Baby-boomearang: why the Democrats can't count on generational politics
Siegel, Fred
society regards dealings with others as trivial affairs. In highly structured corporate or political cultures 4t.seems virtually impossible to give as much respect to the receptionist and...
...Generationalism has been, in considerable part, a marketing phenomenon...
...We meet God in the things we do, in the way we do things, and in the people that God sends to share in our lives...
...The older boomers are far more critical of the military, far more supportive of abortion than other age groups...
...It promotes ambition and measures success in terms of potential rather than accomplishment...
...Caddell's analysis of the popular vote is no more comforting...
...There is little doubt that the media has been fascinated with that percentage of the baby boomers, variously estimated at between 2.5 and 5 percent of their age group who live the life of up-scale consumers to the hilt...
...They have found its portents in such unlikely places as the Caddell-inspired campaign for New Coke --described by one Caddellite, despite its failure, as "the opening shot of the 1988 election" --and the ads for Nike sneakers featuring the Beatles' ambivalent song, "Revolution...
...Ward Circle Auditorium ContracetMton, Abortion, and Reproduction Chairman: Vern Bugca~li, dean of natural and social sciences...
...The upshot is that in order to win in '88 the Democrats will have to capture two-thirds of the states that have gone Republican in four of the last five elections...
...the Modern Secular World 9:00 A.M.-12 NOON--Ward Circle Auditorium Welcome: Paul Kartz, Editor, FREE INQUIRY The Roman Catholic Church and Politics Chairman: Robert Alley, professor of humanities, University of Richmond "Making Ends Meet -- the Dilemma of Social Thought" Ernest L. Fortln, professor of theology, Boston College "The Catholic Bishops" War and Peace" Francis X. wla4ers, professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University "A Comparison of Catholic and Liberal Understanding of Social Justice" Andrew Lantig, professor of philosophy, University of Lowell 12:00 NOON-2 P.M.--Lunch--Campus Cafeteria 2:00.5:00 P.M...
...A tall order even if the party were to be united behind a charismatic candidate and a compelling message...
...be perhaps the most unique It has sponsored to date...
...As the boomers continue to move through the life cycle, their sheer bulk will continue to send shock waves through every institution they enter...
...They thought the military ought not to be a presence in school...
...They are still tinged with the apocalyptic sentiments of the sixties...
...Baby boomers like myself used to howl with an undisguised sense of superiority when that symbol of the "Old Politics," Archie Bunker, would intolerantly explain that only those who had "fought in the big one, DOUBLE U DOUBLE U TWO," could really understand the world...
...I used them to be my conscience...
...We must face the brutal fact," says Caddell...
...our problem is everywhere, with almost everyone...
...But the boomers are far less likely to vote than their parents, and of those who turn out there is little evidence that they vote very differently in the general elections...
...And here is where I have come to value my faith more fully...
...Instead of protecting children, conventional wisdom often would have us believe that adults must be protected from children...
...While the Democrats were the winners in an '86 election despite a precipitous drop in voter participation, the party's support among Catholics, who make up more than one-fourth of the electorate, continued to fall...
...The problem, in short, is that the Democrats have no base...
...Our future," intones Caddell almost reverentially, "lies in the hands, to an enormous extent, of a single generation of young Americans...
...Determined to hold his party's feet to the fire, Caddell lays out the grim electoral college statistics...
...In the past five elections Democrats have managed to win an average of 45 percent of the vote or more in only FRED SIEGEL...
...by 1986 it was down to 55 percent...
...Not surprisingly, wellto-do boomers tend to vote far more like their affluent elders than the semi-skilled laborers of their population cohort...
...He will be writing regularly for Commonweal on the presidential election...
...Date._ Name Address (PLEASE PRINT) City State Zip _ Telephone # 14 August 1987:445...
...The appeal to marketing fads may, however, be unintentionally apt...
...In highly structured corporate or political cultures 4t.seems virtually impossible to give as much respect to the receptionist and clerk as to the vice president, chief executive officer, or chairman...
...he Democrats, Caddell insists, must concentrate on recapturing at a minimum two constituencies if the party is to have a fighting chance to win the presidency...
...Why, then, all the attention...
...The electoral college situation looks even worse for the Democrats when the thirteen states carded by the Republicans four times out of five are added in...
...In 1986, for instance, there was virtually no difference between how the boomers voted for Congress and the way the rest of the country voted...
...As the demographic bulge, the so-called pig in the python, has moved through different stages of life, it has always created an enormous demand for the entire generatioh's needs of the particular moment -- from the creation of new schools in the fifties to the creation of day-care facilities today...
...Our home "works" because we depend --all of us --on the presence of God there...
...Why not regard real success in terms of the broader view of work, and appreciate and honor those wo do well all manner of work...
...Every staff person at the meeting opposed it...
...At the same time that we trivialize the important, we make important the trivial...
...True enough, but as long as presidential votes are counted locally on a state-by-state basis, how many electoral votes can he deliver...
...This is a reality which confuses "New Age" Democrats like Rick Stafford, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Lesbian/Gay Caucus, whose estimate of the party's strength is based on the power of the national interest groups it represents...
