I have posited in several conversations that the problem is the anti-war Boomers who

came of age politically during Vietnam.

A columnist recently noted that a leading demographer had seen fit to split the Boomers

into two groups - those directly affected by Vietnam (i.e. draftable by about 1968 or 1969

- I'll go find the article in a bit) and those not - like you and me.

I think he called us the Jones generation or something. We are more conservative and less

ideologically fixated than the older Boomers.

The point is that the older Boomers have been controlling the political discussion in

America for some time, and particularly post- Reagan. But now they are dying off and we

are beginning to see the generational change I have said many times will be necessary to

get America back to where it needs to be. Those that are not dying off are being rapidly

supplanted in the voting franchise by a more conservative youth. More college-age kids

are self-identifying as Republicans than as demos for the first time in our lifetimes. More

young women are choosing to stay home rather than enter the workforce. This is a

traditional, conservative choice that seems driven by kids who were latchkey themselves,

and don't want to do that to their own children. Respect for the military is an associated

virtue also ascendant.

Columnists in several columns – both on the right and the left – have referred to

something as the “Roe Effect.” In a nutshell, liberals abort their kids, conservatives don’t,

so guess what happens to the franchise?

(More detail: since Roe v Wade, 43M babies have been aborted. Assume that 1/3 would

have been of voting age in 2004 (14M), and that 75% of those would have been raised in

liberal households and become liberals. That’s 10.7M liberal voters that didn’t exist in an

election won by 3M votes. Run it out 20 years. Assume 51% of those 43M were women

and that they had a fertility rate of 2.1 (replacement). In twenty years you have 75% of

43M + 75% of new births = 78.3M liberal voters that just won’t exist. The current liberal

party is dead – they just haven’t figured it out. Those that have are getting more and more

angry that they haven’t taken control, and are more and more nasty about their failure to

have done so.)

I think it is very much this demographic change that has driven the vituperation of the

past two elections. The Left is disappearing - and the anti-war, anti-America Boomers

can't stand it. America's youth are turning right in a big way. The conventional wisdom of

youth voting left and of big turnout voting left was just reversed in November - and the

left still hasn't figured out what to do about it. In reality it looks like there is nothing they

CAN do about it.

My view is that this past election killed the party. Like a horror movie, however, they'll

try to rise again. Now that they have installed ScreamDean as their chairman and with the

nearly inescapable probability that they'll run Hillary, this hard-left group will have a

stake driven through its heart in 2008.

My prediction, for what it's worth, is that the current democratic party will cease to exist

as a potent political force by 2012, and the GOP will fracture along the moderate/far right

fissure. This will really just get us back to the early 1960s. Both parties were foreign

policy hawks but had different social visions. I think that's where we'll end up in a cycle

or two.

Regardless of what happens, the citizen's view of the military will continue to improve.

We'll get attacked again. Our military will defend us again -- and go kill bad guys. Since

Americans don't really like nuance and don't really care for half-measures, the folks who

just kill the bad guys will again become heroes.

Of course, to some of us, they always have been.