The generation apparently has a name
We didn’t know the name of the current generation of young people being targeted in Senator Obama’s campaign when we mentioned the Pepsi Generation the other day. Apparently this new group is the Millennial Generation. Ron Dzwonkowski in the Detroit Free Press:
This Democratic dilemma came up this week in a conversation with two old-line party members who have written a new book on young voters. “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics.” The book is all about the political potential of the so-called Millennial Generation, born from 1983-2003, and at 80 million strong, the largest generation in American history. It also is the most diverse and most technologically savvy and has been forecast to be America’s next great generation, reshaping the nation to the same extent that the “GI Generation” did after World War II.
With its defining moment so far the 9/11 attacks, the Millennial Generation is concerned about security and is in constant communication via cell phones and the Internet. Thanks in part to Title IX and growing up with TV shows that melted down stereotypes, the generation has little sense of traditional roles for men and women, doesn’t make much of racial or ethnic differences, and relies for advice largely on friends and peers. Millennials prefer “win-win” solutions to outright victories for one side, which means they have little use for politics as practiced in this country for the past 20 years or so.
Although, at 46, not part of the generation, Obama obviously is in tune with it. His campaign is the first to tap nationally into the online “social networking” that is an essential part of life for just about every Millennial.
“They don’t see a black candidate; they see hope,” said Morley Winograd, the former Michigan Democratic chairman and adviser to Vice President Al Gore who wrote the book with Michael Hais, a researcher and analyst who worked on campaigns for Michigan U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and former governor James Blanchard. “They are not out to resist government authority, but for them that authority has not worked very well,” Hais said of the coming generation of voters, who have only known presidents named Clinton or Bush. “They want to make it work better and don’t see the current leadership doing that.” For them, Obama means change.
Reread that last paragraph a few times. It is a little disturbing that a chunk of the younger generation is so fatuous. Do these youngsters think that the world has just been waiting for them to arrive? Maybe so. This may be the first, or at least one of the first, presidential campaigns whose marketing strategy often looks like it is selling the hottest fad to unsuspecting teeny-boppers. Maybe we were more right than we knew when we speculated that the iPod ruined America.