As America bifurcates by generation, race, and geography, dispersion has continued apace. Despite efforts by politicians, pundits, and planners—mostly Democrats—to foster dense urbanization, Americans have continued to seek space, affordable housing, and safety. As the most recent census data shows, the much ballyhooed “return to the city,” always exaggerated in the press, has all but ceased while suburban growth is accelerating.On balance the authors report a finding of “Advantage: GOP.” The current booming economy and surfeit of available jobs should move the millennials out of their parents’ basements and on a path to the ‘burbs. Along the way they should shed their socialist leanings as they finally get to a place economically where they have more to lose than to gain from redistributionist schemes.
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Millennials “should shed socialist leanings” but perhaps will not if the economic trauma of their youth was severe enough. I’m remembering the adults around me as I grew to adulthood.
Having lived through the Great Depression and Second World War, they stayed “FDR Democrats” for several decades after he died, basically until the Reagan presidency. It took the rise of identity group politics among Democrats to turn those who survived into Republicans.
The question is whether the Great Recession of the late 2000s was sufficiently traumatic to “freeze” its youthful survivors into a redistributionist mindset lasting decades. They supported socialist Bernie Sanders nearly 10 years later. We won’t know the answer anytime soon.
