I am struck by a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. Millennial women, defined as the group born between 1981 and 1996, favor Democrats by an extraordinarily large 47 percentage points. Millennial men also lean Democratic, but the gap is much smaller, only 8 percentage points. Because the Democratic Party has not had huge national triumphs as of late, the obvious inference is that the Republican Party is doing something to turn off those millennial women.
Another obvious inference is that the Democratic Party must be doing something to turn off older voters, both male and female.
Let me try to flesh out the narrative. Once upon a time, (say, 1930), higher education in America was not for the masses. Harvard was a place for upper-class WASP males, who were not necessarily the cream of the crop intellectually, to firm up their social connections while studying the classics from Western civilization.
By the early 1960s, admission to higher education had become meritocratic, but many of the best colleges did not admit women. This was probably the peak period for “systemizers” to dominate the pool of undergraduates. The classics were still being taught, but many among this brighter cadre of students were gravitating toward the more mathematical and scientific disciplines. To be sure, pre-Med was an especially popular undergraduate choice because guys did not want to end up in Vietnam.
Two developments began in the 1960s that eventually created the state we are in today. One was the attempt to make higher education a mass-market phenomenon. The other was to ensure equal access to higher education for women.
To make a long story short, mass higher education for men was a failure, but for women it was a success. The result was that higher education came to be dominated by empathizers in a number of areas. In the humanities, the classics were displaced by “___ studies” courses, which required less systematic analysis. In these “_____ studies” courses and in psychology and sociology, objectivity gave way to the goal of raising the status of women and minorities.
In terms of voting behavior, we now have young, educated women who have bought into the cause of raising the status of women and minorities, a cause which is packaged with other left-wing causes, including socialism. But we have older Americans and younger less-educated men who have not bought into that cause. Hence, the gap noted by Tyler.
My sense is that, unfortunately, many of these young educated women have a strong streak of soft authoritarianism. If you want to know what it will feel like when they are in charge, read (the movie does not do it justice) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Today’s well-educated young women, and the men who affiliate with them, have a low tolerance for systemizers whose analysis does not lend support to the cause of raising the status of women and minorities.
In the end, I am not convinced that the gender-war narrative is sufficient to describe our current state. The urban-rural divide also matters. Think of a married couple living in a house on the edge of a small town. Then consider two roommates living on the sixth floor of an urban apartment building. These people will have different needs and expectations concerning government, and they are unlikely to vote the same way.
And then you have ethnic divides. And regional divides. I think that if we had an electoral system conducive to multiple parties, then we would have a situation like that in Germany or Italy today, with no coherent central majority.
Regarding millennial…
Adjusted for marrital status? Or better, married with children?
Steve Sailer (among others) has talked of “the marriage gap” and voting patterns. I believe in cohort effects, but there are few things like marriage to change some knee-jerk political impulses.
“I think that if we had an electoral system conducive to multiple, then we would have a situation like that in Germany or Italy today, with no coherent central majority.”
Do we have a coherent central majority today? “Polarization” and “division” appear to be the current dominant adjectives. Would I be misinterpreting the term to suggest that the last time there was a coherent central majority would have been back from around 1957 to 1993 when the Democrats held over 60% of congressional seats?
There were many positive federal achievements related to civil rights during this period but also some actions for which we are still paying a price today. It would not appear to be an open and shut case that coherent central majorities are preferable to what is going on in Germany and Italy currently. One might point out that the Dutch did very well without a government formed for an extended period (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/dutch-doing-just-fine-without-government-on-decade-high-growth ) as did Spain (https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/10/27/spain-has-no-government-for-10-months-economy-grows-unemployment-falls-to-18-9/#2a16cefcb62c) and Belgium ( http://www.businessinsider.com/belgium-is-thriving-without-a-government-2011-9 ).
And there is a strong case to be made that political stability is not equivalent to good governance. ( https://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/can-political-stability-hurt-economic-growth )
It may be simple hubris, but I don’t think that allowing oddballs such as myself from participating in our governance by way of a multi-party system is necessarily the worst thing in the world.
I thought that people who majored in “grievance studies” would make for a toxic workplace, and that companies would avoid them like the plague. Had this been the case, students would have eventually gotten the message and stopped enrolling in such classes. Unfortunately, companies seem to be snapping them up, and employing them in their HR departments. Do American businesses have a death wish or are they trying to comply with government regulations?
What regulations necessitate hiring women with Grievance Studies majors?
Europe and the multi-parties are much more of a mess than the US. Europeans, like in Slovakia or Germany, vote for a party, and the party chooses who is on the party list, and in which order.
After the election comes the reality of usually no one party is a majority, so to get a majority there has to be some coalition. There are usually these parties:
1) Some soft socialist party (Sweden , 1970ish, the model), wanting more gov’t benefits and taxes.
2) Some free market friendly party, wanting smaller gov’t and less taxes; more economic growth
3) Some Christian Democratic party wanting conservative, Christian, pro-life morality; usually lower tax than socialist, higher benefits than free markets
4) Some nationalist party, anti-immigrant and strongly favoring the country
5) Some Green environmental paty
6+) Often some famous personality led party, mildly against the current oligarchy
These don’t quite match up to the 3 languages. Each post-election readjusts the voter preferences, and the party lists of who gets in especially how many of which party. And then some combination that adds up to 51% or more of the delegates forms the govt. Usually any party can be in coalition with any other, altho the socialist – free market coalition (like now in France a bit) has been quite rare.
There will be more as the elites try to stomp out nationalism & patriotism, rather co-opt such movements with more patriotism themselves. I don’t yet see much gender gap in Europe — there’s almost as many women as men voting for nationalist parties; there’s almost as many men as women voting Green.
