by Dan Burns

Nov 17, 2022, 7:30 AM

The voter sea change is here

It’s long been evident that there would come a time when the voter “sea change” in the U.S. would start to make a real difference. That is, more and more younger, progressive (to varying degrees) people would start to vote, which along with the natural decline in the size of the conservative base of old people would result in Democrats consistently winning more elections. Based on the results of the last few elections, that time has clearly arrived. It’s been an agonizing wait.

And there are plenty of caveats. Graphically, we likely won’t be able to take for granted a steady, even climb in progressive electoral fortunes over the next couple of decades, because turnout among various groups doesn’t stay consistent. (It would be great if it does stay consistently high, among all Democrats, everywhere, but that’s not a sure thing yet.) Rather, while on the whole said fortunes should ascend (assuming the U.S. remains pretty much a legitimate representative democracy, which I think it probably will), there will be peaks and valleys. Like going from right to left in the photo at the top of this. On the whole you’re getting higher, but…

The ultimate goal is for every state to end up like California, where right-wing conservatives have no power in state governance, and barring an incredible fluke won’t for the foreseeable future. Ultimately things should get close to that. But, while a state like Minnesota probably is in fact not far from that happy day, for many others it’s going to be decades, yet.

Demographic voter change doesn’t get talked about much. In corporate media that’s certainly understandable. It’s not good business to constantly remind your own elderly base that they’ll soon “exit the electorate,” “go to their eternal rewards,” “have it coming,” or whatever. Along with the fact that corporate “news” media is essentially just corporate propaganda now in any case. But you don’t see a lot about it on the online left, either. Mostly, I suppose, due to fear of “complacency.” My own take is that a measure of confident optimism might well actually be more effective, in many contexts, than constant scaremongering doom and gloom. But I don’t claim to know that for sure.