Why Are These Democrats
Smiling? It’s Cyclical
By Michiko Kakutani
There has been endless
talk about the 2008
presidential race being
a “change election.” A
New York Times/CBS News
poll this month
indicated that 81
percent of respondents
said they believed
“things have pretty
seriously gotten off on
the wrong track” and 78
percent said the country
was worse off than five
years ago. “Change” has
become a mantra chanted
not just by Senator
Barack Obama, who has
been running as an
avatar of a new kind of
politics, but by
Senators Hillary Rodham
Clinton and John McCain
too.
According to the authors
of “Millennial Makeover:
MySpace, YouTube, and
the Future of American
Politics,” change is
indeed on its way, and
the magnitude of that
change will be
monumental — a tectonic
realignment of the sort
that occurs about every
four decades, leading to
a fundamental shift in
policy priorities and
voter coalitions.
Morley Winograd and
Michael D. Hais also
write in this
fascinating but not
always persuasive volume
that the party capturing
the White House in 2008
has “a historic
opportunity to become
the majority party for
at least four more
decades,” and that the
rising generation of
Millennials (born
between 1982 and 2003)
will imprint the coming
national discourse with
its own temperament and
predilections, washing
away “the current
politics of polarization
and ideological
deadlock” and putting in
its place “a new
landscape of collective
purpose and national
consensus that involves
individuals and
communities in solving
the nation’s problems.”
Mr. Winograd, a former
adviser to Al Gore and
the co-author of an
earlier book called
“Taking Control:
Politics in the
Information Age” (which
was reportedly widely
read in the Clinton
White House), and Mr.
Hais, a communications
researcher, have relied
heavily in this volume
on the work of William
Strauss and Neil Howe,
who in books like
“Generations” (1991) and
“Millennials Rising”
(2000) have articulated
a theory of generational
change and who are
acknowledged in these
pages as key
inspirations. Much of
the methodology and
terminology used here
comes directly from the
writings of Mr. Strauss
and Mr. Howe, as do many
of the qualities
ascribed to specific
generations like the
Baby Boomers and the
Millennials.
What Mr. Winograd and
Mr. Hais have
essentially done is
explore, in detail, the
political implications
of Mr. Strauss and Mr.
Howe’s sociological
observations. As they
tell it there have been
five major political
realignments in American
history, and while each
of these huge shifts
seems to have been
triggered by a crucial
event (like the Civil
War or the Great
Depression), all were
actually rooted in
“underlying changes in
generational size and
attitudes and
contemporaneous advances
in communication
technologies” like the
development of radio,
television and, more
recently, the Internet.
There are two types of
major realignments, the
authors say. “Idealist”
realignments, the last
of which occurred in
1968 with the rise of
the boomers, are marked
by low voter turnout,
negative attitudes
toward politics and
political institutions
and “a focus on divisive
social issues involving
such concerns as
substance use, sexual
behavior and socially
acceptable roles for
women and men”; in the
public policy arena
“idealist realignments
tend to lead to
gridlock, limited use of
and even decline in the
national government and
greater economic
inequality.” Since the
1968 realignment the
Republicans, who had
become the party of
traditional values,
would win 7 of 10
presidential elections.
In contrast “civic”
realignments — which
occurred in 1860 with
the election of Abraham
Lincoln and 1932 with
the election of Franklin
D. Roosevelt — are
characterized, Mr.
Winograd and Mr. Hais
write, by rising voter
turnout (or stable
turnout at high levels),
positive attitudes
toward politics and
political institutions,
and “a focus on broader
societal and economic
concerns rather than
social issues involving
personal morality.”
Although Republican
strategists like Karl
Rove, as well as a
number of political
analysts, saw the
terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11 as triggering a
realignment that would
confirm Republican
hegemony for many
decades to come, the
authors of “Millennial
Makeover” — both of whom
are Democrats — argue
that 9/11 is more likely
to encourage “the
Democratically inclined
Millennial Generation to
vote in large numbers”
and thus make the 2008
presidential election
“more likely to be a
realigning election that
favors Democrats.”
Why are Millennials
inclined to vote
Democratic? Thanks to
“their protected,
structured and
positively reinforced
upbringing” (lots of
quality time with their
parents, lots of
exercises in
self-esteem) Millennials
tend to be far more
optimistic and
group-oriented than
their Gen X predecessors
(the alienated
generation sandwiched
between Boomers and
Millennials), and
according to Mr. Hais
and Mr. Winograd,
they’re predisposed to
be inclusive, empathetic
and tolerant in their
social outlook. “A large
majority of Millennials
endorses affirmative
action programs (82
percent) as compared
with two-thirds of older
Americans,” the authors
write, and “more than
two-thirds of Millennial
women” are opposed to
the idea of women
returning to traditional
roles.
Millennials’ reliance on
the Internet (technology
that the Democrats have
learned to exploit more
quickly than their
Republican opponents)
and their passion for
texting and instant
messaging have political
implications as well. In
placing a heavy value on
the opinion of friends
and peers, the authors
of this book suggest,
Millennials are inclined
to favor conclusions
reached by decentralized
decision making, and
multilateral rather than
unilateral policy
making. Their proclivity
for sharing their lives
with thousands of others
through MySpace and
Facebook also makes them
“the generation least
perturbed by any
potential restrictions
on civil rights or
invasions of privacy
that might have occurred
in fighting the war on
terrorism.” As a more
socially tolerant and
less divisive Millennial
generation becomes a
larger part of the
electorate, Mr. Winograd
and Mr. Hais predict,
“the power of social
issues to drive our
political debate will
wane”: wedge issues will
lose their
effectiveness, and
ideological divisions
will give way to an
emphasis on “successful
governmental activism.”
“Majorities,” they
argue, “will coalesce
around ideas that
involve the entire group
in the solution and
downplay the right of
individuals to opt out
of the process.”
Some of the authors’
predictions (like the
demise of disputes over
Darwinism or the
adoption of an inclusive
solution to immigration)
seem less likely to
surface any time soon,
given the importance of
these issues to
high-decibel factions of
the right. In addition
some of Mr. Hais and Mr.
Winograd’s remarks about
the new generation of
voters are patently
absurd. They assert, for
instance, that Andy
Sachs, the perky heroine
in the movie version of
“The Devil Wears Prada,”
is “a true Millennial,
different from the lead
character of previous
coming-of-age movies
about other
generations.” And their
unalloyed faith in their
paradigms seems to leave
little room for the
accidents of fate and
free will.
Though Mr. Winograd and
Mr. Hais sprinkle their
text with qualifications
like “there is no
absolute certainty about
which political party
will benefit from the
current ‘crisis’ era,”
the overwhelming thrust
of their book is to
point to a coming
Democratic victory,
buoyed by the votes of
Millennials. And though
they never come out and
say so, their book
(which went to press
before the Democratic
field narrowed) also
suggests that a
candidate like Mr. Obama
— who appeals to this
most ethnically diverse
of generations with a
message of
postpartisanship and
consensus-building —
will likely be the next
president of the United
States. The bitterness
of the continuing
Democratic nominating
race (with yet another
pivotal primary being
held Tuesday), though,
and polls showing Mr.
McCain, the presumptive
Republican nominee, in a
virtual dead heat with
either Democratic
candidate remind the
reader that these sorts
of predictions — based
on historical patterns
and generational change
— can never be a
foregone conclusion.