Tyler quotes Christopher Caldwell: “The Democrats have become the party of sexual morality.” What Tyler doesn’t go on to quote: “The Democrats really want to talk about what constitutes decent sexual behaviour. The Republicans are more inclined to take the role that the Democrats took 20 years ago and say that your sexual comportment is none of our business.”
Tyler doesn’t engage with that really interesting idea about decency. He’s steering the conversation towards abortion instead, which is not what Christopher means at all by “sexual behaviour” or “sexual morality.” The Republicans think abortion is about life and death, not decency. Not comportment, or how a man treats a woman. Or how a man speaks to a woman, if you think of Chuck Close.
A failure of comportment is what Chuck Close is accused of. The language in an earlier era would have been of his vulgarity, his boorishness. His failure, in other words, to live up to middle class mores. “Decent” means proper, respectful, becoming of a gentleman. The Democrats want to talk about decency without using that particular word. They don’t want to use the Victorian language of decency. The language they prefer is about power imbalances. A legalistic language of consent and harassment, even when it’s irrelevant. Think of Aziz Ansari.
This is as much as Tyler has to say about comportment: “Those on the left are more likely to criticize the sexual behavior of powerful white men, as seen in the #MeToo movement.” Powerless black men on campus, actually, are first up against the wall in this revolution. No due process. No presumption of innocence. These are eighteen-year-old kids thrown out of college on the strength of an accusation. A week’s worth of text messages aren’t accepted as evidence of anything. College administrators and middle class white girls are making sure that powerless black men get kicked out of school, first of all. The statistics are not with Tyler on this point. So “powerful white men” is not accurate.
“But when it comes to moralizing about the behavior of single mothers, or discussing the social costs of the large numbers of births out of wedlock, it is still conservatives who are taking the lead. The debate on abortion plays out a similar logic, where the value of autonomy for women is opposed by an alternative vision of responsible motherhood and the sanctity of the family and the fetus.” Again, the Republicans aren’t talking about sexual morality, are they? The Democrats are in the bedroom. The Republicans aren’t. The Democrats are in Aziz Ansari’s kitchen, and also on his couch. The Republicans are talking about life and death. Raising or aborting a child. And nobody’s talking about responsible fathers. But “responsible” isn’t sexy. And then “autonomy” too, which is a word that doesn’t fit in with that language of power imbalances.
Maybe “the value of autonomy for women” begins and ends with abortion, because it’s precisely a lack of autonomy, a helplessness, the utter absence of agency that eighteen-year-old Democrats are insisting on. The contradiction is that “the future is female” but also, if you’re female, you’re powerless. You can’t say no, and saying yes doesn’t mean you’re not a victim, all the same. You’re always a victim, whatever you do, and also you’re powerful and fierce and unstoppable.
“The Democrats really want to talk about what constitutes decent sexual behaviour.” True. That’s why Aziz Ansari’s comportment is everyone’s business, according to eighteen-year-old Democrats. Older Democrats can remember back 20 years ago, so they’re not fully on board with that. They gave Bill Clinton a pass 20 years ago. Gloria Steinem formulated the “one free grope” rule 20 years ago in March. And then think of Ted Kennedy, 50 years ago. That actually was life and death, but there was no reckoning for him.
It seems to me that the left tore down the customs and traditions that regulated how men treated women. “Old fashioned” traditions were “fascistic” and “constraining.” The left didn’t like the results and are now trying to replace voluntary traditions with coercive laws.
Good comment. Expresses well several things I thought when I read Tyler’s column.
Another obvious inference is that the Democratic Party must be doing something to turn off older voters, both male and female.
Or Donald Trump Republican leadership turned them on in 2016.
1) The biggest change of Trump compared to past Republicans is he explicitly stated support not changing Social Security and Medicare. (We forget how poorly Bush’s 2005 SS endeavors went and effected 2006 Midterms.) So he gained a lot demographically right voters in 2016 and winning an election with less percent than Romney/Ryan who did not make this promise and had a history of wanting to change those programs.
2) After Obama and Party border/immigration being aligned by Party, Democrats were defined by party of minorities. (Remember Bush got 44% of H-A votes in 2004.) 3) I think Josh Barro once simplified the Trump rallies speeches, he promised the return of 1960 America greatness with some 1985 mixed in. He campaigned on big factories and the communities of old. HRC campaigned on job training in WV while Trump rallies were COAL MINES!!!! (Note First Energy is filing bankruptcy and the administration is looking to protect their plants. Their ideas have not been popular.)
Your mention of the streak of authoritarianism in the college-educated, mostly women reminded me of this observation by an autistic man who has been able to write a book describing life in his world. One element being women who assume they were right and had control over his life:
“Many people who have read the book will name as their favorite chapter “Austism and the Bossy Women,” which is a microcosm of his world, his wit, and his intelligence:
“Women who think they know it all have filled my life.
“Wow, do I sound sexist? Not meant to be sexist. It’s another rant.
“From my home programs as a little kid, to my OT therapists, to my speech therapists, to my teachers, to many of my evaluators, I have been bombarded with experts who have talked about me with such conviction, who assumed they were right, and who, in many cases, were not. They have almost always been women, for some reason.”
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/12/10/everything-you-think-you-know-about-autism-is-wrong/7/
He kind of sums it up.
Arnold’s suggestion of this being a war of empathizers against systemizers struck a chord with me. I’ve been thinking about it more and I’m afraid we may be in a sort-of anti-Enlightenment right now. The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were triumphs of reason over emotion, and we seem to be going back on that now. The main streams of politics are almost pure emotion, and even science is infected by it. Especially social science, but also physical science to some extent in the areas where there is a lot of political influence (such as climate science). Life sciences are somewhere in-between, with lots of political influence in medical, nutritional, and environmental science.