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Demographics Matter
Demographics matter. A lot. And in everything.
Elections are no exception. In fact, elections are one place (among several) where demographics are in some respects the only thing that matters.
With that in mind, BofA's Michael Hartnett served up a familiar reminder in the latest installment of his popular weekly "Flow Show" series: Boomers are outnumbered.
"[The] 2024 US election is the first in the past 30 years when Boomers are no longer the majority voting bloc," he wrote, pointing to the
The demographics of actual voters matter the most. Trump is the mule in the Foundation science fiction series. Except the mule was brilliant and Trump is not. He managed to get new voters to turn out for him in 2016 and 2020, who previously did not vote in such great numbers. That’s why the polls did not do a great job; his voters were undercounted. Wall Street talks about a GOP sweep, which I believe is the least likely outcome. I am fearful for our democracy, but I cannot let it drive my client’s investments. Anyway we are too far out to make a reliable guess anyway.
There is really nothing to my childhood, that I care to remember. Perhaps you can understand that. My meagerness is glandular; my nose I was born with. It was not possible for me to lead a normal childhood. My mother died before she saw me. I do not know my father. I grew up haphazard; wounded and tortured in mind, full of self-pity and hatred of others. All avoided me; most out of dislike; some out of fear…the whole notion of my unusual power seems to have broken on me so slowly, in such sluggish steps. Even towards the end, I couldn’t believe it. To me, men’s minds are dials, with pointers that indicate the prevailing emotion. It is a poor picture, but how else can I explain it? Slowly, I learned that I could reach into those minds and turn the pointer to the spot I wished, that I could nail it there forever. And then it took me even longer to realize that others couldn’t.
But consciousness of power came, and with it, the desire to make up for the miserable portion of my earlier life. Maybe you can understand it. Maybe you can try to understand it.
as corporate exec trainers told me over, and over … the same people who created the problems seldom can solve them … I’m a boomer and so glad that others, especially non-white old men, now have opportunity to solve what we all created … thank goddess!
There you go. I mean, if you think the country’s “going to hell,” as Trump puts it, then you gotta ask yourself: What share of the decision makers who put the country on a path to this “hell” were minority women and what share were white men? Just sayin’.
Angry old white guys are not a growing voting block. “Republicans,” if we can still call them that… are dying on that losing demographic hill. Trump is the party now, so there is no future beyond him. When his time is mercifully over, “Republicans” will have some soul searching to do.
Not race or see.
It’s incentives…. until those are fixed, nothing will change.
Boomers, also the generation raised on leaded gasoline, is heading rapidly to the deep sleep. Removing lead from gasoline has been tightly associated with reduced incarceration rates. So one way of looking at it is the Trump Phenomena is that of old lead poisoned people acting out their criminal fantasies in the voting booth. Yes demographics and mental health matter.