While it may be wise for younger people to study the analysis of older people, especially those with experience in finance, public policy, election management and forecasting, it is unreasonable to expect that.
“OK Boomer” is not only a joke about seniors living in the past, but also a measured conclusion that older commentators are simply unfamiliar with the perspectives and concerns of Millennials, Generation Z and Generation Alpha.
A quick reminder of the conventional age categories that define the parameters of these generations. The Silent Generation includes everyone born in 1945 and earlier; Baby boomers include those born between 1946 and 1964; Generation X includes those born between 1965 and 1980; Generation Millennials (also called Generation Y) arrived on earth between 1981 and 1996; Generation Z runs from 1997 to 2012 and Generation Alpha from 2013 to 2024. Generation Betas will hopefully get their one-year checkups or safe deliveries across the country.
I AM FROM GEN Z. WE ARE the ones who must prevent socialism from taking over
Because Generation Alpha won’t start voting until 2032, the “demo” for election consultants must be careful to overstate Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha.
The reason for focusing on voters born between 1981 and 2012 is that large parts of them have not yet or only partially formed a worldview and are open to discussion and messages. Within this huge cohort are millions of people who are generally unwilling to submit to the opinions of older adults. They consume information from a thousand different sources, some of which older Americans are comfortable with and others that Boomers and Gen X aren’t even familiar with.
There are legitimate concerns among Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha that “opinion leaders” over the age of 45 simply do not understand the vast gulf that separates their life experiences and circumstances from those of adults older than themselves.
Of course, voters from the Boomer and Millennial generations will be greatly affected by the devastation of September 11 and the Great Recession, and for them national security and financial stability will weigh heavily on their voting choices as long as they continue to vote. As a broadcaster who covered the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon live during the first eight hours of September 11, I can testify that those terrible hours left a mark that will never fade.
The second attack on the financial collapse that began in 2008 is the other bookend to that era of fear that followed the false confidence given to us by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991. “The End of History” was real for ten years, a decade that was actually a vacation from history. Never expect people aged 45 and over to take the safety or stability of the financial markets for granted.
But these shocks are also blinders for older voters, blinders that protect them from information flows and platforms on which the younger cohort congregates and from which they develop their political views.
The triumph of New York’s newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, tells us more about them than any other data point. For example, 78% of voters aged 19 to 29 voted for Mamdani, compared to 18% for former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and 4% for Republican Curtis Sliwa. Sixty-six percent of voters between the ages of 30 and 44 voted for the candidate who is certainly a socialist and in fact appears to be a committed Marxist (and his anti-Semitic credentials are hard to dispute).
In contrast “[with] voters [ages] According to ABC News exit polls, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has an edge over Mamdani, 53% to 47%, between the ages of 45 and 64. “A majority of voters aged 65 and over (55%) voted for Cuomo, while 36% voted for Mamdani,” was another finding from exit polls. That’s a generation gap if you ever had to find an example of one.
Older voters may lament that younger cohorts have no memory of supermarkets in the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies – government-owned and operated supermarkets that were often empty and always had little choice. Russians stood in long lines to buy what was on sale.
But “OK Boomer” is the expected response to such facts, as well as memories of “Ronald Reagan said…” Such appeals to history will usually fall on deaf ears and for an obvious reason: those ears hardly listen to analysts and commentators over 50, if they listen at all.
That’s why I dedicate so much of my programming and online posts to promoting the voices of the rising center-right, people like Guy Benson, Spencer Brown, Jack Butler, Matt Continetti, Ben Domenech, Mary Katharine Ham, Eliana Johnson, Michael Knowles, Bethany and Seth Mandel, Alex Marlow, Katie Pavlich, Ben Shapiro and Matt Vespa, as well as all of “The Fellas” on the Ruthless Podcast. There are many more, but you get the idea: smart, funny writers who can also talk and do so with remarkable ease. They are also mainstream and recognized.
By ‘certified’ I mean journalists who have experiences to draw on, and who have the virtue of reading at least ten times as much as what they write or say.
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The heart of my radio and Salem News Channel demo is 35-65, with more on the older shoulder than the younger. Raising serious, smart but good-humored voices at or below the bottom of my demo, and even younger, is a necessity for me and should be for every older commentator. It should be something they see as part of their job – and not as a threat to their position – if they are interested in keeping the Constitution and all it guarantees strong and paramount.
Passing batons is never pleasant for the people who are staring their pensions in the face. But it is the final duty of a generation of journalists raised by The Greatest Generation during the Cold War and the all-too-brief peace of the 1990s to encourage and promote the best emerging influencers.
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Failing that, far too many people are condemned to the clutches of extremists from both the left and the right – to talking heads who are often loud and ignorant of all that has come before them and who are concerned with grudges, not history.
The collective retirement of the Boomers and Generation
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