Thread by @fawfulfan

THREAD:

1/ A lot of people have asked how white, rural areas turned against Democrats so sharply over the course of a few election cycles.

There's an answer that's been staring us in the face the whole time: it's a generational issue.

Let me explain.

2/ The reason Dems used to perform well in rural areas is the Greatest Generation — the voters who came of age in the Depression and saw FDR save farmers from economic annihilation. They carried with them the memory that they owe their communities and livelihoods to Democrats.

3/ But the last of these voters have now been dying off in recent years, to be replaced with Silents and Boomers — whose formative political years were marked by the Democratic Party fracturing over civil rights and Republicans busting the Solid South wide open in culture war.

4/ Note: I am NOT saying that Silents and Boomers are *more* racist than the Greatest Generation — I'm saying the Greatest Generation baked in their political views in a time when Democrats were much more willing to triangulate on race than they are now.

5/ This means that the older, more reliably-voting demographic in rural communities had completely different formative political experiences than that same demographic 20 or even 10 years ago.

In short, rural voters didn't change — they were replaced.

6/ I think the reason people miss this is because we have a myth in our culture that people get conservative as they get older.

"If you're not a Democrat before 30 you have no heart, if you're not a Republican after 30 you have no brain" and all that.

7/ But the thing is, there's not really evidence of that. Voting patterns show that, much like a lot of things we learn when we're young, there's a critical period at which our political views get baked in. People drift on issues, but rarely change their whole worldview.

8/ So what does that imply for Democrats going forward?

It implies that it's kind of too late to win back places like rural Arkansas and Missouri, because we didn't lose them based on anything we're doing now — we planted the seeds 50 years ago.

9/ But there's a silver lining to all this: generational change is a double-edged sword.

Millennials and Gen-Zers' formative political experiences are occurring in a era when Republicans are insurgent, shattering democratic institutions and pandering to white nationalism.

10/ So I can't help but wonder — what will all these currently Republican places look like in another 30 years, when today's young people are the dominant voting bloc?

No political alignment lasts forever. Generational politics is slow-moving, but once it's in motion... /END