Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Here's the problem with analyzing things the way you did, JPT. What "liberal" and "conservative" means changes over time. A person can be "liberal" in youth and "conservative" in midlife, without changing actual positions on actual issues at all.

Before answering this, I have to say that another reason I haven't posted here for a while is that I have no interest in arguing with a bunch of hyper-partisan Boomers who see all of S&H through the lens of politics. So I won't respond to much of those posts, but in this case, you're simply wrong. Ronald Reagan was to the "right" of every president since Coolidge, particularly on economic issues. In absolute, not relative terms. He was way more conservative than Richard Nixon on domestic issues, and anybody who knows anything about them knows that. Additionally, George McGovern was well to the left of Bill Clinton. That didn't stop Silents from shifting way more Republican than any other group in 1980, and it didn't stop Boomers from shifting Republican in the 90s when Bill Clinton was on the ballot, in comparison to the way they voted in every election before that.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Before answering this, I have to say that another reason I haven't posted here for a while is that I have no interest in arguing with a bunch of hyper-partisan Boomers who see all of S&H through the lens of politics. So I won't respond to much of those posts, but in this case, you're simply wrong. Ronald Reagan was to the "right" of every president since Coolidge, particularly on economic issues. In absolute, not relative terms. He was way more conservative than Richard Nixon on domestic issues, and anybody who knows anything about them knows that. Additionally, George McGovern was well to the left of Bill Clinton. That didn't stop Silents from shifting way more Republican than any other group in 1980, and it didn't stop Boomers from shifting Republican in the 90s when Bill Clinton was on the ballot, in comparison to the way they voted in every election before that.

You're right, but I don't see how you can say that the Boomers shifted Republican in the 90s when Bill Clinton was on the ballot.

From what I've seen of polls and such, generations differ in how conservative they get as they age. GIs reacted against some of the Boomer behavior and causes, but they still voted Democratic more than other generations and supported the New Deal programs as they aged. Perhaps millennials will stay liberal too, if they follow the GIs. We don't know. The Silents shifted quite a bit to the right as they aged, and the Boomers have shifted somewhat right too; staying fairly evenly divided for a long time, but now leaning right. There's a lot of variation too among early, core and later (Joneser) Boomers; the latter were always more conservative while the core has stayed somewhat liberal. Xers started more conservative than other young generations, but they haven't shifted further right by much yet as they've entered Middle Age. They are about 50-50 now. That's my reading of the various polls I've seen, many of them posted here.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Ronald Reagan was to the "right" of every president since Coolidge, particularly on economic issues.

Let's take a look at that, using Herbert Hoover as the counter-example, since you acknowledge implicitly that Reagan was to the left of Coolidge himself.

Hoover rejected the idea of direct federal aid to the poor, even during the Depression. Reagan did not.

Hoover rejected the idea of federal provision for old age. Reagan, although accused of intending to by Jimmy Carter in 1980, made no move to abolish or significantly cut back Social Security.

Not only Hoover but even Franklin Roosevelt made no move towards federal health-care insurance; that waited for Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Reagan made no effort to unravel Medicare.

Apart from his rather infamous breaking of the air traffic controllers' strike, which was a special case, Reagan made no effort to make things harder for workers trying to form a union. (Although Jimmy Carter had already done so.)

The point here is that Reagan made no attempt to undo the progressive achievements that GIs had supported and fought for in their youth and midlife. In absolute terms, the claim that he was to the right of his predecessors is completely untrue.

He was way more conservative than Richard Nixon on domestic issues

I'm not sure what you mean by "domestic issues" here. Nixon was certainly no right-winger in the White House, but Reagan made no effort to undo any of the things Nixon had done, that hadn't already been unraveled when he took office.

Additionally, George McGovern was well to the left of Bill Clinton. That didn't stop Silents from shifting way more Republican than any other group in 1980

This is a non-sequitur. McGovern ran in 1972, not 1980. Also, he lost. Jimmy Carter certainly wasn't to the left of Clinton.

