The Onion Sums Up the GOP's Big Demographic Problem

[MattusMaximus]

Sometimes, it takes a little satire to make the point; from those classy folks at The Onion:

GOP Trying to Keep Elderly Voting Base Alive Until November

Of course, this is poking fun at a real problem that I think the GOP/Tea Party has on their hands right now: the shifting demographics within the United States. This NPR article really hits home on this point:

Do America's Changing Demographics Impact Politics?

... NORRIS: There are a series of gaps in terms of what the census numbers show or indicate and what we actually see in terms of how politics is practiced right now in America, and I want to quickly tick through some of these.

The first is this chiasm between a fast-growing minority - and for now, we'll still use that term - population that will be interested in services and public investment in education, health care, infrastructure, all kinds of things, and then, on the other side, a shrinking and aging white population that doesn't necessarily warm to the idea of using taxes to pay for those investments. Will that chasm continue to grow over time, and what does that mean for public investment?

Mr. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, I think that is the fundamental political tension that is baked in to our society for the coming decades. I've called this phenomenon the brown and the gray.

You have, as we've said before, an under 18 population, a giant millennial generation that is heavily non-white, soon to be majority non-white, and by and large, those families believe they need public investment, particularly in schools and health care, to help their kids ascend into the middle class.

On the other side, you have a aging baby boom generation that is preponderantly white. Eighty percent of American seniors are white. That proportion isn't going to change much in the coming decades because we essentially cut off immigration into the country between 1924 and 1965. That aging white baby boom has grown increasingly skeptical of government, increasingly resistant to paying taxes to fund government services.

And so you have each political coalition - I mean, this really is the core or the anchor of each political coalition now. The older white population is at the absolute center of the Republican coalition, especially the non-college, working-class part of it. Democrats are increasingly dependent upon the votes of minorities.

About 40 percent of President Obama's vote in 2008 came from minorities, compare to only about 10 percent for John McCain. So you kind of look at these two blocs in the society with very divergent views about the role of government in particular, and you see this conflict, I think, playing out not only nationally but in states. ...

So, from seeing all of this demographic data (and there's plenty more - especially the big shift among younger people away from religion), I'm thinking that the Republican party has really painted itself into a corner.

How do they branch out and attempt to appeal to these younger, more diverse, less religious voters when they have invested so much energy in tying themselves to older, whiter, and highly religious voters for decades? Especially when the GOP/Tea Party has been pursuing political tactics in recent years which do everything possible to alienate the growing, more diverse electorate?

 

[WildCat]

Sometimes, it takes a little satire to make the point; from those classy folks at The Onion:

GOP Trying to Keep Elderly Voting Base Alive Until November

Of course, this is poking fun at a real problem that I think the GOP/Tea Party has on their hands right now: the shifting demographics within the United States. This NPR article really hits home on this point:

Do America's Changing Demographics Impact Politics?


So, from seeing all of this demographic data (and there's plenty more - especially the big shift among younger people away from religion), I'm thinking that the Republican party has really painted itself into a corner.

How do they branch out and attempt to appeal to these younger, more diverse, less religious voters when they have invested so much energy in tying themselves to older, whiter, and highly religious voters for decades? Especially when the GOP/Tea Party has been pursuing political tactics in recent years which do everything possible to alienate the growing, more diverse electorate?

They'll just pander to some other group when the time comes. After all, they didn't pander to the religious right until the Reagan era and they'll throw them under the bus as soon as they become more liability than asset.

 

[thaiboxerken]

They're pretty much throwing older folks under the bus now with their plans for Medicare.

 

[MG1962]

They'll just pander to some other group when the time comes. After all, they didn't pander to the religious right until the Reagan era and they'll throw them under the bus as soon as they become more liability than asset.

Maybe they'll discover their real power base is moderate conservatives

 

[Cain]

They're pretty much throwing older folks under the bus now with their plans for Medicare.

But that's what's so strangely fascinating. Romney (and Ryan) have been attacking Obama on Medicare; they claim he's weakened it.

Why is this single-payer program SO popular with Republicans? How does it figure into their moral principles? Redistribution of income is OK, but only if it goes to those over 65? We should have a gerontocracy?

The same story gets repeated everywhere: whenever a universal system is implemented, even conservatives defend it. What ideological free-market fundamentalists fear is not that Medicare/Universal health-care will hurt people, but that those programs will become popular, and then difficult to kill.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Maybe they'll discover their real power base is moderate conservatives

I thought they were all Democrats.

