YUCCies - Young Urban Conservatives

YUCCies - Young Urban Conservatives - Michael Medved and Lori Sturdevant are, for once, on the same sheet of music.

Medved had some big news last week. Apparently, for the first time in decades, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans is equal to those calling themselves Democrats.

More importantly:

About a third of adults under age 30 now say they're Republicans, up from about a quarter in 1983. Meanwhile the Democrats' share of young adults has gone from about a third 20 years ago to fewer than a quarter today. (Among older adults, four in 10 are Democrats.)

This is huge news. For the first time, Democrats are older than Republicans, and the younger generation is largely - perhaps decisively - Republican.

Polipundit notes that Republicans are garnering a veritable flood of volunteers.

And that national trend has coattails here in St. Paul. The Strib's Lori Sturdevant observed about last week's City Council and School Board elections:

Sociologists say that in countless ways across America in the next decade or so, ambitious baby busters (born between 1965, though some say 1961, and 1976) are going to be bumping into members of the dominating, and often domineering, generation that was born between 1946 and 1964 (or, if you prefer, 1960).

The bumps will come for several reasons. These are people with different values and expectations from life. They often don't understand or like each other very much. Further, there are a lot more boomers than busters, and a lot of boomers have no intention to yield their spot on life's stage to a Gen-X upstart. "They are the first generation in modern times to approach later middle age not expecting to retire," Reinhardt said.

She elucidated: Research shows that people's experiences between the ages of 17 and 24 color their values and attitudes for the rest of their days. America's boomers experienced affluence, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War. The busters knew financial insecurity, family breakup, the end of the Cold War. It's Bob Dylan vs. Kurt Cobain, Ed Sullivan vs. MTV, the Kennedys vs. Ronald Reagan.

The result is a 50-something cohort that tends to be optimistic, communitarian and politically liberal, vs. 30-somethings who are skeptical, individualistic and conservative at the polls, if you can get them there. Think Paul Wellstone vs. Tim Pawlenty.

Leave aside the subtle derogation ("We" got to the polls, Lori, and you've been pissing and moaning about it since last November). She's right. And it's going to have an impact that will have Lori Sturdevant ever more upset as she rolls into her declining years.

I live in the Midway. It's a nice, middle-class neighborhood. It's in Saint Paul, a city whose main business is government. It's also within two miles of five colleges and universities. The neighborhood is home to many of the people who work for government or government education; teachers, bureaucrats, administrators, professors, and quite a few of their students. And they vote DFL; my neighborhood sends Jay Benanav to the City Council, Alice "The Phantom" Hausman to the House, Ellen Anderson (who is as personable and responsive as she is liberal, which really sucks, because I feel bad trying to insult her!) to the state Senate, and is the lynchpin of Betty "White-out on the Monitor" McCollum's support in the Fourth Congressional District.

With some - many - of my neighbors, I feel like I'm in perpetual, first-date, "try not to make them hate me" mode. You can see the looks - on a street dotted (still!) with Wellstone signs, my "Coleman" sign got funny looks (and then got stolen). I see political candidates gingerly flit past my yard, as I wait, watching.

"Really, DFL neighbor - I'm not such a bad guy".

And yet.

Maybe things are changing. Sturdevant's "Wellstone Vs. Pawlenty" simile is excellent, but here in the Midway, it's more like "Hubert Humphrey vs. Pawlenty." The old guard is getting older. They're moving to smaller houses, or to Florida...

...and they're being replaced by younger, "Gen-X" couples with young kids; people like me, I guess. And as a very broad thing, they seem more conservative than the neighbors they replaced. Younger, less-institutional families, drawn by the wonderful housing stock and bargain-basement prices, have been moving in as the older generation moves on.

St. Paul is a strange place; it mixes the Wellstone-y, Kathleen-Soliah-supporting la-la-land DFL of Highland Park with the blue-collar, "pro-life, pro-gun" DFL of Randy Kelly's east side. And looking at the examples of the likes of Brett Shundler in Jersey City, and hopefully Jack Ryan in Chicago, it's an interesting exercise to think...what would it take to put a conservative Republican in office is Saint Paul?

Saint Paul's ethnic minorities have quadrupled their numbers in the past decade. They vote solidly DFL. And when I talk with them, I have to ask; why?

• If you're Latino - hard-working, Catholic, socially-conservative - why do you vote for the part of welfare and abortion?
• If you're an Afro-American who's raising a family - and trying to get a decent education for your kids - why do you vote for the party of our education system's wretched status quo?
• If you're Asian - hard-working, with a legendary (and sometimes stereotypical) focus on education - what is it about the DFL's endless upsucking to the teacher's union that grabs you?
• If you're Somali - why would you vote for a party that essentially coddles dictators like the ones that destroyed your nation?
• If you're a legal immigrant - the kind that built this country - why would you find any traction with a party that promotes illegal immigration, which only devalues your jobs and hurts your status in this country?

Thinking globally: conservatism seems to be winning the war, bit by tiny bit.

Thinking locally: How do we make it happen in Saint Paul?

As Drudge would say - developing.

Posted by Mitch at November 7, 2003 11:36 AM