But I think you're missing the point here. Progress happens, and what is progressive in one era becomes a conservative position later on. I'm not saying that Reagan wasn't conservative in temperament. If time travel had permitted him to be elected president in 1928, he might have governed to the right of where Hoover actually did. But he was elected in 1980, not 1928, and his administration preserved many progressive accomplishments from the previous administrations. The only way he could have been as conservative as Hoover in absolute terms would have been to abolish Social Security, Medicare, all federal aid to the poor, school desegregation, the Civil Rights Act, integration of the armed forces, etc., etc.

It's highly doubtful that he could have abolished much of this, but the fact is, he didn't try. He supported those things in his youth, too, being a Democrat during the Roosevelt years. And he himself didn't change his mind on any of those things. This gave GIs no reason to oppose him.

As for Boomers, Boomer voters went majority for Nixon in 1972, those that voted. Look it up.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Perhaps millennials will stay liberal too, if they follow the GIs.

They will and won't. The current issues will be non-issues by the next Awakening. New issues will arise. Millennials may well take conservative stances on those issues. But on the issues that currently matter to them, they're not likely to change their minds.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

You're right. New York and California should rule and everyone else should just go along. You do realize, you're not going to get bailed out the next time.

Sorry, old friend, its actually the entire Northeast, Pacific West and the MidWest with the exception of Indiana as Red and Ohio as a swing. If it was just NY and CA, you all might have a chance, but sorry, sunshine, its not.

The 2016 Dem nominee only needs one of either VA, OH, FL, or NC and its over. The 2016 GOP candidate would need ALL of these plus pick up a Blue Wall state that has at least 6 electoral votes - that's not going to happen. This is over before it starts.

The media needs to play up that there's an actual contest but it is going to be eventually seen for what it is - inevitable. The real action will be 24 Senate GOPers trying to keep from being swept out - many of them got in during the 2010 low voter turnout t-bagger mid-term election - in states that went Obama, twice. The post-election analysis is going to be all about can the GOP ever again win a national election and when, not if, will that question start coming up within most states (e.g. VA, OH, FL, NC, TX!). Not if, but when, will the GOP be seen as just a regional/rural power?

From there, it will gradually dawn on folks what this means for the SCOTUS. By the end of a 2-term Dem elected to the WH in 2016, Scalia will be closer to 90 than to 80 and Thomas will be in his mid-70s; those guys ain't no Ruth Ginsburg when it comes to cardiovascular systems.

An Obama/Clinton-dominated court will take big wacks at the GOP re-guard actions - Citizens United, voter suppression, gerrymandering. That latter one will start to put the U.S. House in play.

The real problem for the GOP is long before this comes to its inevitable fruition, the money-folks are going to sniff the blood in the water and the well is going to start drying up pretty quickly for Rightees. The pressure for a split in the Party is going to build as the various fractions start the inevitable desperate finger pointing - my bet it will be Cruz theocons rather than Paul libertarians that split off.

I can hardly wait.

You should take the family to Gettysburg, and see the previous High Water Mark. The interesting debate today is whether this time it was 2000, 2010 or 2014.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

You're right, but I don't see how you can say that the Boomers shifted Republican in the 90s when Bill Clinton was on the ballot.

From what I've seen of polls and such, generations differ in how conservative they get as they age. GIs reacted against some of the Boomer behavior and causes, but they still voted Democratic more than other generations and supported the New Deal programs as they aged. Perhaps millennials will stay liberal too, if they follow the GIs. We don't know. The Silents shifted quite a bit to the right as they aged, and the Boomers have shifted somewhat right too; staying fairly evenly divided for a long time, but now leaning right. There's a lot of variation too among early, core and later (Joneser) Boomers; the latter were always more conservative while the core has stayed somewhat liberal. Xers started more conservative than other young generations, but they haven't shifted further right by much yet as they've entered Middle Age. They are about 50-50 now. That's my reading of the various polls I've seen, many of them posted here.

You've got a lot of incorrect information. Boomers voted more heavily for the Democrat in every presidential election from 1976 through 1988 than any other generation. By quite a substantial margin. The site I used to look at historical exit polls now asks people to pay to see the data they used to host for free, but Boomers suddenly voted more Republican than some other generations in 1992, and have ever since.


