Michael Medved has got rocks.
He ignores that the voters born in the 1980s and early 1990s are already much more liberal than older generations on economics and social issues. They are fleeing the Religious Right, one of the most reliable constituencies for the GOP since the early 1980s. They are heavily in debt for student loans and are underearning for their abilities -- both tendencies tending to push people to vote for the more left-wing politicians. Their idea of a Republican President is the awful George W. Bush. Barack Obama is by every non-ideological criterion a far-better President.
As voters age they increasingly identify with institutions, but what institutions will they trust? Giant corporations that underpay them and offer no security? Predatory lenders? The Religious Right? It is more likely that they will identify with the political causes that they know in youth. Significantly some of the young volunteers for Obama are likely to grow into political careers -- and the vast majority of them will be elected as Democrats. The McCain and Romney campaigns did little to attract youth. When people's buddies start running for elective office, guess how people are going to vote.
Republicans need to ask themselves what they have to offer younger voters. Enrichment and pampering of elites is one of the most indirect and inefficient means of creating widespread prosperity. Educated rationalists have little use for the superstitious pablum that the Republicans offer to the Religious Right.
Did I say that he was non-ideological? Ronald Reagan was ideological -- and effective. Barack Obama is about as left-of-center as Reagan was right-of-center and similarly effective.
Sure, I would like to underpay for everything that I get, but I know that if everyone underpays at a nice restaurant, either that restaurant isn't going to stay nice or it isn't going to stay in business. Underpay workers, and employers get a high turnover of workers and get stuck with not-so-good ones. The work ethic succeeds because people get something out of it -- that is, a good life. People get lazy in a sweatshop.
Predatory lending is a consequence of people being underpaid and overworked. When people get honest pay for dedicated and effective work they can pay as they go or they can save for their dreams. When they get underpaid they end up making compromises of quality by paying too much for schlock -- like ten-year-old used cars. Don;t let me go into a spiel about student loans for questionable education.
Make no mistake -- the prospects for a young adult are much less favorable than they were in perhaps the 1950s. Sure, the technology was primitive by modern standards, and one paid full retail and thus couldn't fill a living space with schlock. But just think of something that people had in those days -- savings accounts. Try building one of those while being deeply in hock.
Conservatism succeeds because people have something to protect (like savings accounts, bonds, and insurance policies) from inflation. Small-scale creditors tend slightly right. People who find themselves in debt want expansive monetary policy that trivializes debt and expansive fiscal policy that creates opportunities for paid work at higher wages. Debtors tend Left. Large-scale creditors tend very far to the Right. We have a huge number of struggling debtors (thank you, "Ownership Society" of Dubya) to the left of center and a comparatively few big creditors. Is it any wonder that we have so much political polarization?
