2020 Was The Last Boomer Election

In 2024 Gen X takes control in Trump 2.0, and gives him a mandate

There’s something kind of perfect about the naming of Sean Duffy, former Wisconsin Congressman, to Donald Trump’s cabinet — not just because, by dint of his lengthy political career (and personal handling of the transportation of his nine kids), he’s already more qualified for the Transportation job than Mayor “I like trains” Pete. But it’s perfect as a symbol for the transfer of political and cultural power we’re witnessing in the country, made definitive by the election outcome: The Gen Xers are in charge now.

Throw a handful of elder Millennials in there for good measure, but the shift in age is dramatic and undeniable — and it comes as a reward, intentionally or not, to the demographic that shifted the most from Trump-skeptical in 2016 to emphatically for him in 2024:

Kamala Harris won voters under 30 and voters in their 30s -- albeit by weaker margins than past Democrats did -- and tied Trump with voters over 65. But voters age 45–64 gave Trump a ten-point margin, 54 percent to 44 percent, with Trump carrying forty-somethings 50 percent to 48 percent and 50- to 64-year-olds by a whopping 56 percent to 43 percent.

Choosing Duffy — a Gen X reality star icon before he became a district attorney, flannel-clad ESPN Outdoor Games star, and spent almost a decade in Congress — also fits the political shift that we’ve seen take place in Blue Wall states across the Midwest.

When I first was introduced to Duffy, he was considering a run for Wisconsin’s 7th District, an underdog race that would’ve had him challenging the powerful chair of the Appropriations Committee, David Obey. My advice was to wait, and he did — instead of running in a decidedly Democratic year, he waited until the Tea Party cycle in 2010. By that point, the poll numbers in the solid blue 7th had shifted so significantly that, despite a huge campaign warchest, Obey chose to retire. Duffy won handily, and now the 7th is the most Republican district in the state — going from voting for Barack Obama with 56 percent in 2008 to Donald Trump with 60 percent in 2024.

You can entertain a lot of theories as to why this generational shift is taking place, but the answer seems straightforward: children of the 1970s who remember the 1980s and 1990s as good times for the United States are at the point in life where they both remember a time when America was economically hopeful, the post-Cold War peace seemed firm, Democrats were sane and still wore flag pins and went to church, and the culture was in a much healthier place than it is today. They also are at such an age when, unlike younger Millennials, they have the informed perspective that the Left has moved far too aggressively in recent years — openly antagonizing the country in ways once thought impossible. This is a recipe for reconsideration of Donald Trump’s appeal and a more intentional desire to send a shock to the system even greater than just the narrow rejection of Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s how you win not just because you’re not her, but with a mandate.

More here from Patrick Ruffini and Steve Kornacki — the latter containing this summation of how Kamala Harris lost Michigan:

This was the story of Michigan, where increased blue-collar strength and new nonwhite voter support added hundreds of thousands of votes to Trump’s column. With her gains limited to wine country and resort towns, Harris simply couldn’t keep pace.

Wine country and resort towns — exactly the kind of places where people wonder how on earth Hispanic voters could possibly vote for Donald Trump.