As for GIs, they supported Nixon and Reagan quite heavily. In 1984, the groups that voted most heavily for Reagan were GIs and Xers. The group that voted least heavily for him was Boomers (although he won majorities among all ages groups in that landslide).


GIS were a little bit unusual because they heavily supported Reagan, but did not heavily support Bush 41 (relative to other age groups). They moved towards Republicans in the 70s and 80s, but moved back slightly to the Democrats in the 90s, probably due to the DLC agenda and impression that Clinton was more moderate than some previous Democrats. Anyone who was paying attention during that period knows that the biggest issues for GIs were Social Security and Medicare, and the Democrats used those issues relentlessly to keep GIs on board. That approach of showing Republicans throwing Granny off a cliff in campaign ads has not worked on Silents at all. Meanwhile Xers also shifted slightly left during the 90s from their earlier support of Reagan and Bush . They've been in the middle since then, but slightly right of the overall vote, and well to the right of Millennials. If they undergo the same shift as the previous two generations, they will become heavily Republican, second only to Silents. That was also the case with the Lost, the previous "Nomad" generation.


So you could assume that GIs were heavily in favor of the Democrats of their youth, but at the same time heavily opposed to the Democrats after 1968 who pushed the issues of the Boomer counter culture. Silents and Boomers have been more consistent in their movement, following the patten I described. And obviously, Democrats (who used to include a lot of conservatives) held Congress for a very long time until 1994, when Boomers and Silents (primarily) threw them out.

Long story short though, what you see in almost every election, with the lone exception of 1984, is that Democrats do better among younger voters than older voters. Xers and GIs broke those rules slightly, with Xers heavily supporting Reagan/Bush, and GIS being slightly cool towards Republicans in 1988.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

They will and won't. The current issues will be non-issues by the next Awakening. New issues will arise. Millennials may well take conservative stances on those issues. But on the issues that currently matter to them, they're not likely to change their minds.

If current issues remain issues in the 2030s, then something has gone very wrong with America. Something will have frozen a consensus of the Double-Zero decade, at least on the Right. Most likely the social attitude would be analogous to "Curiosity killed the cat". Asking questions about the appropriateness of economic inequality that serves only elites, why ideological strictures have more power than scientific reality, why discussions in the mainstream in countries not so "Christian and Capitalist" as America are taboo in America, why America lags an increasing number of countries in living standards, why American-trained scientists find Bucharest more attractive than Boston, why the best movies and mass culture come from Bollywood instead of Hollywood, and why the rest of the world is so hostile to the foreign policy of a militaristic America when 'our' neo-colonial adventures are offered as the definitive exercise of patriotism...

'Frozen' political orders look stable... but they are brittle. Soviet officials may have snickered as youth protested against wars and environmental degradation as they could not in the Soviet Union. Dissidents might find their lives ruined, so it is best to not ask too many questions in the USSR if you want to attend college or get a career that isn't so proletarian as assembly-line work -- or keep a well-paying job (by Soviet standards). Anyone could be a KGB snitch because such was expected; betraying a friend to the KGB was the expectation. That's not good for creating a civil society.

If the political realities of America are frozen as they are in 2015 only with the GOP entrenched completely in American politics, then the political system has squelched generational change only to institutionalize rot. Maybe the political order could delay a 2T... only to ensure that the 2T has political revolution as a focus.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

GIS were a little bit unusual because they heavily supported Reagan, but did not heavily support Bush 41 (relative to other age groups). They moved towards Republicans in the 70s and 80s, but moved back slightly to the Democrats in the 90s . . . So you could assume that GIs were heavily in favor of the Democrats of their youth, but at the same time heavily opposed to the Democrats after 1968 who pushed the issues of the Boomer counter culture.

That last sentence explains it perfectly. The Democrats of their youth weren't running in their old age. The GIs had been (and remained) progressive in terms of the economic and foreign policy issues that dominated their youth in the Crisis, but came down more conservative on the social issues that dominated in the Awakening. They didn't change that much. The prevailing issues did.

