Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Fascinating article:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/the-gop-is-dying-off-literally-118035.html?ml=po

Another unreported but unfortunately too real scenario is people who can no longer get to the polls due to various ailments.

Though there's some meh math there let's assume the GOP loses about 400k more voters than the Democrats in 4 years simply due to having more older voters. The total vote in the last election was 125M. That means this effect is less than 1% of the popular vote, about 0.3% last time. If it builds over many elections it becomes a larger and larger problem, but for any given cycle it's decimal dust.

We saw the same effect when New Deal Democrats started dying off in the 70s and 80s. Up until that time, the Democrats had actually held an advantage among older voters due to the hangover effect of FDR's popularity. We're seeing that now with the aging of the Reagan coalition. (By the next election a person will have to be at least 50 to have ever cast a vote for Reagan. About 44% of the US electorate is over 50 (95 / 215M), meaning a large majority of American voters have no adult recollection of a Republican president not named "Bush.")

Paradoxically, I think the effect will become smaller because of GOP policies. As Paul Ryan et al introduce bills aimed at privatizing social security, older voters will become more nervous about the GOP and Republican loyalty among the olds will soften. The GOP was betting on younger voters cutting payments for a system they tried to convince them would never be around for them, but that doesn't seem to have worked. (For one thing, social security's solvency is fine. For another, the GOP had what is usually the Dems' problem: the message they were trying to put over was too complicated for the typical voter.)

tl; dr: If I were a Republican, I'd worry a lot more about my party's association with racist and misogynist themes than aging out. The world will always produce roughly as many conservatives as liberals. The question is will the GOP be perceived as a modern conservative party or as an atavistic reactionary menace. The GOP needs its David Cameron.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Have to say I've enjoyed Marco and Jeb vomiting all over themselves on this issue the last week or so. Apparently even the super dangerous Walker couldn't quite handle the question either. Rand handled it just fine which means he has absolutely no shot at the GOP nod.

What'd Rubio do? It must have been obscured by the brightness of Jeb's supernova of fail.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

FWIW, Iraq was meant to be the Millennials' Vietnam (population's too big, so draft as many as you can and prolong the war to control the population). Ever wonder why it seems like countries go to war every few generations or so?

It used to be to thin the sociopaths from the herd, but our casualty rates are way too low to do that anymore.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

What'd Rubio do? It must have been obscured by the brightness of Jeb's supernova of fail.

You'll have to look it up. He was on Fox News Sunday and got into a 3 minute semantics argument with Wallace. It was beautiful.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

You'll have to look it up. He was on Fox News Sunday and got into a 3 minute semantics argument with Wallace. It was beautiful.

Oh.

My God... that's amazing. Is he ducking or just plain stupid? Is it possible that, like Sarah Palin, he simply can't combine concepts at the intellectual level of an average 8th grader?

Hitherto I have believed most of these guys: Walker, Rubio, Jeb, Christie, are just typical hucksters who, when confronted with their lies being on tape, try to bluff it out or deflect onto That Evil Media or whatever. In a word: politicians. But based on both Jeb and Rubio the last week I'm starting to wonder whether they are actually on Dubya's short bus.

For that matter, which is worse?

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Oh.

My God... that's amazing. Is he ducking or just plain stupid? Is it possible that, like Sarah Palin, he simply can't combine concepts at the intellectual level of an average 8th grader?

And if you want to know the real GOP position on Iraq here's Lindsey Graham.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-drone-kill-islamic-state

"If you fought in Iraq it's not your fault it's going to hell," Graham said. "It's Obama's fault."

"The person I blame is Barack Obama not George W. Bush," he said.

"If I'm President of the United States and you're thinkin' about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL — anybody thinkin' about that? — I'm not going to call a judge, I'm going to call a drone and we will kill you," Graham said at the Iowa Republican Party's annual Lincoln Day Dinner fundraiser.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

And if you want to know the real GOP position on Iraq here's Lindsey Graham.

Now, see, that's just good ol' corn pone tub thumpin'. That's what I expect from the party of the herpa-derps. Good for him!

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Though there's some meh math there let's assume the GOP loses about 400k more voters than the Democrats in 4 years simply due to having more older voters. The total vote in the last election was 125M. That means this effect is less than 1% of the popular vote, about 0.3% last time. If it builds over many elections it becomes a larger and larger problem, but for any given cycle it's decimal dust.

We saw the same effect when New Deal Democrats started dying off in the 70s and 80s. Up until that time, the Democrats had actually held an advantage among older voters due to the hangover effect of FDR's popularity. We're seeing that now with the aging of the Reagan coalition. (By the next election a person will have to be at least 50 to have ever cast a vote for Reagan. About 44% of the US electorate is over 50 (95 / 215M), meaning a large majority of American voters have no adult recollection of a Republican president not named "Bush.")