...That solid total of 202 votes is 75 percent of the 270 needed to win...
...The example of Mondale garnering only 29 percent of the white Southern vote is often cited as an example of the Democrats' prime weakness...
...Support for that premier spokesman for generationalism, Gary Hart, was so casual, that Hart, like a discarded marketing fad, has disap14 August 1987:443 like the rest of the population...
...Francis College, from a sociology professor who laterbecame a good friend, of how the concept of true community goes far beyond what we see around us in the various social organizations we loosely term community...
...The prophets of generational salvation are, to paraphrase the historian Lewis Namier, people who have imagined the past and remembered the future...
...J "Truth and the Keeper of Orthodoxy'" Dim Magulre, professor of theology, Matquetle University "The Authority of the Roman Catholic Church in a Secular Age" Paul Dents, professor of social ethics, Boston University "'Dissent and Dialogue in the Catholic Church" Leonard Swidler, professor of religion, Temple University "The Catholic Bishops and the Question of Authority" John Yoder, professor of theology, Notre Dame University FREE INQUIRY 1987 Conference, Box 5, Buffalo NY 14215-0005 D Yea, (we) plan to attend FREE INOUIRY's 1987 COnference Enclosed please find my check or money order (payable to FREE INQUIRY) to cover: D $25,00 Registration Fee for ___ person(s) $ .__ n $5.00 each for Friday Cafeteria Luncheon for pemor~s) $ __ [] $10,00 each for Fdday Dinner (Tefface Dining Room) for _ person(s) $__ [:3 I (we) cannot attend the conference, but please accept this donation to help cover the cost of this and other special events, $__ __ Check or Money Order (U.S bank) Total $ [3 Visa [] Master Card# Exp...
...The Yuppie, whatever his or her discretionary income and importance for campaign contributions, can still dispose of no more votes than the "left-behind" unemployed factory worker...
...Responding to Democratic Party National Chairman Paul Kirk's attempt to curb the power of interest groups on party policy, Stafford complained "I represent a lot of Democrats, as many as some state chair from Mississippi or some other state or region...
...The ability to do things that I believe in --to push for a program, to advocate an unpopular cause (like integration, in a world that rewards elites) --has required the insight and strength that prayer affords...
...Some have suggested that the press is fascinated with Yuppie boomers because most of the people doing the stories on generational politics are in effect ~ writing about themselves...
...Yet Mondale also won only 31 percent of the whites in the industrial Midwest...
...They deserve a close look...
...But along comes the party's premier pollster Pat Caddell, to rain on the parade...
...The 1976 election notwithstanding, the antagonism between Yankees and Southerners is our oldest and most enduring regional rivalry...
...I 'tried to start a junior ROTC program in high school because I thought students should have that option...
...In the past five elections, Democratic candidates have averaged 42 percent of the popular vote, Republicans 53 percent...
...In the five elections since the Johnson landslide of 1964, "twenty-three states that now have 202 electoral votes have voted Republican five times straight...
...And yet, I believe that such equality of respect is a necessary part of what we should be about in the process of llving a good life...
...Caught up in the politics of the possible, the professionals of public education seemed too willing to defend the fact that the school setting frequently denied students some of their basic rights as individuals...
...Such a respect for power is, I believe, misplaced...
...I believe that in many ways our social interactions should give evidence of our belief that we are one community and that God has a very real and immediate closeness to every one of us...
...In 1984 the Democrats came far closer to winning electoral votes in the West than in the South...
...Poor teaching, poor use of instructional time, low expectations, inadequate curricula, and an uncaring atmosphere were all too often defended on the basis of the needs of the system...
...I learned at St...
...For others buoyed by Democratic success in the'~86 off-year elections, Caddell points out that a swing of a mere 29,000 votes would have left the Senate in Republican control...
...FRED SIEGEL Caddell, they have to realize that the long-term trends in presidential voting are running against them...
...We think that leadership is only a function of those endowed with leadership roles in complex organizations...
...We meet God in the challenge to do good things, in the glory of our successes, and in the lessons of our failures...
...At certain times I have felt quite lonely pursuing what I thought was a basic part of the community's value system only to find out that many people were unaware of what I was talking about or what I actually meant...
...This lesson applies strongly as well at home for family...
...For those comforted by the analogies between Watergate and Contra-gate, Caddell notes that even after the greatest scandal in American history, the Democrats barely hung on to win against the man who had pardoned Richard Nixon...
...Driven by a debunking spirit, the memo moves point by point to try to unsettle those Democrats who believe the presidency is theirs for the asking in '88...
...By the same measure --states won four times out of five the Democrats can add only Minnesota...
...But even if Biden could appeal to this halfgeneration, there are still sharp differences...
...Relentlessly, Caddell slices the numbers every which way to show that they always lead to the same dismal conclusions...
...author of Troubled Journey: From Pearl Harbor to Ronald Reagan (Hill and Wang), teaches in the humanities department of The Cooper Union in New York City...
...His own...