Dave

 

[Upchurch]

They'll just pander to some other group when the time comes. After all, they didn't pander to the religious right until the Reagan era and they'll throw them under the bus as soon as they become more liability than asset.

So, what? Another three months or so?

 

[WildCat]

So, what? Another three months or so?

Not that soon, they're still an asset in southern states.

 

[dc1971]

They'll just pander to some other group when the time comes. After all, they didn't pander to the religious right until the Reagan era and they'll throw them under the bus as soon as they become more liability than asset.

However, social conservatives became more involved with the Republican party as far back as the 1960 election.

 

[Dorian Gray]

OMG! What is the GOP going to do when the country is 51% minorities?!?!?!

ha ha

 

[Ziggurat]

So, from seeing all of this demographic data (and there's plenty more - especially the big shift among younger people away from religion), I'm thinking that the Republican party has really painted itself into a corner.

I wouldn't be too sure of that. You see, current entitlement programs represent a massive and unsustainable transfer of wealth from young people to old people. Those college kids are going to get financially reamed by entitlement programs. When they wake up to that fact, are you sure they're going to remain a Democrat constituency? Because religion or not, people don't like getting screwed over, and that's what both Social Security and Medicare are going to do to them.

 

[Robrob]

They're pretty much throwing older folks under the bus now with their plans for Medicare.

As I predict they will with veterans in the near future.

 

[Trakar]

They'll just pander to some other group when the time comes. After all, they didn't pander to the religious right until the Reagan era and they'll throw them under the bus as soon as they become more liability than asset.

Actually, the pandering to the religious right began in the NIxon era:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

 

[Ziggurat]

They're pretty much throwing older folks under the bus now with their plans for Medicare.

Future old people. Also known as young people.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Future old people. Also known as young people.

Oh okay. Then that's acceptable.

 

[Ziggurat]

Oh okay. Then that's acceptable.

Young people are going to get screwed over by medicare regardless. The demographics allow no other possibility unless you screw over the old people right now.

 

[Solitaire]

Young people are going to get screwed over by medicare regardless. The demographics allow no other possibility unless you screw over the old people right now.

Yes.

But if you do that then you face an ever larger increase in medical spending.

"Medicare spending rose by an average of 4.3 percent each year between 1997 and 2009,
while private insurance premiums grew at a rate of 6.5 percent per year."¹
It's a no win - no win situation.

 

[Brainster]

Oh, look, it's another one of those "the Republicans are doomed long-term" threads that are so popular on JREF. What I do find amusing about this one is this bit:

On the other side, you have a aging baby boom generation that is preponderantly white. Eighty percent of American seniors are white. That proportion isn't going to change much in the coming decades because we essentially cut off immigration into the country between 1924 and 1965. That aging white baby boom has grown increasingly skeptical of government, increasingly resistant to paying taxes to fund government services.

Why do I find that amusing? Because back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Baby Boomers were supposed to be the demographic trend that was going to lead the Democrats to victory for decades. In fact, Lanny Davis wrote a book in 1974 called The Emerging Democratic Majority based on this thesis. It didn't happen then. In 2002, Ruy Texiera and John Judis dusted off that title for a new book, with similar themes to that discussed in the NPR piece. They may have looked pretty good in 2006 and 2008, but they didn't exactly ring the bell in 2004 or 2010.

The demographic problem that the Democrats face is an aging population. People generally become more conservative as they age. Not everyone, certainly, but in any large group it's pretty consistent, even among minorities.

 

[Puppycow]

Young people are going to get screwed over by medicare regardless. The demographics allow no other possibility unless you screw over the old people right now.

Japan is decades ahead of America demographically. I mean, as far as having lots of old people and not many young people. And it's going to get worse. (Europe is probably also ahead of America.)

The only way out I can think of is ever-increasing per capita productivity. If per capita productivity increases fast enough then we can continue to have a reasonable standard of living even as the working population decreases and the retired population increases.

 

[rocketdodger]

Young people are going to get screwed over by medicare regardless. The demographics allow no other possibility unless you screw over the old people right now.

Can you show me any numbers that suggest this would be the case if the wages of the non-elite classes had risen on par with those of our masters?

Call me a naive liberal, but in my mind it seems like the real issue is that wealth is funneled to the rich people at a rate higher than it is funneled to the old people.

If we fix that, the young people aren't going to be screwed. Just the rich people.

And, that's basically the difference between the two extremes right now. I don't particularly have much of a problem with rich people being screwed -- after all, they are rich, and after all, they have been screwing everyone else for oh I dunno 50,000 years ? Since our ancestors could even communicate in grunts? Yeah, about that long. So call me extreme, I guess?