https://thebulwark.com/darwin-is-coming-for-the-gop/

“Another ayfkm moment.” 🙂

I almost didn’t read this article, because it looks like Yet Another Demographics Is Destiny! article (based on the headline), but The Bulwark is a conservative outlet, I guess (remnants of The Weekly Standard?), and I got sorta sucked in by this:

«Let’s start with the orange elephant in the room. The youngs don’t like Donald Trump. The only generation that gives him a majority approval rating is the “silent” generation (those born before 1945). After that, Trump’s approval numbers by generation are downright grim. boomers: 43 percent; Gen-X: 38 percent; millennials: 29 percent; Gen-Z: 30 percent.

When the numbers are this stark, you don’t even have to project out a generation to see the electoral effects. Trump’s strongest cohort is people aged 73 to 90 in 2018. Some non-trivial percentage of those folks—probably upward of 5 percent—won’t be around even in November 2020.

Then there’s gay marriage: Young people are almost entirely supportive of it, with 85 percent of Gen-Z and millennials saying it’s a good thing or it doesn’t make a difference. If you’re still opposed, it’s time to surrender. Not only has it been almost 30 years since Andrew Sullivan made his eloquent “(Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage” but the practice was legal in a growing number of states before Obergefell v. Hodges sealed the deal in 2015. In all that time, the universe neglected to open a black hole and swallow the earth as punishment. If you must console yourself, consider that marriage is an inherently conservative institution and two-parent families, whatever their marital status or partner makeup, create more positive outcomes for kids.

Another ayfkm moment comes from looking at the study’s results on race. Respondents who identified as Democrats were consistent across generational divides in supporting the idea that blacks aren’t treated fairly today, with anywhere from 76 percent (boomers) to 82 percent (Gen-Z and millennials) agreeing with that sentiment. By comparison, only 20 percent of older Republican generations supported that statement. Gen-Z Republicans were still far behind their Democratic counterparts in agreeing with this view, but there were more than twice as likely to agree (43 percent) as boomer Republicans.

(The Gen-Z Republicans seem to be convinced by (1) the data showing that blacks deal with higher poverty and incarceration rates, and that their encounters with police are more likely to be deadly; and (2) high-profile anecdotes which show black Americans being subjected to pernicious, ridiculous, and humiliating experiences. Republicans can point out the flaws of affirmative action and debate the causes of (and solutions to) poverty and crime rates. But they probably shouldn’t pretend that the problems aren’t real.)»

(I do have something to say about that “standing athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!'” sentiment: Conservatives aren’t heroes, and haven’t been since 1964, when they suddenly decided they could stop Negroes from enjoying the benefits of the Civil Rights Act. Everything they have done since then has constituted the road that led to this moment, and they should spend at least a generation in purgatory as a result, until they can lose the racists, sexists, homophobes, and downright selfish people that make up so much of their ranks.)

[Interesting writeup of the Defending Democracy Together Institute, which publishes The Bulwark: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/defending-democracy-together-institute/.]

(Twitter had better not pick up any preceding links instead of the one at the top of this post, but just in case, here it is again: https://thebulwark.com/darwin-is-coming-for-the-gop/.)