How did we raise our young people to be so smart? It seems that a lot of us as parents have raised our young peoples to be more tolerant of others than previous generations. This means that many of them are turned off by the republicans’ dalliance with those Americans who self identify themselves as White supremacists or the Alt-right. And they are turned off by the republican President Trump’s bullying and intolerant behaviors towards others.
The proof of this, is that these young people are leaving the republican party in droves.
Here is the rest of the story…
On May 19, 2017, David LeonHardt of the New York Times penned the following op-ed piece, “The Young Flee the G.O.P.”
Excerpts:
“A fascinating series of polls from the Pew Research Center offers support for the Theory of Disjunction (originated by the political scientist Stephen Skowronek). A disjunctive president straddles political eras. He can often diagnose a core affliction in his political party, but can’t fully fix it — which means that his presidency ends up looking like a failed pause before a new era.”
“After surveying Americans periodically over the 15 months since the 2016 campaign began, Pew has found that one demographic group has been much more likely than any other to switch its party identification: Republicans under the age of 30.”
“Among those under 30 who initially identified as Republicans or leaned Republican in December 2015, 23% shifted to the Democratic Party,” Pew reported this week. The average switch rate for other groups was just above 10 percent. Not surprisingly, many of the people who stopped identifying as Republicans also held negative views about Trump.”
“These millennials are the flip side of Trump’s success in attracting white working-class voters who’d previously stayed home or voted Democratic. He has done so in part by aligning the Republican Party more closely with white nationalism, which played a role in his huge victory margins in older, less metropolitan America.”
“Yet it also seems to have further turned off young voters, including some who previously identified as Republican. Younger voters already leaned left. They’re notably more diverse, more liberal on many social issues and more optimistic about the country’s future than many Trump voters.”
Who knows whether the recent shifts will stick. But they do present a real risk for the Republican Party. Research has shown that generations tend to adopt political habits that last a lifetime. The cliché that the young are liberal and the old are conservative is mostly untrue. Liberal or conservative, the young often retain their ideology as they age.”
“Right now, the Republican Party is Donald Trump’s party, and fewer than one in three adults under the age of 30 approve of him.”
Related Reference: (“Ruy Teixeira”) did a recent Q. and A. with The Atlantic’s Clare Foran and wrote an op-ed in Vox that distills seven reasons for liberal optimism.”
Gronda Morin 
Excellent post Gronda… the research does hold up looking at the Trump-base characterized as basically lower educated. Association with university-types has always been the best possible way to present the real side of history and political science, as these Pew studies present. These schools of study tend to rise above the golden-conservative views and even those steeped in right-leaning attitudes are more prone to be at least aware of the true state of the world.
How come there aren’t any non-white kids in the photos? just sayin’ 🙂
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Dear Gradmama2011,
You are so right. I need to upgrade these pictures.
You could say that the republican party is in its declining years, a party consisting of too many greedy, selfish grumpy ole White men with a virulent strain of intolerance coursing through their veins towards all those who are different. It can’t happen soon enough.
Hugs, Gronda
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The biggest problem is young progressive liberal voters mostly reside in major metro cities like NY, LA, Seattle, Denver so these states win by a landslide. But we’re losing the majority of rural bible belt alt right rednecky conservative states, and most recent previous democratic strongholds like WI, MI, FL, PA, OH have switched.
Democratic outreach need to go broader, by returning to traditional dem values, ie help the ppl.
The Dem party has clearly lost it’s way and needs to reform bigly! By rigging the primaries and siding with pro-establishment candidate Hillary over progressive inspirational Sanders sealed our fate.
We all saw the signs, Hillary’s rallies and campaign speeches were practically empty while Bernie’s packing the room everywhere he went, his message resonates with the ppl. If the Dem party didn’t interfere, we would be addressing President Sanders right now and not this orange laughing stock.
We should take responsibility for the loss, learn from it and overhaul the whole rotten party and return to it’s original core values: HELP THE PPL, not itself!
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Dear !EarthUnited,
The good news is that the democratic party is hard at work right now, developing an economic policy package designed to help the average Joe worker in rural areas.
The young people who are leaving the republican party in droves are not of the progressive wing. They are just against Donald Trump’s catering to the alt-right. So while, the republicans are attempting to hold on this portion of its demographics, they are losing another demographic group, young peoples for an entire generation.
Hugs, Gronda
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That is very hopeful news!
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Interesting that you name-dropped Skowronek. I’m a big fan of this work. However, when talking about the dissolution of the Republican Party, you’re overlooking a big thing that he alludes to in his book:
During periods of disjunction, it’s not the dominant party that gets remade (at least right away), it’s the opposition party. You can see significant echoes of the Democratic Party under Johnson and Nixon and Carter in today’s party, but little of the GOP of that era in today’s party. Similarly, Lincoln and McKinley’s Republican Party would feel right at home under Eisenhower and Nixon, but the Democratic Party under Bryan and Wilson would be alienated by FDR and Truman. Pierce and Buchanan oversaw the Democratic Party hegemony becoming marginalized for four generations, but it was the WHIG Party that got destroyed, not the Democrats.
