or begging the state for the dole.
IMO, people cleaning toilets and flipping burgers should be paid well enough to live comfortably on one job and no roommates. Apparently that makes me a godless commie bastard who hates family and America, but so be it; I’d prefer that to our current dystopian hellscape of human misery.
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