Policies even the far-left couldn’t even dream of two decades ago is now becoming mainstream in Washington, and President Joe Biden is turning in favor of many of them too. From eliminating the filibuster, to investing big in green energy, to overhauling voting rights, to spending big in America’s infrastructure, and to admitting Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as states, liberal ideals are now starting to gain footholds in Congress.
There is no doubt that the U.S. has been getting more and more liberal over the past decade or so. Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) and those belonging to the Generation Z cohort (those born after 1996) are the most liberal generations to exist in America. A major Pew Research Center study, which comprised of 10,682 U.S. adults aged above 18 and 920 teenagers aged between 13 and 17 found, in 2019, that not only are the younger generations more consistently liberal than any other generation, they are also substantially more likely to hold liberal positions.
For example, those belonging to the Gen Z and Millennial generations are far more likely to disapprove of former President Donald Trump, believe that the government should do more to solve problems, and that increasing diversity is good for society. A core belief of many liberals is that big government is a good thing, and that governments should do lots of things to help society, and so the age divide in this question couldn’t be more stark: while 70 percent of Gen Z adults believed big government is good, just 39 percent of those belonging to the Silent Generation (born between 1928 and 1945) believe the same, a 31-point gap.
Even Gen Z and Millennial Republicans are far more likely to believe that Blacks are not treated fairly than older Republicans.
And in terms of LGBTQ rights, the difference is also quite stark. While just 15 percent of Gen Z adults believe same-sex marriage to be a bad thing, 43 percent of those in the Silent Generation and 32 percent of those in the Baby Boomer Generation (those born between 1945 and 1964) think same-sex marriage is bad for society. In addition, about half of all Millennials and Gen Zers believe that society is not accepting enough toward people who don’t identify as a man or woman, while just 32 percent of those in the Silent Generation and 36 percent of Baby Boomers believe the same.
Other policies which younger Americans are in favor of significantly more than their older counterparts include universal health care, student debt cancellation, legalization of recreational marijuana, continued legalization of abortion, reform to the American criminal justice system, and workers’ rights, like increasing the minimum wage to $15.
There is no doubt that age is a directly correlated to age. However, we must also ask the question as to why our younger generation is so liberal.
Those born in the Silent Generation likely came of age during the stagflation of the 1970s, when big government, Keynesian-style economic policies dominated governments across the world. And Baby Boomers came of age during the Ronald Reagan era, when his small-government, trickle-down policies made the American economy rise again. Thus, this group of adults, who grew up under a conservative government, are likely to hold conservative views.
On the other hand, Millennials and Gen Zers largely came of age during the Great Recession and now, the COVID-19-induced economic recession, both of which started under conservative governments. This is likely to have caused many young adults to lose trust in the idea that small government is best for the people. In addition, with younger Americans being increasingly more diverse, increasingly more educated, and being far more likely to have college-educated parents (a direct indicator of someone’s political standing), these are all factors which increase the chance of someone identifying as liberal.
Also, Gen Zers, who are now entering the workforce and becoming voting-age in numbers greater than ever before, will have vivid memories of Donald Trump’s presidency. Research has shown that the Republicans’ continued embrace of Donald Trump and his politics could be detrimental to their party’s performance with young voters. This is a major problem as Millennials and Gen Zers are on track to becoming the largest voting bloc, surpassing Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, in just a couple years’ time. Once the current group of Silent and Baby Boomer generation politicians leave office, more and more young adults are coming into power. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., just became the youngest senator and only Millennial in the 117th Congress.
The generation divide has never been more stark, and Democrats, who have typically performed extremely well with younger voters, would be foolish not to take advantage of such a large divide, not seen since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency and the New Deal.
Young, progressive leaders within the Democratic Party, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., being powered by the older progressives like Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are single-handedly pushing the Democratic Party to the left. In 2016, Medicare for All was not even a talking point. Yet, in just five short years, progressives have brought issues such as this onto the national stage, garnering widespread attention in the process. Even if you don’t agree with the politics of Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive colleagues, there is no denying that their voices are simply very powerful.
The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is undoubtedly one of the most progressive pieces of legislation passed by Congress in modern history. Though liberals were forced to scrap the $15 minimum wage proposal, the bill was still chock-full of liberal priorities, including sending money to state and local governments and vastly expanding child-related benefits.
And there is no doubt that the Senate in this era is far more progressive than it ever has been. Even in 2009 and 2010, when Democrats held 59 seats on the Senate and, for a brief period in time, a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats, there were lots of conservative Southern Democrats, who, ideology wise, probably leaned more to the Republicans than to the Democrats. (This explains why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “only” spent $900 billion.) Now that most of these “Democrats In Name Only” have been voted out of office, what is left is actual liberal Democrats, and the moderate Democratic senators, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), have not made too-outrageous demands to completely gut the relief bill, which is what a lot of those conservative Democrats did back in the days of the Obama administration.
By embracing liberal policy, Democrats are empowering a new generation of leaders to take shape and to vote in greater numbers than ever before. The Democratic Party knows that by moving to the left, they will only have more to gain, since they have finally begun to realize that the elusive “swing voter” who is appealed by moderate policies does not exist. By appealing to the party’s progressive wing, they can tap into a much larger voter base than moderate “swing voters,” and it would be foolish for the Democratic Party to not do so.
Change is coming to American politics, and it is going to be in one particular direction. And that direction is not the right.