Xers may well be sharply conservative in their old age, if they follow the same pattern as the Lost. However, once again, that depends on the prevailing issues changing. Xers tend to be more in favor of gay rights and gay marriage than Boomers or older (but less so than Millennials), so the only way they can be as crusty right-wing as the Lost were is if that's no longer an issue when they get old. On a new set of issues, they may well drag their feet. Again, though, that's not them changing. It's the issues changing.

Playwrite, in regard to splits in the parties -- I think a more logical split would be in the Democrats rather than the GOP. This assumes that the Republican Party continues to champion the neo-Confederate cause, circles the drain as the demographics change, and dies. So-called "moderate" Republicans abandon the party and become Democrats. The whacko birds lose elections and fade into obscurity.

The American electoral system requires two parties and won't long tolerate a one-party state, so the Democrats can't continue in that role for long. They'll split in one direction or the other. Either the progressive Democrats or the conservative Democrats will continue to use that name, the other side will adopt a new one. If the conserva-Dems remain Democrats, former moderate Republicans will, too; otherwise they'll call themselves something else.

As the GOP is now constituted, there's no role for them at all in future politics. They're doomed. As the South urbanizes, the Civil Conflict will finally end, and there will be no more neo-Confederates. Genuine dictionary-definition conservatives will contend with progressives and we'll have a healthy and functioning political culture for the first time -- well, ever.

I've posted this article before, but here it is again:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...ting-behavior/



No data for 1992 in this chart though.

I found this chart from Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/167012/ba...ars-ahead.aspx

It shows that party leanings by poll were about the same across generations in 1993, with Greatest/GIs as most Democratic. This was about the same in 2003, but in 2013 the Silent had veered to the GOP quite sharply, and Greatest slightly. Boomers were only slightly less Democratic than Xers, and Millennials were sharply Democratic.



The article also shows the difference among Boomers that I noted above. Early 50s cohort core Boomers were still strongly Democratic in 2013, while Jonesers were much less so, and the Boomers whom we call Xers leaned Republican.

Gallup speculates that as Boomers replace Silents in the older age brackets, the country might shift more Democratic.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That last sentence explains it perfectly. The Democrats of their youth weren't running in their old age. The GIs had been (and remained) progressive in terms of the economic and foreign policy issues that dominated their youth in the Crisis, but came down more conservative on the social issues that dominated in the Awakening. They didn't change that much. The prevailing issues did.

Xers may well be sharply conservative in their old age, if they follow the same pattern as the Lost. However, once again, that depends on the prevailing issues changing. Xers tend to be more in favor of gay rights and gay marriage than Boomers or older (but less so than Millennials), so the only way they can be as crusty right-wing as the Lost were is if that's no longer an issue when they get old. On a new set of issues, they may well drag their feet. Again, though, that's not them changing. It's the issues changing.

As said earlier in the thread, there is a point (as part of the 4T/1T transition if you buy into S&H) where the left goes too far, and people turn against them. I think Brendan Eich and the recent threats of murder and arson against an Indiana pizzeria represent what is and will be the inflection point in that area.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Playwrite, in regard to splits in the parties -- I think a more logical split would be in the Democrats rather than the GOP. This assumes that the Republican Party continues to champion the neo-Confederate cause, circles the drain as the demographics change, and dies. So-called "moderate" Republicans abandon the party and become Democrats. The whacko birds lose elections and fade into obscurity.

The American electoral system requires two parties and won't long tolerate a one-party state, so the Democrats can't continue in that role for long. They'll split in one direction or the other. Either the progressive Democrats or the conservative Democrats will continue to use that name, the other side will adopt a new one. If the conserva-Dems remain Democrats, former moderate Republicans will, too; otherwise they'll call themselves something else.

As the GOP is now constituted, there's no role for them at all in future politics. They're doomed. As the South urbanizes, the Civil Conflict will finally end, and there will be no more neo-Confederates. Genuine dictionary-definition conservatives will contend with progressives and we'll have a healthy and functioning political culture for the first time -- well, ever.

