The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A ‘Big Tent’ Can Be Too Big

I disagree with the conclusion (more on that in a moment), but (a) this is a great thing to investigate with the data; (b) as soon as I saw the time-series data, I immediately wanted to plot it on the 2-axis / 4-quadrant Nolan chart ... and that's exactly what the author did next!

Now, why I'm not convinced that the data actually shows what the author thinks it shows: there are two possible explanations of the data:

1) that people change their views over time 2) that views are a function of when you were born

The author accepts point 1 without even thinking about point 2.

Two examples:

1) data shows that the older you are, the more your joints hurt.

2) data shows that the older you are, the more you disapprove of homosexuality.

I assert that fact #1 is explained by "old age leads to creaky joints", and fact #2 is explained by "social norms changed between 1930 and 2000, and people, to a good degree, retain the social norms of their youth".

Instead of concluding that "youth makes you a libertarian and old age makes you an authoritarian", I suggest that the truth might be that "being born after the Berlin Wall fell and globalization occurred makes you a libertarian; coming of age in the hippy era makes you a leftist, and living through the Great Depression and WWII makes you an authoritarian".

I don't endorse everything in it, but the book _Generations_

( http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-15... )

argues something pretty much in this direction.

Given that OKC's data is all from a very short period of time, there's no way to prove one hypothesis over another. Given a longer time series, though, we can disambiguate.

Many years ago, I made a similar point to a friend of mine: that the U.S. Rep. Party attracts a relatively cohesive group of people, while the Dem. Party is attractive to various people who have little in common. He replied that there is a strong commonality among Dem. supporters: the idea that government is an effective and beneficial way to deal with societal problems.

I've thought about this a lot since, and have not really come to any conclusions. However I will say that it seems possible that, while groups trending Democratic are not very cohesive when measured on some scales (e.g., social & economic permissive/restrictive scales, as in this article), they are relatively cohesive when measured on other scales.

Democrats have a broader, multi-issue base that can be picked apart on specific issues/legislation at the edge/fringes.