DEMOCRATIC MILLENNIAL'S COULD BEAT TRUMP IN 2020

… New York primary winner, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Many future Democratic candidates and voters will be progressive, young, non-white, female millennials.

Ok, so what chance do the Democrats have in America over the coming decades?

Most of the American political analysist insist that the future of the Democratic Party wild depend on the serious involvement of our up-coming millennials.  When used as a noun, a millennial is defined as: “A person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century”.

In foreign countries that are also small-d democracies, many times their voters will stand in line for many hours just to vote, and they will have over 90% of eligible voters going to the polls.  But in today’s America, we are very fortunate if we have over 50% of our eligible voters going to the polls.

As of today, the nation’s millennials will soon be taking over the reins of our government, and based on all those political analysts, the new voters and the new candidates will mostly consist of progressive, young, non-white millennials.  And most of them, both voters and candidates will be female.

It is already the case that more American women show up at the polls than do American men.

The latest House primary winner in New York was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  A 28 year old Latina activist that beat the heir apparent Democratic House Speaker, and the head of the House Democratic Caucus, Joe Crowley.  According to the analysts, this woman is a perfect example of what Washington DC will apparently be seeing more of in the future.

Those same analysts are now saying “I told you so!”, and I guess we will see if this is the beginning of the new generation that will be taking the reins of the opposition to the Party of Trump.

But in reality, the Democratic Party has been headed this way for the last decade.

Today, a majority of House Democrats are either women, people of color, or even gay.  A disproportionate number of the strongest Dem candidates in the coming November’s election are women, and many are young.  Of the 54 on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s most competitive “Red to Blue” list, 19 aren’t yet 40 years old, and 26 are women. The Cook Political Report sees Democratic women outperforming Democratic men by 15 points in primaries.

Now, this may be the future of the leadership of the Democratic Party, but as of today, the overall nation’s leadership consists of “septuagenarians”, or near “septuagenarians”.  (A “septuagenarians” is defined as someone being 70 to 79 years old.)

Now Joe Crowley, the recent Democratic primary loser, is only 56, and the Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is close at 67, but Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi are all “septuagenarians”.

When you look at the current leadership in both parties, most all would be eligible for retirement.  Here is just a random list of political leadership names in American politics that came to mind:

Name:                                                 Age            

Senator Lindsay Graham                 62

Former VP Joe Biden                       75

Senator Susan Collins                      62

Hillary Clinton                                    70

Nancy Pelosi                                      78

Senator Bernie Sanders                   76

Senator John McCain                       81

Governor Mitt Romney                      71

Governor John Kasich                      66

Steny Hoyer                                       79

Jim Clyburn                                        77                                   

                   

But the real key is not their age. It’s what are they selling, versus what the people want to hear about that has to do with helping them?

Let’s take that recent primary loss of the established Democrat as an example.

The 10 times elected Joe Crowley lost mainly because of the changing demographics in his district, which had been redrawn considerably after 2010.  Today it is only 18%white. Yes, even though Ocasio-Cortez does call herself a socialist, Crowley was a down-the-line liberal, particularly in recent years, and he was a champion of single-payer health care.

But the issues Ocasio-Cortez used against him were largely non-ideological.  Expecting that he would be in line for the Speakership, Crowley had moved his family to Washington and he began taking special-interest money. These issues were used against him.  Crowley obviously didn’t realize he was in trouble until too late and he never sought his colleagues’ help in actually canvasing what became a very low-turnout primary.  Crowley just did not spend the appropriate time listening to his constituents.

But Crowley’s ouster is not typical, as he is the only Democratic incumbent to be ousted so far in this political cycle.  Of the 29 candidates on the “Red to Blue” list that the DCCC endorsed during their primaries, 27 Dems have prevailed. The Center for Responsive Politics tells us that in 85% of the Democratic House primaries this year, the winner of 252 of 296 primaries was the candidate who raised the most money; of the 44 exceptions to that, 31 were women, suggesting the reason was gender based, not ideology.

Analyses also indicate that first-time Democratic candidates this year tend to be more liberal than any of the incumbents, but the entire party has seriously moved to the left. There is no “civil war” within the party because no one is pushing back against this progressive rise.  Yes, some of it is a rise as a reaction to Trump.  But it is also a reflection of the growing prominence of women, minorities and young voters in the electorate.

2018 is being called the "Year of the Woman", as was 1992.

But here is why this time might be very different.  The top three House Democratic leaders, California’s Nancy Pelosi, 78, Maryland’s Steny Hoyer, 79, and South Carolina’s James Clyburn, 77, and they show no interest in stepping down.

However, after the November’s elections, whoever moves up and replaces Crowley will be in the No. 4 spot and they will immediately become the party’s leader-in-waiting.

Among the contenders: Joe Kennedy (Mass.), 37, Bobby Kennedy’s grandson and a former prosecutor, he has charisma and a gift for oratory; Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), 46, is a well-liked Latino and, as head of the DCCC, will be riding a wave of support if Democrats win the House; Cheri Bustos (Ill.), 56, would be a popular choice though she comes from a very vulnerable district; and Adam Schiff (Calif.), 58, though he's another white guy, has media savvy and has deftly led House Democrats in the Russia inquiry and in intelligence matters. There are plenty of others — Seth Moulton (Mass.), 39; Eric Swalwell (Calif.), 37; Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), 47; Cedric L. Richmond (La.), 44; Katherine Clark (Mass.), 54; and Linda Sánchez (Calif.), 49 — who could be dark horses.

The win by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be the beginning that would give the Democrats a chance to own the emerging electorate of young, female, nonwhite and progressive voters. This is a coalition that could beat Trump in 2020. and if necessary, it could deal with the president’s “Trumpism” for years to come.

But at this point, we can only hope and pray and keep our fingers crossed

Copyright G.Ater 2018