Paradoxically, I think the effect will become smaller because of GOP policies. As Paul Ryan et al introduce bills aimed at privatizing social security, older voters will become more nervous about the GOP and Republican loyalty among the olds will soften. The GOP was betting on younger voters cutting payments for a system they tried to convince them would never be around for them, but that doesn't seem to have worked. (For one thing, social security's solvency is fine. For another, the GOP had what is usually the Dems' problem: the message they were trying to put over was too complicated for the typical voter.)

tl; dr: If I were a Republican, I'd worry a lot more about my party's association with racist and misogynist themes than aging out. The world will always produce roughly as many conservatives as liberals. The question is will the GOP be perceived as a modern conservative party or as an atavistic reactionary menace. The GOP needs its David Cameron.

Kep I suspect you didn't read the whole article. In it the author states the bigger issues is the people aged 15-17 in 2012 who will now be eligible to vote. Using his calcs figuring in turn out rate for this demographic and 2012 voter preference he figures another 2M net Dem votes. The guy's pretty open about this being back of the envolope calcs, but still it sounds logical. Add to the .5M deceased elderly righties you'd have to add at least that who are too sickly to get out and vote. In truth its probably more than that.

The last election was won by about 5M votes. Add 3M more to that and Cruz/Walker/Bush/etc now need to go out and find 8M new voters on their own, or switch 8M minds to vote their way. No, elections aren't won by popular vote, but I find it hard to fathom that a candidate could lose the popular vote by that much and still prevail in the electoral college.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Kep I suspect you didn't read the whole article. In it the author states the bigger issues is the people aged 15-17 in 2012 who will now be eligible to vote.

I read the whole article, and I'm deliberately ignoring the last part. For one thing, it doesn't have bearing on the primary thesis: they're dying. For another, I have no faith that youth voting patterns will stay markedly liberal. They vary wildly based on exogenous factors like economic conditions, world events, ideological fads, and the charisma of particular leaders.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

I read the whole article, and I'm deliberately ignoring the last part. For one thing, it doesn't have bearing on the primary thesis: they're dying. For another, I have no faith that youth voting patterns will stay markedly liberal. They vary wildly based on exogenous factors like economic conditions, world events, ideological fads, and the charisma of particular leaders.

Yes, because the party that wants us to return to 50's era social policy and 80's era economic policy has real pull amongst people born in the 90's....

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Yes, because the party that wants us to return to 50's era social policy and 80's era economic policy has real pull amongst people born in the 90's....

You put weight on that leg at your peril, Rover. It's mushy at best. If the culture war was deterministic of youth voting, we would have gained a greater and greater portion of their vote going all the way back to the early 70's, as the GOP was essentially frozen in amber at 6:01 p.m. ET on April 4, 1968 and has not moved an inch since. And yet, this has not happened.

The GOP posted gains in youth vote percentage from the prior election in: 1976, 1984, and 2000. In each of these years, culture war themes were prominent and an allegedly more tolerant and socially progressive youth culture should have resulted in lower GOP numbers.

But it's far, far more complicated than that, and if you assume the youth gap will remain as huge as it has been during Obama's two elections I think you are in for a rude shock.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

If you read between the lines the upcoming GOP Iraq talking point will be to flip it on its face and ignore the question and talk about how pulling out screwed it up. Now it isnt about how bad a war it was, but how once we were in we should have stayed in and so it is all on Obama.

Whatever strategist came up with that should be fired, because there is zero chance the populous buys that. It didnt work with Vietnam and it wont work with Iraq either...

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

If you read between the lines the upcoming GOP Iraq talking point will be to flip it on its face and ignore the question and talk about how pulling out screwed it up. Now it isnt about how bad a war it was, but how once we were in we should have stayed in and so it is all on Obama.

Whatever strategist came up with that should be fired, because there is zero chance the populous buys that. It didnt work with Vietnam and it wont work with Iraq either...

It'll work with the GOP base who cheered Lindsey when he said he would drone any American who joined ISIS.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

It'll work with the GOP base who cheered Lindsey when he said he would drone any American who joined ISIS.

Yes, and that's all that matters to the candidates right now. The other problem, of course, is that Bush actually negotiated the pull out. Details, details.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Yes, and that's all that matters to the candidates right now. The other problem, of course, is that Bush actually negotiated the pull out. Details, details.

It's amazing how people forget that part. Or the part where Iraq told us to get the **** out of there.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

You put weight on that leg at your peril, Rover. It's mushy at best. If the culture war was deterministic of youth voting, we would have gained a greater and greater portion of their vote going all the way back to the early 70's, as the GOP was essentially frozen in amber at 6:01 p.m. ET on April 4, 1968 and has not moved an inch since. And yet, this has not happened.

The GOP posted gains in youth vote percentage from the prior election in: 1976, 1984, and 2000. In each of these years, culture war themes were prominent and an allegedly more tolerant and socially progressive youth culture should have resulted in lower GOP numbers.

