They just don't get it. The increasingly hilarious arguments being made by the Clinton camp about Barack Obama's supposed lack of electability in November have been shown to be bunk time and time and time again. Barack Obama can easily defeat John McCain in November (probably even more easily than she can), and everyone knows it. Heck, Hillary even said so herself in front of millions of viewers.
But there's a big problem with the whole "electability" argument, anyway. Let's give the mendacious Clinton camp the benefit of the doubt and say that Hillary is a sure thing, while Obama would likely lose. Wrong, but let's grant that idea.
I. Wouldn't. Care. Anyway. And neither should you.
Why not, you say? What could be more important than ending the occupation of Iraq and saving thousands or tens of thousands of lives (though there are doubts about whether Clinton would truly end it), preventing an attack on Iran (though there are doubts about what Clinton would do there, too), enacting the beginnings of universal healthcare, ending the insane fiscal mismanagement of the Bush Administration, putting to bed the Imperial Presidency, beginning action on curbing CO2 emissions and other environmental degradataion, and helping to ensure that the Supreme Court does not fall into irreparably conservative, insanely dogmatic hands? What could be more important than all this?
Demographics and the future of the Democratic Party. As Morley Winograd and Michael Hais point out in their outstanding new book Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & and the Future of American Politics, America stands on the verge of a new political realignment. The baby boomers who used the overwhelming numbers of what been until now the largest American generation in history, ushered in the previous Idealist Realignment that flipped the Dixiecrat, racist southern white vote toward the Republicans, while making the Democratic Party the bastion of civil rights, equality and personal freedoms. This Idealist boomer generation, like Idealist generations before it that engaged in the Temperance and Suffragist movements, was marked by an obsession with social issues such as substance abuse, cultural issues, race, and the role of women in society. Like other Idealist generations, it was also marked by a distrust of government, a pattern of decreasing voter turnout, a marked preference for divided government, and rising numbers of Independents and split-ticket voters.
As Winograd and Hais point out (building on the fantastic work of generational scientists Strauss, Howe, and others), political realignments in American history occur in generational cycles of approximately 30-35 years or so--and America is due to experience another one yet again. This time the realignment will be led by the Millennial Generation (born, depending on how you count it, between approximately 1982 and 2000). As with the GI generation that survived the Great Depression and fought in World War II, this upcoming Millennial generation is a Civic Generation marked by increased desire to work together to solve problems; an increase in partisanship and the belief in the power of political parties to effectuate results; a strong belief in the positive power of government; and a move away from divisive social issues toward more structural fixes in the economy, governmental process, and range of other issues. America is changing, and fast.
Even more importantly, the Millennial generation is the largest generation in history--larger in numbers even than the boomers--and we have the opportunity lock them in to the Democratic Party for the next FORTY years. As Michael Connery, author of Youth to Power: How Young Voters are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority said two years ago at his blog Future Majority:
We've talked a lot lately about young voters. How they turned out in near record numbers, and broke heavily democratic. Pollsters, bloggers and strategists are also busy promoting the fact that if a someone votes for a party 3 times (before they turn 30),they are likely to become a life-long voter for that party. The new conventional wisdom is this: "youth voted Democratic in 2004 and in 2006. If we get them in 2008, we've locked a generation the size of the baby boomers for life."
That's right, people: if the Democratic Party gets the vote of the Millennial generation again, it will have it for the rest of their natural lives, creating a daunting electoral majority that will ensure Democratic advantages if not Democratic dominance for the next 30-40 years--whether McCain happens to get elected in 2008 or not.
And yet, points out Connery, the votes of Millennials in 2008 cannot be taken for granted:
So while I share most everyone's view that the trends are extremely encouraging, and we've locked up 2/3 of the necessary elections to solidify a sizable portion of Millennials as life-ling Democratic voters, I don't think that the 3rd and final election is necessarily a lock. With Bush off the ballot, the electoral conditions will be different in 2008.
So the question becomes, how do we solidify this "first" of many 3/3 elections, and how do we keep that trend going into the future? This gets to my second point. The answer, I think, lies in a long-term strategic vision that can bridge the Millennial's gap between volunteering and voting. It will require a shift in thinking that expands the political engagement of young voters beyond the current cyclical programs (which ramp up in September and disappear by December), towards a more comprehensive vision in which participation is one aspect of an overall lifestyle.
That is exactly what Obama has done through targeted messaging and through the innovative use of the new communications technologies beloved of the new Millennial generation (an important point, as realignments are nearly always aided by advances in communications technologies), and why he is overwhelmingly favored by young voters. With Obama at the top of the ticket, the Millennials will come to the polls in massive numbers to elect him. Will they succeed? I don't know. But in a larger sense, it doesn't really matter. If McCain and the Republican Party win the Presidency in 2008 despite losing Millennials for the 3rd straight election, it will by a Pyrrhic and short-lived victory.
So while the pundits and prognosticators all fret over whether Obama can win over the famed "Reagan Democrats"--conservative-leaning boomers and older Xers who voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 on the basis of his anti-government and not-so-subtle racism and cemented the voting patterns that are the hallmark of the realignment of 1968--I have my sights on the future. Reagan Democrats are not the future, and they will probably never come back to the Democratic fold in the sorts of numbers that will swing an election to our Party in the years ahead. That is because their instinctive focus on divisive social issues, their racial resentments that were the subject of Obama's masterful speech on race in Philadelphia, their inherent distrust for government and its efficacy, and their disbelief in the power to effectuate real change through partisan means are directly contrary to the message of the post-racial, structurally focused and fundamentally optimistic Millennials that the Democratic Party should and must adopt going forward. Reagan Democrats are not the present or future of the Party: new immigrants (especially Hispanics) and Millennials are.
That's why Obama is the right nominee for Democrats in 2008. Not just because he is winning by all real measures, including actual delegates and the popular vote, nor because he is just as electable as Clinton if not more so. All of these are true, but it wouldn't matter if they were not.
Obama is the nominee who can literally lock in structural advantages for Democrats for the next forty years (to say nothing of Obama's downballot advantages today). Clinton is the nominee who will wage an increasingly futile battle to bring back the lost Democratic coalitions of yesteryear.
Win or lose in November, the right choice for the Party and the country is obvious: Barack Obama is the candidate who will secure the future of the Party--win or lose. Just don't expect pundits, prognosticators and consultants still stuck in the realignment patterns of 1968 to understand that.
They just don't get it--and they probably never will.