When I was a kid, I heard as a constant refrain that people just got more conservative as they aged—as if this was a well-known truth, that the once radical youth would eventually start wearing suits and demanding propriety.
I was just thinking about major party realignment and had a realization that perhaps should have struck me earlier: the people saying this went from being FDR Democrats to Reagan Republicans.
They loved progressive policy right up through the point where we got civil rights, and then they bailed.
They didn’t get more conservative. They just had to choose between their racism and their economic values, and they chose racism.
they also did, largely, grow to be more affluent and stable and therefore invested in the perpetuation of the status quo, something that has gotten much less true over time
I'm going to get a small one as a government employee! Apparently if I had started 10 or 15 years earlier (although I still would've been in college at the time hah) it would've been a much bigger pension than what I am getting
I feel like the people I know along the X/Boomer cusp (my parents microgeneration) the ones who are doing well for themselves and have gone further left either have 1) queer relatives 2) a career history that leaves them unable to forget struggling to make a living
Eventually I will be getting $457/month and change to show for my 9 years at a major hospital! Thrilling! (You don’t see a lot of defined-benefit pensions these days.)
This is it. It's easier to fall into the conservative trap when you were able to "work hard" and retire comfortably. It worked for them. However, the problem is that they don't realize (or choose not to) that times have changed, and it's much much harder to do that.
This dovetails nicely with my grandfather's explanation that conservatives were the ones that survived to old age because they had the money to not take the dangerous jobs.
Something I really wish people understood was that LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act he locked the Democratic party into officially being the party of Civil Rights, and the party DID try to be that and got electorally punished for 20 years
The White working class fled the party in droves, and they just ate loss after loss. I'm convinced it's why the current aging leaders are obsessed with trying to recapture the Clinton era, "triangulation worked"
20 years? try 60. The civil rights movement never stopped and sad as it may be that the movement is being pushed back hard once again, the Dems are still the closest party to that movement.
My late grandfather voted for Republicans up until 2008, not because he loved Obama, but because the racism became too obvious for him to ignore.
"When did this happen? When did we become the party of racism? Thurmond, Helms, those guys used to be outliers!"
I think also that reflected the white hippie-to-yuppie pipeline. (I don’t know that it happened with any other generation or racial group.)
And frankly, hippies were tremendously selfish and self-centered. But during Vietnam, that selfishness coded liberal while post-Reagan it coded conservative.
I always heard this explained by as-
*gesture around*
Conserve... what, exactly?
-but this also makes a lot of sense. That generation certainly loves taking personal experiences and assuming they are universal truths. Jobs are plentiful so you just need to show up in person, etc.
I wonder how much this dovetails with the theory that folks become less racist as they meet more diverse people, and the rise of the internet that gave us unlimited access to the world for the first time. Maybe we were the first generation to thwart that trope?
I think this is pretty accurate, but I also like Beau of the Fifth Column’s take: people don’t tend to get much more conservative, they just stay where they are. Society often gets more liberal over time, so there’s a relative movement
I think that also fits with what you’re saying about the FDR Democrats to Regan Republicans
I think it also explains the lack of conservative drift recently. With the Republicans being so… *waves hands* whatever they are, people that are staying still politically are no longer drifting conservative
Have you read Heather McGhee's "The Sum of Us"? She shows this with excellent examples from pretty much all areas of life... housing, education, public services, banking, unionization, etc. It's a fabulous book.
FWIW I do think many people become conservative (little c) with age. There are risks that I took when I was younger that I would not take now. But I think people confuse becoming personally more conservative with politically more conservative and those aren't the same thing.
The generations before you had a chance to build wealth when younger and trended selfish/conservative as they got older. Gen X and beyond have all been sucked dry by the vampiric Boomers.
Watching them grasp at power, pull up ladders, and destroy the American dream has made me trend liberal.
I don’t think this is fully explanatory, though, because Gen X is kind of on the verge—some of them have done very well for themselves, and are in fact building wealth, and I know a LOT of those people b/c fancy law school etc etc.
As far as I can tell, it hasn’t made people super conservative.
Again, the Boomers get blamed for a lot of stuff that actually came from the Silents.
My older brothers are Silents. I'm Jones (late Boomer). They are...quite conservative.
How so?
DNC is raising money in record numbers. Our Chairman is outstanding. We've won every competitive election in the last four years. Recruitment is up. The party is unified and enthusiastic about our President's reelection.
What more do you want?
