Welcome to the Loyal Order of Moose
Over the weekend, I took another step back from leadeship here so people decades younger could put a hand on the tiller. I helped elect a 25-year-old woman for N.C. state chair in 2023. I welcome a 27-year old woman as our newly elected county chair. I still complain that some Democratic Party organizations have the institutional vitality and cultural relevance of (no offense) the Loyal Order of Moose (founded 1888).
A couple of items this morning on why recognizing that and acting on it is important. Because younger voters are justifiably fed up with the two party system.
Exit polling that Newsweek reported in November showed that not only did Kamala Harris’s support slump 13 points among 18 to 29 Gen Z voters over Joe Biden’s 2020 electorate, but they swung right by several points.
Yale’s Youth Poll from last week found that for “a generic Democrat vs. Republican ballot for 2026, respondents ages 18-21 supported Republicans by nearly 12 points, while those ages 22-29 backed Democrats by about 6 points,” Rachel Janfaza reported at Politico:
It was a stunning gap that undermined the longstanding notion of younger voters always trending more liberal. On the contrary, today’s youngest eligible voters are more conservative than their older counterparts: According to the poll, they are less likely to support transgender athletes participating in sports, less likely to support sending aid to Ukraine and more likely to approve of President Donald Trump. Fifty-one percent of younger Gen Zers view him favorably, compared to 46 percent of older Gen Z.
An NBC News Stay Tuned Poll reported this morning as Donald Trump approaches his first 100 days that “64% of independents have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party and 71% have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party,” polling by Survey Monkey found:
Meanwhile, Gen Zers and millennials were more likely than Gen X and baby boomers to identify themselves as independents. And it’s under these uncertain conditions that many voters are coming into politics without strong ties to the traditional parties.
In North Carolina, registered independents (“unaffiliateds” here) now outnumber Democrats by seven points. When cheerleading candidates urge party volunteers to turn out our Democrats, I wonder, “Have you seen the registration numbers?”
Corruption and corrosive partisanship are concerns NBC found among young independents.
The new poll found that 65% of Gen Z independents believe neither Democrats nor Republicans fight for people like them, with 78% saying the country is on the wrong track.
The poll also revealed 67% of all independent voters somewhat or strongly disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president. Nearly half (48%) of Gen Zers strongly disapprove, and Gen Z women have the highest disapproval.
An op-ed from Rob Flaherty, a Biden White House veteran and deputy campaign manager on Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, considers what this means for Democrats going forward.
Flaherty concurs with the late Andrew Breitbart that politics is downstream of culture. But in a digital culture in which voters increasingly opt in to curated information bubbles, Democrats have failed to leave theirs. And to recognize that people can if they wish opt out of politics. Those who have, voters Democrats failed to reach, decided the 2024 elections (The New York Times, gift link):
But opting out of politics doesn’t mean never hearing about it. Opt-out voters aren’t watching CNN or paying for news subscriptions, but they still get a lot of information from social media, friends and family. Politics, for them, tends to show up as cultural drift — bits of stories, values and secondhand outrage shared online by friends, influencers and nonpolitical creators. It’s ambient, not deliberate. It’s culture, not news. A young dad scrolling Instagram for parenting tips stumbles across a clip about “traditional family values.” A small-business owner watching finance videos gets fed posts about why “woke policies” are destroying the economy. A 25-year-old gym enthusiast on TikTok starts seeing content about masculinity, personal responsibility and — soon enough — right-wing politics.
The right makes money wooing them too.
Younger opt-out voters view the system as broken and Democrats as defending the status quo. When they hear from them at all, Flaherty adds:
If you don’t trust the mainstream press, we’re not for you — because it’s the only way we know how to reach people.
If you’re looking for fast relief, we’ve got a white paper to explain our phased-in tax credit through the fiscal year 2030. Sorry, am I boring you?
Point is, the right dominates the opt-out media ecosystem while Democrats are as attractive as the Loyal Order of Moose when it comes young independents. “In style, substance and communication, Democrats have become an opt-in party in an opt-out country,” Flaherty cautions.
So we’re stuck: We’ve got opt-in media for an opt-out electorate. At a time when many Americans don’t trust the mainstream press or Hollywood, the left owns where voters used to be. The right owns where voters are going. It leaves Democrats unable to influence the culture that really matters today, which leaves us unable to make our case to the voters we need.
Not to mention a party using campaign tools and tactics for identifying voters that are not designed for reaching independents.
David Hogg, 25, gun control activist and recently elected DNC Vice Chair, is pissing off defenders of the party’s status quo by threatening to challenge quiescent Democratic House members in secure seats. Independents don’t see Democrats fighting for them. Hogg means to give incumbents a reason to or else replace some with politicians who will. They’ll likely be younger and more readily penetrate the opt-out world than their older compatriots. Because as Flaherty sees it, “We are now seeing a generation of 70-year-olds who called for the departure of an 81-year-old fail to understand how anyone under 60 gets information about their world.”
Many of those running the Democratic Party bring 20th-century knives to a 21st-century gunfight. For the party to remain vital, new blood should be more welcome and allowed to lead, and to lead their elders into media spaces they don’t know how to navigate. There are more Americans out there than Democrats who need champions. Democrats cannot afford to opt out of talking to them where they hang out.
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