It’s Now Time for Washington to Break the Groundhog Day Cycle

In the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day, self-centered TV weathercaster, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is doomed to continuously repeat the events of his life. Only the counsel and eventual love of his producer, Rita, (Andie MacDowell) allows Phil to break the never-ending cycle that keeps him in place. Like Phil Connors, many Washington pundits and politicians act as if they and the country are destined to keep on reliving 1993. The latest of these is former George W. Bush speechwriter, William McGurn. In a Wall Street Journal column McGurn maintains that the failure of Congress to enact healthcare reform during the first year of the Clinton administration forced the president to move to the right, announce that the "era of big government is over" and thereby save his presidency. At least by indirection, McGurn recommends that Barack Obama would benefit if he did the same thing.

But it's not 1993 and it's now finally time to break the Groundhog Day pattern of American politics. The United States has moved to a new political era driven by the emergence of America's next civic generation, Millennials (born 1982-2003), and marked by a new pattern of partisan identification and changed attitudes. Strategies that may have been useful nearly two decades ago are not likely to be effective now. Failure to recognize these changes by adhering to old and worn out approaches, in fact, will be counterproductive.

One thing that has changed since the early 1990s is that the American electorate is no longer evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. In 1994, according to the Pew Research Center, an equal number of voters identified as or leaned to the Democrats and Republicans (44% each). Now Pew shows an electorate in which half of the electorate, or slightly more call themselves or lean to the Democrats and only a third identify as or lean to the Republicans. Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by an even larger margin (56% vs. 30%).

Moreover, the U.S. electorate is now more open to governmental activity and economic intervention, more positive toward government, and less driven by moralistic fears on social issues than it was on the eve of the Gingrich revolution in 1994.

 

Total Electorate 1994

Total Electorate 2009

Millennials 2009

Attitudes Toward Government Economic Activity and Regulation

 

 

 

Agree it is responsibility of government to take care of people who can't take care of themselves

57%

63%

63%

Agree government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep

59%

62%

69%

Agree government should help more needy people even if national debt increases

41%

48%

60%

Agree poor people have become too dependent on government assistance

85%

72%

65%

Concerned that government will become too involved in health care

 

Not asked

46%

36%

Agree government investment needed to develop new energy technology

 

Not asked

58%

68%

Agree government regulation of business does more harm than good

63%

56%

51%

Overall Attitudes Toward and Confidence in Government

 

 

 

Agree federal government controls too much of our daily lives

69%

55%

48%

Agree government is run for the benefit of all people

42%

49%

60%

Agree that when government runs things it is usually wasteful and inefficient

69%

57%

42%

Agree people like me have no say in what government does

54%

51%

46%

Attitudes on Social Issues

 

 

 

Agree women should return to their traditional roles in society

30%

19%

16%

Agree school boards should be able to fire teachers who are known homosexuals

39%

28%

21%

Agree that they have old-fashioned values about family and marriage

84%

71%

60%

Unfortunately, many inside the Beltway seem intent on reliving 1993 rather than moving to the new Millennial civic era. For Republicans and conservatives, who see resistance to change and derailing Obama administration initiatives as the way back to political power, this isn't surprising. After all, failure to pass health care reform in the first two years of the Clinton administration contributed to the GOP sweep in the 1994-midterm elections. Republicans are hoping that, as in Groundhog Day, history will repeat itself. For Democrats, the results of acting like it's 1993 are already worrisome and could soon become disastrous.

In a review of recent Gallup Poll data Real Clear Politics polling analyst, Jay Cost, points out that since mid-July Barack Obama's job approval rating among 18-29 year olds (primarily Millennials) has fallen from 71% to 60%. Cost argues that this decline results from the volatility of young voters who are early in the process of forming lifelong political preferences. To support his contention, he says that young Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) preferred George McGovern in 1972 and later switched to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Actually, however, Gallup data indicates that a slight majority of Boomers voted for Richard Nixon over McGovern in 1972 (52%). In 1980, by contrast, a plurality of Boomers (47%) voted to reelect Jimmy Carter against Reagan. A disproportionately large number of Boomers (11%) voted for Republican congressman, John Anderson, running as an independent and who was, in many respects, more liberal than either of the major party candidates.  More than anything, these close results point to the fractured nature of Boomer political preferences, sharp divisions that persist to this day. The "youth vote" didn't turn solidly Republican until 1984, when 60% of 18-29 year olds voted to reelect Reagan, and even more so, 1988, when 63% voted for George H.W. Bush. By then, however, a new generation of young people, the individualistic and relatively conservative Generation X (born 1965-1981), had come into the electorate.

Given the solidly Democratic party identification and liberal political attitudes of Millennials, the decline in Barack Obama's job approval score among young people more likely stems from disappointment that the president and congressional Democrats have not yet delivered on a campaign message built around change and reform. Certainly the decline is not based on distress that the president is pushing change too far or too fast.

This increased disappointment with the outcome of the first seven months of the Obama administration among Millennials (and other Democratically-oriented groups) is reflected in changes in the Daily Kos tracking poll's generic congressional vote. Since June the Democratic lead over the Republicans has declined from a high of 14-percentage points to just 6. Almost none of this decline in the Democratic margin has come from an increased preference for the GOP. In fact, the overall percentage favoring the Republicans is actually down a point or two since May and June. Instead, virtually all of the change has come because of a decline in support for the Democrats and an increase in the percentage saying they are not sure. And, in turn, most of that is produced by increased indecision among Democratic identifiers and within demographic groups inclined toward the Democrats. In all, it appears that the biggest threat facing the Democrats is not from Republicans, but from disenchanted and disaffected voters within the groups that gave Barack Obama the presidency and Democrats a large congressional majority in the last two elections. 

 

May Generic Vote Preference

D/R/Not sure

June Generic Vote Preference

D/R/Not sure

July Generic Vote Preference

D/R/Not sure

August Generic Vote Preference

D/R/Not sure

Total Electorate

42%/30%/28%

44%/30%/26%

42%/28%/30%

35%/29%/36%

Democratic Identifiers

80%/4%/16%

84%/4%/12%

83%/4%/13%

74%/5%/21%

Millennials

49%/19%/32%

52%/16%/32%

52%/12%/36%

48%/10%/42%

African-Americans

73%/4%/23%

75%/5%/21%

73%/5%/22%

63%/7%/30%

Latinos

57%/25%/18%

61%/21%/18%

59%/20%/21%

52%/22%/26%

Residents of the Northeast

52%/16%/32%

56%/15%/29%

54%/11%/35%

47%/10%/43%

In the new civic era that America is entering, suggestions by conservatives like William McGurn that Barack Obama and the Democrats move to the right or by Jay Cost that they appeal to seniors rather than the rising Millennial Generation are at best misguided and at worst dangerous. Instead, it's at long last time that Washington Democrats to leave Groundhog Day 1993 behind, start acting like Democrats, and redeem the promises that made them the majority party. One way to do that is to pass meaningful healthcare reform legislation. That would be a fitting memorial to Edward M. Kennedy, the Democratic Lion of the Senate. It would also advance the fortunes of the party he so dearly loved.