A generational civil war? Well . . .

I don't see much commentary on this issue but I think it an interesting one. From The Democrats' generational battle by Brad Bannon.

It is too simplistic to say that there are two camps - The 75-85 year-old establishment leadership battling the 30-45 year-old socialists but it sometimes feels that way through news accounts. Interestingly, the Republicans went through the same Establishment versus Youthful Reformers experience but 20-30 years ago under the young firebrand, Newt Gingrich.

From Bannon:

A battle rages between the baby boomers who run the party and the millennials who are the strongest Democratic partisans.

The first big reveal in the Democratic battle for generational supremacy came in 2018. In Democratic congressional primaries that year, two young progressive challengers, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (then age-28) and Ayanna Pressley (44), beat stalwart liberal incumbents, Joe Crowley (56) and Mike Capuano (66) in Democratic primaries in New York City and Boston, respectively.

The insurgent primary victories were more generational than they were ideological. Both incumbents had very good liberal voting records that were no match for younger challengers.

This generational battle has since played out in the U.S. House of Representatives, where the Democratic leadership has seniority in more ways than one.

The big Democratic House majority has isolated the Republic minority so the real battle has been between the senior House leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (age 79) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (80) on one side and “The Squad,” Ocasio-Cortez (now 30) along with three other young women, Reps. Ilhan Omar (38) of Minnesota, Rashida Talib (43) of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley (45) of Massachusetts.

The squad and their progressive allies have battled with the Democratic leadership over Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and the pace of impeachment.

The battle between millennials and boomers has now reared its head in the Democratic race for president.

I think that Bannon is overstating his case but that doesn't mean there isn't a real and interesting dynamic. I still think that the principle lines are drawn more on cultural beliefs than on age. In other words, most of the older establishment have at least some awareness of history and civic norms. The radicals (critical race theory, feminist theory, deconstructionists, socialists, etc.) do not. Post circa 1995, we do have a whole generation who have potentially been raised without much real knowledge of history and a strong bias towards postmodernist fancies such that radicalism is more prevalent among the young. But that is a cultural/ideological divide which happens to have a correlation with age due to educational changes. Not a youth issue per se.