Here is a list of the latest polls:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...lls/president/

They show Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker beating Hillary Clinton in Colorado. The pendulum there appears to be swinging back from left to right. In VA and IA, Clinton is well below 50%, with everyone knowing who she is and what she stands for, while her potential rivals are unknown to many. These are also polls of all registered voters, not "likely voters". In recent VA elections, undecideds have broken almost unanimously for the Republicans, and they've lost by razor thin margins with little support from the national party. Mark Warner, probably the most popular Democrat statewide in VA, almost lost and hung on by only a few thousand votes in 2014.

Your slanderous "neo-Confederate" label looks a little odd when you consider that South Carolina, the most Southern of all Southern states, the one where the Civil War began 150 years ago, is represented by a black Republican Senator and an Indian, Republican, female governor.

But I know from long history here that the people I'm talking to are completely beyond reason, and fully dedicated to a delusional world view in which the left marches ever forward and to greater and greater victories. Despite the fact that the Republicans already control both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and state legislatures, all as a result of the most recent elections. But you're still here trumpeting the notion that the Democrats are on the way to permanent one party dominance. In other words, nothing has changed. And if some of you still don't see reality, you obviously never will.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

As said earlier in the thread, there is a point (as part of the 4T/1T transition if you buy into S&H) where the left goes too far, and people turn against them. I think Brendan Eich and the recent threats of murder and arson against an Indiana pizzeria represent what is and will be the inflection point in that area.

First sentence, yes, that's the way it works, although no, we're nowhere near ​that point yet.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

First sentence, yes, that's the way it works, although no, we're nowhere near ​that point yet.

That's what you hope. But reality suggests otherwise. I remember people like you and others in this thread predicting Democrat control of Congress in recent elections as well, where you were completely wrong. But obviously no amount of being proven wrong by reality will stop you all, so enjoy.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Here is a list of the latest polls:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...lls/president/

They show Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker beating Hillary Clinton in Colorado.

Why do you single out Colorado and those three candidates, none of whom is likely to win the GOP nomination?

As Playwrite pointed out above, the Democratic candidate only needs to win one of Ohio, Virginia, Florida, or North Carolina to win the White House, along with the states that he or she absolutely will win. That will happen. It's a done deal.

Your slanderous "neo-Confederate" label looks a little odd when you consider that South Carolina, the most Southern of all Southern states, the one where the Civil War began 150 years ago

The first characterization doesn't follow from the second, nor is it true. Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana contend today for the title of "most Southern" states. SC isn't in the running. In fact, it wasn't in the running in 1861, either.

But I know from long history here that the people I'm talking to are completely beyond reason

Well, we're beyond the spurious, specious, and special-pleading nonsense that you typically offer as "reason," anyway.

Let's see what kind of tune you play after the Democratic candidate, whoever it is (probably Clinton, alas) wins again in 2016. If you're still here. Oh, and the Democrats will retake the Senate next year, too. The math makes that inevitable. Retaking the House, less inevitable, but pretty likely.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That will happen. It's a done deal.

There is no point in even engaging in conversation with this kind of nuttery. There are very few Democrats who are this crazy. So I gave you all a little response, but I'm done. Ask Democrat pollsters and experts if you think the Democrats are assured the presidency in 2016. You don't have to take my word for it.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

That's what you hope. But reality suggests otherwise. I remember people like you and others in this thread predicting Democrat control of Congress in recent elections as well

If that's what you "remember," then you and "reality" have only the most tenuous of connections. I certainly never expected anything other than what happened last year.

Next year, as I said above, the Democratic candidate will win the White House, and the Democrats will retake the Senate. I'm not making a similar prediction for the House, although it wouldn't surprise me. That you can quote. And that IS reality.

EDIT: A correction. I did not expect progressive ballot measures to do so well last year, nor conservative ones to fail so badly. So the outcome was, in that respect, better than I predicted. And that's a better indication of whether we've "overshot the mark" and are ready for a swing back to the right, and the beginning of the High. Obviously we have not.

Another Edit: I do seem to recall that, after Obamacare was passed by Congress, you predicted that this would be the issue that doomed Obama's second term. Didn't turn out that way, did it?

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Ask Democrat pollsters and experts if you think the Democrats are assured the presidency in 2016. You don't have to take my word for it.

