I’ve lived my entire adult life in an odd space that finds me smack in the center of all kinds of seemingly random American trends, on the one hand, and on the left-hand margin of American political trends. Beginning with the election of 1980, when America swept Ronald Reagan into the White House, I was finding a glimmer of hope in the 4,330 residents of Brattleboro, Vermont, whose votes made Bernie Sanders as their mayor. Meanwhile, I was helping make Pink Floyd’s The Wall one of the best-selling albums of all time.
If demographers want to know what the next big thing is going to be, they could do way worse than simply checking in on our household regularly. Seriously, within a few months of our moving to Pittsburgh in 1999, the New York Times ran a front page story headed “Pittsburgh: The Next Big Thing.”
That one didn’t quite pan out for us or for Pittsburgh, but most of the time, whatever Cheryl and I are into is about to become culturally and economically central. It makes sense. After all, more babies were born in the United States in 1959-60 than at any other point in the post-war baby boom. Although culturally, we fall into the cracks between classic Boomers and Generation X, we are part of a cohort that has a huge amount of buying power. (So, as an aside, if you’re looking for the next big thing check out elder co-housing. Trust me.)
On the other hand, politically, I’ve rarely been in the middle of any wave. The one exception would be the 2008 election of President Obama, but that increasingly looks like a great outlier. After all, he united and excited a coalition that included millions of voters who, like me, are significantly more progressive than he is.
What does any of that have to do with politics on Super Tuesday, 2020?
Writing in the Times today, Michelle Goldberg observes that:
College-educated white women, for example, helped flip the House in 2018. They favor Biden over Trump by double digits, but Sanders by only two points. Sanders, however, seems to see little need to reach out to them. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times editorial board in December, Sanders said he didn’t believe the way to win against Trump “is to just speak to Republican women in the suburbs.”
That jumped out at me even though none of it is about me. It is, however, close to me, because I’m married to a college-educated white woman who (see above) is part of a huge cohort that includes way more than “Republican women in the suburbs.” If Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination he will have to figure out how to reach out to that huge cohort or else President Trump will be re-elected.
I certainly cannot speak for any of those women – especially not the one to whom I am married. But I do know some things about them, and one of the things I know is that they vote. Another thing that I know is that many of them are more than a little tired of choosing between old white men when they step into voting booths. More to the point, they are tired of old white men whose most consistent rhetorical strategy amounts to mansplaining the world.
Way too often that’s the way Bernie Sanders sounds to way too many people, and, critically, not just “Republican women in the suburbs.”
If he really wants to win a national election, Bernie needs to figure out how to connect with people like my beloved. She is one of a kind, but there are millions of others who are also ones of that same kind. I’m betting that they’ll decide the election next fall.
