Proud of Our Gray Base

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

 
It's hard to believe that the GOP is still not pushing our biggest advantage by celebrating - not ignoring - voters 50-plus, one-half of the electorate in the next four presidential cycles and, beyond any doubt whatsoever, our Party's ace in the hole.


Republicans tend to be optimistic folks - even when we're angry. So GOP activists like me still believe our turbulent Party will suddenly wake up and begin to realize that our true Base, our effective and passionate and well-informed Base, is driven by Demographic changes within the U.S. which are strongly favorable, not unfavorable, to Republicans.

To reiterate what we have stressed in past articles: Fully 43 percent of the American population - or over 2 in 5 Americans - are now aged 50 and older. This Gray population may well escalate even further, to close to 1 in 2 Americans, within another 10-12 years, if longevity continues to improve and this country impedes, rather than encourages, the explosive growth in immigration, which so many Republicans believe has been negative, not positive, for our economy and our culture during the past two decades.

The Demographic facts are even more dramatic for American women than for the population as a whole. Since U.S. women still - alas! - outlive men by several years, women 50 and over already make up very close to half of all American women.
In terms of the electorate, both women and men, of all ethnicities, religions, and educational levels and in all regions of the country:

Starting with this 2016 presidential cycle, about one-half of all voters will be Gray voters 50 and over. And this domination by Grays will continue in the 2020, 2024, and 2028 election cycles - and possibly beyond them.

That's because, despite the efforts of Nancy Pelosi and others, Americans age 0-17 still cannot vote, nor can illegal immigrants.

The cohort of Gray voters will be boosted this presidential election cycle, versus the last one, because now all of the vast Baby Boomer generation, still almost one-third of all Americans and numbering a whopping 1.1 billion human beings worldwide, are now over age 50 (turning 52-70 in 2016.)

Those Americans older than Boomers - i.e. age 70 and older - which includes many prominent political figures within both major Parties (John Kerry, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi, for example), as well the Gray doyens of Wall Street, the corporate world, and the media, are still going very strong and are certain to outlive and stay productive longer than any former generation of Americans.

Meanwhile, by the end of 2016, the first two birth-years of the Gen-X generation, particularly prominent and influential within technology and the Internet universe, will have turned 50, with a major portion of this demographically front-loaded generation turning 50 by the 2020 election.

All three of these generations - Boomers (52-70 in 2016), Boomers' "older siblings," the Depression and World War Two-era Babies (70-88 in 2016), and the first of the Gray Gen-Xers (50-52 in 2016) - are, as everyone knows, very highly-educated compared to prior generations. They are also technology-proficient, media-savvy, issues-oriented, and may be the last truly independent-minded generations in America - until today's "Youth" wakes up and smells the need to think independently.

Note also, once again, that voters over 50 go to the polls in significantly greater numbers than younger - especially very young - voters tend to do.

In fact, in the last national election, only about 1 in 4 Millennial voters made it to polling stations. Their percentages may be somewhat greater in 2016, due to the historical significance of this very important election.

But older voters will almost certainly far outnumber them, even further highlighting the supreme importance to both major Parties of courting and wooing the Gray portions of their electoral Bases.

Very fortunately, the GOP Base is already far Grayer than is the Democratic Base. In simple fact, more than half of Republicans are mature voters, and Grays still - again, fortunately, not the opposite - dominate many of the key caucus states and Red states in general.

This is only part of the story in 2016, however. Grays within both major Parties, as well as within the ranks of Independent voters, are almost certainly the key swing voters this year and the key Populist voters this year.

We will explain why in the next few stories in the Party of Yes series.

We'll talk about the issues - primarily economic issues - which Grays are embracing as their top priorities this cycle, although such issues also embrace geopolitics and social causes in a broader sense.

We will make specific reference to women voters over 50 - again, already about one-half of American women  - a group that the GOP absolutely needs to start courting and wooing right now.

We will talk about many Grays' utter disgust with the continued corruption on Wall Street, now the essential province of the Limousine Liberals and their viciously anti-Gray agenda, which coincides with their anti-GOP agenda.

And we'll propose a couple of related strategic hypotheses:

How the GOP needs to point out the difference between a strong business climate, in a national sense - which we should enthusiastically embrace - and what's good for an absurdly wealthy cadre of Limousine Liberals now controlling many world markets and attempting to control the entire U.S. economy via financial engineering of the worst possible kind.

And how - as the Party of morality and decency and basic human kindness - Republicans need to make a clean break with the immoral mantra of Wealth for Wealth's Sake, the mantra of the Limousine Liberals, which has permeated our economy and our social climate for the past 25 years or more.

Wealth for Wealth's Sake represents their culture - the Limousine Liberals' culture - not ours.

And coming out strongly on the side of Positive Morality - we might even make that phrase our Republican motto this year - can be the glue that pulls together and unites the apparently disparate "establishment" and "non-establishment" parts of the GOP in 2016.