For those of you keeping score at home, the Baby Boomer Generation is made up of people born between 1946 and 1964, meaning that they are currently between 44 and 62 years old. The Blog Reader Project shows the following demographic breakdown for Daily Kos readers:
- Age:
<18: 0.3%
18-20: 1.2%
21-34: 26.3%
35-45: 22.8%
46-55: 25.7%
56-65: 18.0%
66-75: 4.6%
>75: 1.0%
The results show that the majority of Daily Kos readers are not Baby Boomers. The largest category (the plurality) is the 21-34 contingent, and more than 50% of readers (the majority) are too young to be part of the Boomer generation, while more than 5% are too old. This doesn’t prevent senior adviser to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s vice presidential and presidential campaigns, Dan Gerstein, from asserting:
The Kossacks and their activist allies — who skew toward the Boomers — believe that Republicans are venal bordering on evil, and that the way Democrats will win elections and hold power is to one-up Karl Rove’s divisive, bare-knuckled tactics. Their opponents within the party — who skew younger and freer of culture war wounds — believe that the way to win is offer voters a break from this poisonous tribal warfare and a compelling, inclusive vision for where we want to take the country.
Technically, Gerstein said ‘Kossacks and their activist allies‘, so I guess he can try to defend himself by claiming that the ‘activist allies’ skew to the boomer generation, thereby tilting Kossacks in that direction. I don’t know, Gerstein is an asshat. But it’s kind of important that he’s screwed up the generational profile of Daily Kos because his entire essay depends on Kossacks (and by extension, the blogosphere as a whole) being about the politics of the past, in distinction from the hopeful, post-partisan politics of the future (as embodied in Senator Barack Obama).
Gerstein might be onto something about Kossacks (and the blogosphere more generally) but not because of the age distinctions, i.e., because non-Kossacks/Blogosphereites are “freer of culture war wounds.” Ironically, Gerstein hits on a better explanation (though he skips right over it) while he is in the process of distorting the history of the Lieberman/Lamont battle.
The country got an initial taste of this tactical tussle in 2006 when the Lieberman-Lamont Senate campaign in Connecticut went national — and an initial test of the relative merits in the general-election portion of that race (in which I was Joe Lieberman’s communications director).
With a discredited Republican candidate in the race, the choice came down to two Democrats who actually agreed on most issues outside of Iraq, but differed on the kind of change we need in Washington. Mr. Lieberman called for a new politics of unity and purpose; Mr. Lamont mostly called for Messrs. Bush’s and Lieberman’s heads.
The hope candidate soundly beat the Kos candidate — Kos actually taped a commercial for Lamont — by 10 points. More importantly, Mr. Lieberman won independents (the biggest voting bloc in the state) by 19 points, which is all the more remarkable because they opposed the war by a margin of 65%-29%.
When Democrats voted in the primary, they rejected Joe Lieberman. Lieberman won the general election because Republicans rejected their own candidate and voted for Lieberman by a 70%-8% margin. Democrats prefered Lamont by a 65%-33% margin and Independents preferred Lieberman 54%-35%. As the Republican numbers show, this was a highly unusual election, but there’s nothing in the exit polls to bolster Gerstein’s case about a Baby Boomer skew towards Lamont.
- VOTE BY AGE
TOTAL Lieberman/Lamont/Schlesinger
18-29 (10%): 40%/50%/10%
30-44 (23%): 45%/41%/13%
45-59 (39%): 51%/39%/10%
60 and Older (28%): 56%/36%/7%
The numbers decisively show that younger voters preferred Lamont and Baby Boomers gave Lieberman his victory. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Gerstein’s dishonest interpretation of polling data continues into the South Carolina results:
The outcome in South Carolina was the most telling — and arguably put the last nail in the coffin of Kos-ism. This was the state where Mr. Edwards and his drawl were born. This was the state he won by 15 points in 2004, even after losing Iowa and New Hampshire to John Kerry. And this was a state that was ostensibly most amenable to his arguments about being the most electable Democrat in red states. Yet Mr. Edwards was rejected by voters across the board, failing to win even a majority of the white vote (40%).
Gerstein makes a point of Edwards failing to win the majority of the white vote, when the most startling thing about the South Carolina exit polls is that Edwards won the plurality of the white vote, despite coming in a distant third place overall.
- Vote by Race
White (Overall)
Clinton 36% (27%)
Edwards 40% (18%)
Kucinich 0% (0%)
Obama 24% (55%)
As I have written elsewhere, undecided white voters (and even some committed white Clinton voters) broke late for Edwards and Obama at a 3:1 ratio that clearly indicates how racially polarized the South Carolina primary became near the end and how much it hurt the Clinton campaign. If there is a lesson to take from that it was that Edwards’ peace keeping role in the South Carolina debate helped make him an attractive alternative to white voters that were disgusted with the Clintons. I guess Gerstein can take some comfort in knowing that hyperpartisanship doesn’t always sell, but the facts in every other regard make a mockery of his argument.
The one thing I will agree with Gerstein about is this: for many of my blogging colleagues, Obama’s approach does not resonate because it doesn’t conform to what actually worked in the battles of 2005-7. Gerstein acknowledges this, in part:
This analysis will likely be seen as a bit of grave-dancing on my part, given that I have been an occasional target of the wrath of Kos. But while I am troubled by their hostile, hyper-partisan tendencies, I think the Kossacks have at their best made enormous contributions to the party over the last few years — most noticeably by stiffening the Washington establishment’s spine in confronting President Bush and energizing and organizing the base. One could credibly argue, in fact, that Mr. Obama would not be in the position to inspire the base if Kos and his allies had not first helped to get them “fired up, ready to go.”
Taken in total isolation, I agree with that observation and think it helps explain why so many of my colleagues became hopelessly wanking imbeciles when they were confronted with Obama’s campaign. If he used a talking point on Social Security that they had spent effort to debunk, they went beserk. It’s like they couldn’t accept that the battle over Social Security was won and it didn’t matter anymore whether Obama stepped on their message. Moreover, my colleagues have consistently applied idiotic standards to Obama’s campaign, rarely taking into consideration the true limitations his race makes on his ability to embrace populist or partisan or angry messages and be successful. We wasn’t going to beat Edwards by out-Edwardsing Edwards, nor beat Hillary by showing more heat. His strategy has been calibrated to the moment and to reality, and so far it has been almost miraculous in its success and its ability to attract and excite a new generation of Americans.
Having said that, the need to fight is stronger than ever, and the Blogosphere won’t be taking any time off.