How about we ask a Republican instead:

http://goplifer.com/2014/11/06/a-rea...-2014-results/

Originally Posted by playwrite

Lot's of fallacies and wishful thinking here.

At least Brian pointed out the inevitability of the "Blue Wall" in the Electoral College, but there are other needed corrections such as -

- Libertarians, by their very nature, don't vote
- Do all the wishful thinking you want of youth's 'growing out of their Progressive nature,' says nothing about the consequences of the demographics of an increasingly minority majority.
- Don't mistake the results of the past decade of gerrymandering in the House and a flawed governmental organization principle of giving two senators to puny population states as providing any political power other than to say "no" for a few more years
- If you're still holding onto the notion of no difference in party, sunshine, then you should be okay with Cotton's channelling Rumsfeld with our needing just 6 days of bombing to get those pesky Iranians under control or Ted Cruz telling us that a SCOTUS decision legalizing gay marriage would be "fundamentally illegitimate."

As for the "great divide," I'm going with biological. There's those whose cerebral cortex are in control and those whose cerebral cortex get overridden by the more primative xenophobic, fight-or-flight amygdala -

http://www.psych.nyu.edu/jost/Jost-Amodio-2012.pdf

Oh, as for the theory of Progressive youth becoming with age something like today's 'conservatives" - I caulk that up to early-onset dementia.

OMG ... political difference = physical difference? Seriously? That PoV is in and of itself quite primitive and lacks sophistication in the extreme.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

OMG ... political difference = physical difference? Seriously? That PoV is in and of itself quite primitive and lacks sophistication in the extreme.

Not in this case. Although I'm pretty sure Playwrite was being tongue in cheek. But it really is the case that liberals and conservatives (dictionary-definition) are reality-based, while the neo-Confederate Tea Party types are reality-denying and living in fantasy-land.

Once again, these are not conservatives. This is not the equivalent of Buckley, Goldwater, Coolidge, Robert Taft, or any other conservative from our history. It's not even the equivalent of Reagan although it comes closer. These are nut jobs. These are crazies. This is the Stupid Party, and you really couldn't say that about the GOP prior to about 1990. And not entirely even then.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

if there is any validity to S&H whatsoever, the 4T started on 9/11/2001. Interpreting things any other way makes S&H completely indefensible. Their whole theory falls apart.

Might as well address this, even though JPT seems to have turned tail and run again. Or says he is. Maybe he'll change his mind.

As you pointed out yourself, it's if we DO assume that the 4T started on 9/11 that the whole structure of the theory falls apart. It doesn't fit the generational constellation expected, and it results in a 4T so atypical that it makes no sense at all, and all the predictive power of the theory fails.

There's nothing about 9/11 (or any other single event) that makes it 4T. No particular reason why a terrorist attack can't be the Catalyst, but it occurred at the wrong time, and events like that can happen at any point in the saeculum. Pearl Harbor, an event to which 9/11 is sometimes compared, happened very late in the last 4T; the building of the Berlin Wall in this cycle's 1T; the Iran hostage crisis in its 2T; the Oklahoma City bombing in its 3T. And 9/11 also occurred in the 3T.

The Boston Tea Party, on the other hand, was a very mild event, but it was followed by a cascading sequence of events that led to the Revolutionary War. The BTP led to the Coercive Acts which led to the formation of a Massachusetts militia and the Continental Congress, which led to the first battles of the war and the Declaration of Independence, which led to . . . and so on. Similarly: the Lincoln election led to the secession of the South, which led to the attack on Fort Sumter, which started the Civil War, which ended the impasse between agrarian and industrial elements in America, to the 13th - 15th Amendments, and to the strengthening of federal power vis-a-vis the states. Similarly: the stock market crash led to the economic collapse which led to the rise of Roosevelt and a new Democratic coalition, which led to the New Deal, which led to Social Security and the union revolution, which along with the war in Europe and Asia led to America assuming superpower status.

