I’m old enough to remember when Democrats were the Cool Party. All of the big movie stars, edgy comedians, and rock gods advocated for Leftist causes and held massive fundraisers for the DNC. What you saw in every form of mass media was that Democrats were open-minded free spirits with a lust for life. They were cool, and they had the little guy’s interests at heart. Republicans were always depicted as stodgy old white guys in last season’s business suits.
You might ask what changed. All the talking heads, pretty boys, and autotuned THOTs are still lock-step Democrat shills.
That’s quite true, but there are two new variables in the equation. First, there are no big movie or rock stars like there were twenty years ago. The Left’s own project of globalization has resulted in a country with a culture so broken we can’t even agree on what sorts of entertainment we like.
Second, the Democrat party’s brand is in the gutter. They made a Faustian bargain with hysterical SJWs to win the culture war. Now their need to placate the hate mob has put the inmates in charge of the asylum. The party must now pander to their extreme fringe and ignore calls for sensible platform planks like those urged by soon-to-be indicted porn lawyer Michael Aenatti. He pointed out that the Democrats need something resembling a coherent legislative agenda to get a blue wave and correctly insisted that they steal the border security issue from Republicans. But they can’t take his advice, even if he wasn’t going to be spending the next several years behind bars.
As a result of selling their souls to the secular death cult of social justice, the Democrat party has become terminally unhip. They’ve lost their edge. Comedians are no longer funny. The music has died. Movies target third world audiences and end up appealing to no one. The laid back free spirit has been browbeaten to silence by the finger-wagging androgynous scold.
The Dems as Cool Party meme started in the 60s as a weapon of the counterculture movement, which was really a battle between liberal and less consistently liberal Boomers. No generation before or since has been more obsessed with being seen as cool, so it made sense that whichever side could capture the elusive aura of coolness would win. The Dems made their devil’s bargain with Alinskyites and grabbed the crown. Republicans were tarred as squares by default.
Not that Republicans don’t bear their share of blame for ceding control of the West’s institutions without a fight.
The current problem facing the Dems is that Generations X through Z care less about looking cool and more about securing a reliable income, housing, and soon, access to food and water. Elections do indeed have consequences, and fifty years of Leftist triumph in the culture wars has left most of the younger cohorts living in Clown World.
That’s why Trump’s “Jobs not mobs” rhetoric is striking a chord with voters.
Earlier I’d pointed out that Democrats need to vote at 2016 levels while Republican turnout dipped to 2014 levels in order to get a blue wave. Let’s look at the data.
As you can see, current conditions are the diametric opposite of what’s needed for a blue wave. The early Republican vote now beats their numbers from the 2016 elections, which you may recall they won. Meanwhile, more Democrat early voters are staying home than in the election they lost.
Sad. And uncool.