If Skowronek’s cycle holds, we should expect the Democratic Party, and not the Republicans, to be destroyed or reconstructed over the next 3-11 years. The Republicans will still live on as the party of Reagan, though modified to accommodate whatever form the post-Clinton regime takes.
I’m betting that the weakened Republican Party will form a permanent liberal-conservative alliance based on defectees from tech and the professional class who won’t be able to stomach economic leftism. Liberals will accommodate the conservative faction’s tendencies to nationalism and Reaganomics and conservatives will bend their way on the liberal faction’s social liberalism and technocracy.
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Alternatively, liberalism (as opposed to leftism) will become permanently marginalized like it is becoming in the UK with the Lib-Dems. The conservative faction of the GOP might realize that, like their libertarian clients, cultural liberalism is still very unpopular with their base and the only chance in hell they have of turning out their (greatly weakened) faction of petit bourgeois, fascists, and religious righters is by keeping a tight leash on the Chaits and Pelosis and Clintons that will come crawling hat-in-hand. The Obama-Clintonites will, after some initial complaining, sideline their cosmopolitan liberalism to get what they want on interventionalism and neoliberalism. Not by entering into an alliance with the conservatives, as in the above scenario, but by adopting the libertarian strategy of forming a powerless but noisy clique and giving the post-Trump GOP whatever they want electorally. The GOP will tolerate these quisling liberals both for the money they bring and their hegemony in media and popular culture, but it’ll be a strict patronage relationship.
This will be especially ironic since the Clintonites have spent the last 25 years telling us (when the conservatives aren’t looking) how evil and fascist and destructive the right is.
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The thing is, Clintonites right now are facing the same problem that the Rockefeller Republicans faced back during the New Deal era but especially during the 70s; they, by themselves, don’t bring anything to the table electorally. They have all these demands and insist on holding onto power, but they don’t actually help the anti-reactionaries win. Like with Eisenhower and Nixon, the Rockefeller faction had these great Presidential electoral victories (though Obama and Clinton’s were nowhere near as impressive as Eisenhower and Nixon’s) that didn’t translate into any lasting power.
This will be especially true during the post-Trump era and they get booted out of the anti-reactionary party. Their one asset, plutocrat money, won’t mean anything to the conservative faction.
Expect to see, as what happened with Corbyn and Labour, the Clintonites really start to freak out as the Berniecrats build a political vehicle that his hostile to their worldview despite their every attempt to marginalize and stop it.
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@Deadl_E_Cheese Sounds about right. The Clintonistas’ neoliberal globalist worldview no longer jives with the younger, more progressive crowd under 30. Hillary’s pro-establishment pay-for-play business as usual shenanigans are no better than Trump catering to the elite 1%. Wealth sucking greed from special interests, lobbyists for corporations in bed with corrupt politicians will no longer play as ppl wake up to the exploitation.
Citizens do have power of the vote, now we just need an upstanding candidate who is not part of the system.
This will only happen if enough ppl wake up and demand it, ie vote independent and drop the partisan politics!
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It seems to identify with Trump by being Republican means young people worry they are seen as poor, undereducated and against all immigrants and people of color. In some cases that’s a valid worry. Some people jump to conclusions especially if they’re not American. —- Suzanne
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Dear Suzanne,
All of the above are possible explanations, as well as young people are just more tolerant of others, where they are turned off by the alt-right members’ support of Donald Trump.
Hugs, Gronda
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The one factor which is new to the mix is the current occupant of the Whitehouse. In the previous century, or so each president or rivals have come through the political system and have learned to either respect or appreciate its dynamics.
This oaf seems to believe that his ego is sufficient to administer a large and complex nation; this cannot last in such a circumstance as the USA; the dynamics are too large and numerous in their interactions.
When this person has gone the aftermath may actually see a sobering (under pressure from the majority of citizens) and more mature approach to politics than that which you have suffered with over the past ten years.
Thus you could see the same parties, though moving back to the centre and the spirit of co-operation ( and time-honoured back room deals).
Those who worship and admire this unhappy event of the 2016 presidential election will have to go off and form their own third party, which of course will fracture into dust.
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Gronda, with the constant attacks on civil rights, the environment, climate change action and civility, there is not much that this party is doing to invite people to stay. Also, when I left the party in 2006, I observed then a pattern of making things up. Yes, both sides do it, but the GOP owns too many biased sources and it is too easy for them to control the debate. Keith
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Dear Keith,
As the republican party caters more to the alt-right and those spouting words of intolerance while by turning a blind eye to its harm to the body of politics, the party may keep those voters but it is at the expense of losing members who cannot abide by this devolution, like you and me.
Hugs, Gronda.
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Great news Gronda! Let’s hope the trend continues!
Hugs!!!
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