As the nature of the event itself, combined with wishful thinking on your part, is the only reason why you are so adamant that 9/11 was the Catalyst, you demonstrate with that conviction that you have a false conception of what the saeculum would predict, and a very poor understanding of the theory overall. 9/11 led to nothing of great and lasting significance, no important changes in American culture and national policy, no great shifts in the international order (bin Ladin wanted it to, but he failed).

On the other hand, the economic meltdown of 2008, not because of what it was but of what followed, fits the pattern. The meltdown led to the Obama election, which led to the Tea Party movement, which led to the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by grass-roots insurgents, which has led to the current situation in which the American Civil Conflict has once again taken front stage center. At the same time, it has led to the emergence of direct-democracy elements that will probably prove longer-lasting than anything the Obama administration has accomplished. The next act will be the resolution of the ACC and the complete defeat of the Tea Party, leading to a government that is capable of actually doing things, along with the further application of direct democracy via the internet, pushing the government in necessary directions.

That cascading sequence shows a pattern very much like what happened in the prior three Crises. As for S&H's predictions about generational qualities, some of that was due to their own (particularly Strauss') wishful thinking and failure to understand what the GIs were like, and hence what the Millennials would be like. Strauss predicted that the Millennials would reverse the cultural changes wrought by Boomers in the 2T. I pointed out while he was still alive and participating here that that was unlikely in the extreme, that no Civic generation so far had ever reversed what the Idealists did, but rather normalized it and made it part of the status quo, while making their own progressive changes mostly to political and economic institutions rather than culture. And that's what they're doing, in some rather surprising ways, but only surprising in the details, not in the overall trend.

Since that makes them very much like the GIs in certain core respects, which is what the theory predicts, failure of some of the predictions that S&H made that don't follow from the theory, don't invalidate the theory.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

That's what you hope. But reality suggests otherwise. I remember people like you and others in this thread predicting Democrat control of Congress in recent elections as well, where you were completely wrong. But obviously no amount of being proven wrong by reality will stop you all, so enjoy.

Democrats will regain the House of Representatives when 54% of the electorate (because of gerrymandering) get sick of Republican non-achievement in the House or scared of Republican warmongering and bigotry.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Democrats will regain the House of Representatives when 54% of the electorate (because of gerrymandering) get sick of Republican non-achievement in the House or scared of Republican warmongering and bigotry.

I almost hate to write this because the future of the Supreme Court would then depend totally on 4 heartbeats, including Ruth Bader Ginsberg's frail one, for two years, but the quickest way to get there is to have a GOP victory in 2016 followed by two years of worse than Dubya CF in DC.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Democrats will regain the House of Representatives when 54% of the electorate (because of gerrymandering) get sick of Republican non-achievement in the House or scared of Republican warmongering and bigotry.

Why don't the people just get rid of gerrymandering, which is what they should have been doing these last 4 years????

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

But I know from long history here that the people I'm talking to are completely beyond reason, and fully dedicated to a delusional world view in which the left marches ever forward and to greater and greater victories. Despite the fact that the Republicans already control both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and state legislatures, all as a result of the most recent elections. But you're still here trumpeting the notion that the Democrats are on the way to permanent one party dominance. In other words, nothing has changed. And if some of you still don't see reality, you obviously never will.

Maybe because Republican governance is so horrific, that we cannot conceive of it continuing for too long. But I may be a bit more in touch with your "reality" than some of my fellow liberals here.

It will take a large shift to take back those governorships, legislatures, and congress. I think this is likely to happen in 2020. The Democrats I give a slight edge to keeping the White House in 2016. A Republican win of the White House is less likely, but possible. In that case, the Democrats will regain congress etc. in 2022 and the White House in 2024.

Democrats do better in presidential elections right now, and Republicans do better in midterms. On that basis we can say that the purple states like CO, IA and VA are more likely than not to stay blue. There is some chance that as young people and non-whites learn that voting only counts if you also vote in midterms, that the Democrats will have an advantage. The future of our nation depends on this.

Republican policies are bankrupt. They have nothing to offer the country. What they offer is the nation's and the world's destruction. A banana republic USA is not viable. The Republicans as now constituted will have to die in this 4T, or else the nation will die. That is the choice. I predict it is the Republicans that will die. But that is only because I DO have a crystal ball.