But it's far, far more complicated than that, and if you assume the youth gap will remain as huge as it has been during Obama's two elections I think you are in for a rude shock.

That's the myth of the baby boomers. While 60's campus radicals may have gotten headlines, consider this. The big liberal elections of 1960-1964 were done with zero help from Boomers, as they weren't eligible to vote until at least the 1968 elections (and even then only those born in 46 to mid 47 would have been old enough). Only in '72 with the change in voting age would have captured most of them.

So, it was NEVER boomers giving libs their congressional mandates. It was the WWII Generation. I say those whiny, self centered Boomers were always GOP leaners in totality. Especially when the 80's rolled around and they hit their late 20's and early 30's.

Millenials for whatever reasons share few social norms with their Boomer parents but line up closer to Gen X. While you had once put forth the theory that people get more conservative when they get older, that theory has been debunked. Plus we already have a voting pattern to review as Millenials have been voting since 2004.

 

[Rover]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

If you read between the lines the upcoming GOP Iraq talking point will be to flip it on its face and ignore the question and talk about how pulling out screwed it up. Now it isnt about how bad a war it was, but how once we were in we should have stayed in and so it is all on Obama.

Whatever strategist came up with that should be fired, because there is zero chance the populous buys that. It didnt work with Vietnam and it wont work with Iraq either...

Amazing how hard it is for even people who had nothing to do with voting for the war to own up to their party's mistakes. Jebbers is in an admittedly tough position on this one and frankly I don't see any realistic way out. He owns his brother's war. But Rubio, Walker, etc have nothing to do with it so should not only wash their hands up it, but should blast the decision to go to war as a way to damage Jeb Bush by proxy. Think of the ball washing the lamestream media would do if say Christie came out and blasted Bush or Cheney over that. The NYT's would endorse his candidacy immediately and he'd get an offer from CNN to be their new prime time host.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

It's amazing how people forget that part. Or the part where Iraq told us to get the **** out of there.

One of the problems with the GOP is their power structure is still living in the 80s and thinks all they have to do is deploy the "Dems are soft on defense" meme and the suburbanites will come running under their skirt. But that perception is dead with everyone but the septuagenarians at National Review Online. The Democrats have been better on defense and much better on the economy for the last 20 years, robbing the GOP of their traditional strengths. All that's really left are fatigue (which is a problem after 8 years) and their dog whistles, which are more and more problematic in the internet age. They used to be able to roll into NC, drop a few veiled references to the N word, and roll out with a 4-point push among ahem "social conservatives." But now that gets on the web in a matter of minutes and for every racist they pull in a dozen moderates are pushed just that much farther away. The Atwater-Ailes strategy of winning by racing to the bottom is no longer effective outside the deep south.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

Amazing how hard it is for even people who had nothing to do with voting for the war to own up to their party's mistakes. Jebbers is in an admittedly tough position on this one and frankly I don't see any realistic way out. He owns his brother's war. But Rubio, Walker, etc have nothing to do with it so should not only wash their hands up it, but should blast the decision to go to war as a way to damage Jeb Bush by proxy. Think of the ball washing the lamestream media would do if say Christie came out and blasted Bush or Cheney over that. The NYT's would endorse his candidacy immediately and he'd get an offer from CNN to be their new prime time host.

That's funny considering how complicit the Times was on the Iraq war. Judith Miller was working there you know.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Campaign 2016 - It's never too late to start all over again!

That's the myth of the baby boomers. While 60's campus radicals may have gotten headlines, consider this. The big liberal elections of 1960-1964 were done with zero help from Boomers, as they weren't eligible to vote until at least the 1968 elections (and even then only those born in 46 to mid 47 would have been old enough). Only in '72 with the change in voting age would have captured most of them.

So, it was NEVER boomers giving libs their congressional mandates. It was the WWII Generation. I say those whiny, self centered Boomers were always GOP leaners in totality. Especially when the 80's rolled around and they hit their late 20's and early 30's.

Millenials for whatever reasons share few social norms with their Boomer parents but line up closer to Gen X. While you had once put forth the theory that people get more conservative when they get older, that theory has been debunked. Plus we already have a voting pattern to review as Millenials have been voting since 2004.

Needless to say, I think nearly all of this is bunk. The one thing that is true is that voting patterns established after 2 elections are very hard to break, so mid 20-year olds who are tied enough into politics to have voted twice for Obama will likely be captured Dems for life.

Your Boomer slam is a favorite meme right now among a certain type of Journalistic Jihadist, but suffice to say that (1) there's zero upside and lots of risk in using that sort of dismissive language for an enormous portion of the electorate and (2) it says nothing about future generations, which will be influenced by the events of their day and could as easily be another Reagan generation as an Obama generation.

I hate to see the errors of 2000 being repeated by Hillary's core supporters. These arguments reek of over-confidence and establishment groupthink and are the type of position that history just loves to see crash and burn.