by Selwyn Duke
It’s the clash of two narratives. On the one hand, we hear that the youth vote’s breaking two-to-one for the Democrats neutralized the GOP’s expected 2022 “red wave” and that this is the wave of the (liberal) future. On the other, Reuters reported in 2018 already that Democrats were losing ground with millennials. Even The New York Times, just last month, wrote that “almost every cohort of voters under 50 has shifted rightward.”
But what is the reality? Are these voters actually embracing more Truth? And to what extent are they merely appearing to shift right because our frame of reference — our society — is shifting left?
Espousing the first narrative, The Hill cited last year the under-30s’ resounding 2022 rejection of the GOP and stated that “Gen Z and millennials are the two largest, most progressive and most racially diverse generations in American history. These generations are not the future of the Democratic Party – they are the here and now.” Espousing the second, author Ryan Girdusky noted just last month that while Barack Obama won millennials by 32 points, Joe Biden captured them by a mere seven or eight, despite having been the former’s vice president.
“That’s a gigantic swing and it’s not all based on ideology, although some of it is,” The Hill quoted Girdusky as saying.
Of course, with Obama having been fancied “cool” and charismatic, being an excellent speech-maker (not a great speaker), and being billed as a historic “first” (“black” president), it’s not surprising that Sleepy Joe wouldn’t be able to match his millennial support. But then there’s this:
Last fall, “the young voters of ’08 — by then 32 to 43 — preferred Democratic congressional candidates by just 10 points in Times/Siena polling,” related The New York Times last month. This likely indicates that Biden’s decline in millennial support is being experienced by the Democratic Party generally.
This said, the two narratives aren’t contradictory: Younger generations’ support for the Democrats and “liberalism” can decline somewhat, and they can be the party’s future. After all, if the under-30s’ Democrat/Republican split diminishes from 2 to 1 to 1.25 to 1, it still can translate into resounding Democratic Party victories.
For certain, however, there is movement toward the “right.” And on Sunday, Fox News host Lawrence Jones — a millennial who himself transitioned from Obama voter to conservativism — interviewed four other generation-mates who’ve abandoned the Democratic Party (video below).
What’s more, under the above video, the second-most-popular respondent related a not uncommon story. “My daughter, born in 1989, was absolutely indoctrinated in college to become a liberal,” he wrote. “She voted for Obama during that time and then she married a Marine who served in Afghanistan — that really opened her eyes…. She and my son-in-law tend to lean right on most issues.”
Though anecdotal, the above does reflect the aforementioned political-shift statistics. In fact, Republicans might have “reversed their former disadvantage on some issues, whether by sometimes opposing foreign intervention, winning some voters with colorblind messaging on race, or by becoming the ‘anti-establishment’ party,” the Times also writes.
This, however, reflects the truth that much of the millennial “movement toward the right” is relative — that is, it results from the Democrats having moved radically left, jumping the shark with obsessions such as racialism, “transgenderism,” and open-borders extremism. It’s also true that conservatism, being anti-establishment, is now rebellion and, hence, sometimes cool.
This is no doubt at least partially why “the percentage of high school seniors who identified as conservative rose from 23% in 2000 to 29% in 2015,” wrote Time in 2017. The magazine also makes a classic mistake, however, claiming that this change created “a group more conservative than the Reagan-era GenX teens of the 1980s.” The issue?
The problem with “identifying” as conservative (or liberal) is that it can sometimes be only a bit more valid than identifying as the opposite sex, as self-perception can be flawed. It’s just like saying you were short in 2000 but tall in 2015: Maybe you’ve grown.
Then again, what if everyone else has shrunk?
Of course, we accept that “tall” is defined relative to the human average; the problem is that conservatism is generally reckoned, quite instinctively, the same way. In other words, yes, young people tend to move “right” somewhat as they age. Yet our society also moves left as it ages, placing the formerly young people further right on its political spectrum even if their views remain the same.
Realize here that just as the only consistent definition of “liberalism” relates to a desire to change the status quo, “conservatism” is about maintaining the status quo. Yet society’s status quo is not a constant: It shifts as the population’s consensus positions do.
Just consider that back in the 1950s, virtually everyone would’ve been considered “conservative” by today’s standards. At the time, accepting open homosexuality, let alone same-sex “marriage,” was unthinkable, and even the staunchest liberal of the day would’ve looked at you funny if you said a time would come when the Democrats would claim boys and girls could switch sexes at will. Abominations such as critical race theory, white-privilege rhetoric, DIE (diversity, inclusion, and equity), and indoctrinating children with sexual devolutionary material were also unthinkable.
So while 2015 high school seniors may be more likely to describe themselves as conservatives than Reagan-era 18-year-olds were, it’s fanciful thinking their actual views are more “conservative.” Likewise, millennials today may be more likely than they were 15 years ago to characterize themselves as conservative, but this doesn’t just have to do with their moving “right,” but with society moving “left.”
The bottom line: We must dispense with the relativism and understand that it matters not how we rate (conservative or liberal) measured against other people; only the degree to which we profess Truth matters. We need to be eternally right, not just more right — because sometimes this only means being just right of totally wrong.
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
Reprinted with permission from the New American