...The requirement of community-building --in family life, in social life, and in our civic life --requires an infusion of personal commitment that combines a strong sense of self-worth with a strong sense of how the larger community must operate in basic harmony...
...I brought a law suit against the board of examiners --I was on the board --and won the point that found discriminatory the BABY-BOOMERANG WHY THE DEMOCRATS CAN'T COUNT ON GENERATIONAL POLITICS he wheel of fortune has smiled on the Democrats of late...
...Older male boomers were far more supportive of Reagan than the collegeeducated single women who distinguished themselves by voting against Reagan in unusual proportions...
...Few women or minorities had ever been chosen...
...State University of New York at Buffalo "Maternal Consent and Ensoulment" MarJorle Maguire, Author "Contraceptive and Reproductive Freedom" Robert Francoeur,, professor of human sexuality, Falrleigh Dickinson University "Fathering and Fatherhood: A Perspective of Catholic Ethics" MeHe Longwood, professor of religion...
...But even so, the boomers are unlikely to have a profound effect on the electoral college, which is where presidential elections are won and lost...
...Where once they were reduced to waiting for a severe recession in order to recapture the presidency, the victories in the '86 mid-term election lifted them out "of the morass of depression" and the Iragua affair promised to produce a presidential victory in '88...
...What then is to be done...
...First, geographically it's the South and not the West, he argues, perhaps with his old boss Jimmy Carter in mind, which holds the greatest near-term potential...
...FREE INQUIRY's Sixth Annual Conference ROMAN CATHOLICISM: CONFRONTING THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD Friday, September 11, 1987 American University, ,80 TT.,SCON R NC I AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW FREE INQUIRY's sixth annual conference proudaeg to [ Roman Catholicism Confronts Washington, D.C...
...In public life we define a life of success in terms of higher office...
...In 1982 Catholic voters gave Democratic congressional candidates 63 percent of the vote...
...as the Northeast has swung Democratic in recent years, the South has swung Republican...
...Caddell's analysis of these trends and his strategy for overcoming them, are already exerting a major influence on the Democratic primary race...
...And therein may lie part of the answer...
...As political marketing and product marketing have become increasingly intertwined, advertisers selling to the boomer market are likely to have a distorted sense of the importance of Yuppies, mistakenly seen to typify the boomers, but whose purchasing power, in fact, far exceeds their weight in the population or at the polling place...
...Siena College 5:00-7:30 P.M.--Dinner--Terrace Dining Room 7:30-10:00 P.M.--Wm'd Circle Auditorium Free InqdirY and Papal Authority Chairman, Gtrald I.true, professor emeritus of archaeology and biblical history, University of Southern California at Los Angeles For further information, please contact FREE INQUIRY magazine a (716) 834-2921 Never before have Roman Catholic theologians enlpqed | in lengthy dialogue with secular humanists about Issue* of ] concern to the general public:, the church and politics, the | role of the papacy, church doctrine on reprodiKtive ] freedom, the role of women...
...Second, generationally --and this is clearly the heart of Caddell's message, not only in this memo but for the last fifteen years --the Democrats have to make themselves the party of the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, the single largest age group in the electorate...
...I believe that my faith in God has mattered a great deal in the quality of the work I do...
...I felt often that the education community largely refused to understand the basic entitlements of children...
...In these situations we confuse the importance of a job with the importance of work...
...Their 152 electoral votes would give the Republicans a total of thirty-six states and 354 electoral votes, a comfortable 84 votes more than is needed to win...
...nine states and in twenty-one states they've averaged less than 40 percent of the vote...
...This is a debatable proposition...
...Yet in 1972, the one year that neither Humphrey nor Mondale was on the ticket, the state went Republican...
...It is the power of prayer, as well, that affords us courage to do things that are filled with risks...
...However much comfort Democrats want to take from short-term events, says 442" Commonweal test for supervisors in the public schools...
...Michael X. Delli Carpini, the author of the most extensive study of baby-boomer political behavior, has concluded that their voting patterns "have become increasingly similar to those of the rest of the population...
...But only the District of Colombia whose 3 electoral votes are a scant 1 percent of the number needed has plunked for the Democrats five times running...
...Caddell has faithfully recreated the spirit of Archie's argument, except that for him the parataxic moments are the political and cultural events of 1968 and 1972...
...My wife, Mary, whose home I have shared for more than seventeen years, has taught me wonderful things about how faith that runs deep can be so beautiful...
...Like the Beatles fans of the sixties, futilely searching for hidden meaning in the rock group's lyrics, the Caddellites have searched for the hidden wellspring of generational votes...
...Caddell's views have been laid out in a widely discussed ninety-two page memo written by Caddell for IMPAC, a group of big-money contributors to the Democratic party looking for guidance in how to place their political bets/investments...
...Responding to pollsters, they are far more likely to agree, "Yes, it is unfair to bring a child into the world...
...There are 76 million Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964, more than half of the voting age population...
...When it comes to evidence to show that the spirit of '68 will 1"eappear in '88, Caddell and his journalistic supporters shift from statistical arguments to a mystical invocation of the spirits...
Vol. 114 • August 1987 • No. 14
