A Reason To Believe America Will Make It

Watching the Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs and hearing the attacks on Obama for "playing the race card" by urging his original coalition to vote makes me think the mid-term elections will be chaos. I also feel that conventional wisdom will be wrong. We've heard the drill--mid-terms the President's party lose significant seats; the American people are outraged at Washington; and the economy will hurt the Democrats. Of course, this all may be true if the Democrats were running against a normal political party. Anti-gay and anti-enviromental moves in Virginia have triggered mobilization of the Democrats and an anti-immigration law has put Latino support for Democrats over the moon.



Let's talk about conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is defined by the last remains of the silent generation, the baby-boomers and Generation X. By class, these people are the types covered in the recent American Express luxury consumer poll where the average annual income was $575,000 per family. That's several times mine and over 12 times the average American. Washington conventional wisdom is even more confined to super wealthy people who dine out with each other.



So conventional wisdom also believes these cohorts are the center of the universe and the people who actually determine elections--whether by their voting numbers or by their media influence. So by their calculations, minorities--blacks and Latinos don't vote and youth will never come out for mid-terms. What seems to validate their case were the governors' elections in New Jersey and Virginia--where we have seen the disasterous results.



During the last Democratic primaries, Nate Silver wrote extensively about the difficulties with polling minorities and polling young voters, since the later all have cellphones. He always warned that the polls at that time underpresented these groups, particularly the young. And he pointed out that these people were the Obama surge voters, who blew by the opposition within the last week of the campaign. But these surge voters have to be organized and mobilized to vote. As we saw in the Virginia race there was no effort to reach these voters by the Deeds campaign.



Last night I read a diary posted on the Dailykos by a millenial(a member of those between 18-24), who claimed they were the last minority and were going to mobilize. I call these people the Digital Generation after the studies by Don Tapscott. This generation is committed to change through democratic means, are very environmentally concerned, are non-racist and are non-homophobic. A large percentage come from an ethnically or racially mixed background. They also come from homes where they have experienced different parents. My sons' friends insisted on meeting my wife and I because my son was the only one of his cohort raised by the same parents all his life.



Today, the economy has hit millenials sometimes worse than minorities. They experience unemployment at 30% and over 45% have been unemployed during their work years. Those that make it through college are burdened by debt. These young people are extraordinarily connected to each other through Facebook and the internet, maintaining close contact with friends across the country. But for politicians and pollsters, these young people are off the radar.



As this young dairist noted, his friends kept up to date with the healthcare debate and the provision that they can be carried on their parents plans until the age of 26. They also were keeningly aware of the whole overhaul of the student loan programs and Obama's commitment to community colleges. And they see their economic situation as a result of the looting of America by Wall Street. Also, they are aware that this President keeps talking and acting on issues that concern them and doesn't just discard their support after the election was over.



Democrats were always hoping for the youth vote but it didn't pan out in the 2000 election for Al Gore and hence conventional wisdom took hold that the young don't vote. What's interesting is that Republicans are banking on the 60+ voter to take back the House. They claim and I always believed them that these are the most reliable voter. But facts can be stubborn things.



The 65 and older voter constituted 10% of the total vote both in the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential elections. In both those elections, the parties split the vote evenly. In the 60-65 year voter, the Republicans did marginally better. And in the presidential elections, the only demographic age group that Republicans had a slight advantage were Generation X-ers.



Flip down to the Digital Generation. In the 2006 midterms, they also constituted 10% of the vote also but produced a Democratic margin by 60%-38%. In that election the older vote went 49-49%. In short, the large Democratic victory in the 2006 midterms owed alot to young voters, contrary to our conventional wisdom.



In 2008, the digital generation voted 62-35% for the Democrats and among the 25-29 group, they voted 64-34% for the Democrats. Again their total percentage of the vote remained in line with the older voters.



If you add up the slight advantages of Democrats in the past two elections by age group, the Digital Generation's edge for Democrats represents slightly less than all the other age groups combined! Most worrisome for Republicans is that the party you first vote for remains the same for nearly a generation.



Now, The Republican Party has decided that they are going to run against Barack Obama in the midterms. This is evident by the ads cut by their Governors' Association and their pubic statements. Now, Obama is sitting at 54% approval rating overall in today's Washington Post poll but with the digital generation his approval rating is far above the percentage he received in the last election. Throughout the past year, approval ratings of the digital generation mirror the numbers of Obama in the black and Latino communities.



The young millenial diarist mentioned that his former activists from the last election are ready and available because most of them have been hurt by the recession and have time on their hands. They are the minority not singled out by Fox News and conservative radio. Organizing for America has already been conducting training seminars for them beginning last week. While Republicans did try and suppress the youth vote in many states, it's far less able to now that they are registered. Here the efforts at voter registration last election will pay off for the Democrats.



This generation is immune to the teabaggers as we have seen by polling on that group and have no tendency toward the extremes. The GOP state campaigns against gays, Latinos and the national party's climate change denials simply spark the digital generations' activism. The Tax issue is meaningless to them.



On a last side note, the pundits have mentioned how Republican Jan Brewer's support among whites has increased by 8% in Arizona after she signed the anti-immigration bill. But few mention that Latino support for the Democratic candidate for governor has soared to 77% in a state where Obama only won 56% of the Latino vote. Despite the dominance of the white voter, the solidifying of the Latino vote by such a large margin eradicates Brewer's temporary advantage. Brewer's numbers should fall further because Arizona depends on Mexico for 1/3rd of its economy and now Mexico is boycotting the state.

Those are some reasons to believe that the mid-terms may produce some surprises.