While Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter's announcement that he was switching from the Republicans to the Democrats may have gratified the latter and upset the former, no one should have been surprised by it. Historically, party switching is common, indeed inevitable at times of party realignment.
Spurred by the rise of a new large dynamic generation and the emergence of a new communication technology, realignments occur about every four decades in U.S. politics. The most recent one began with the election of Barack Obama last November. These large political makeovers normally enthrone a new dominant national party. Beneath the surface, realignments are characterized by major shifts in the voting coalitions that support the two parties.
If history is any guide, Arlen Specter's move from the Republican to the Democratic Party will not be the last during the next several years.  Let the switching begin.

In a ceremony fraught with political and generational symbolism, President Barack Obama today will sign the aptly named "Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education" (GIVE) Act (now the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act) at a White House ceremony, capping his campaign promise to ask Americans to reinvigorate their country through community service. GIVE represents a major redemption of candidate Obama's promise to offer his most loyal and largest constituency, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, a chance to serve their country at the community level and in return earn assistance with the cost of their college education.

Not everyone is ready to join hands and sing the praises of the concept, however. While GIVE enjoyed bipartisan sponsorship in both the Senate and the House, that didn't prevent a majority of Republicans from voting against the bill on final passage.

The 2010 Census makes a convenient political target since its findings define so much of where federal aid - now the country's one true growth industry - is apportioned as well as legislative seats in both states and nationally. Yet after an abortive attempt to hijack the Census by narrowly focused Democratic groups,  cooler heads prevailed in the White House. Now the danger to the integrity of the Census is coming from the other direction: the right-wing of the Republican Party.  

From the diaries, Jerome

Republican campaign strategists like Karl Rove and Michael Gerson are pushing the line that President Obama is the most polarizing president in history based on a recent Pew Research Survey. But their interpretation of the poll's results are dead wrong. The election of President Obama last year brought America into a new civic era, a turning point that has occurred roughly every eighty years throughout American history.  Each time the country enters a civic era there is a rise in partisan identifications, a more coherent ideological divide between the two parties, and an increase in straight ticket voting.

The polarization between Democrats and Republicans in the Pew  survey has much less to do with President Obama's personal and political style, as they are suggesting, than it does with the inability of his own Republican Party to adapt to this new era. From the earliest Pew survey conducted in 1989, the first year of George H.W. Bush's administration, through 2005, there was near parity in the distribution of party identifiers within the electorate; no more than three or four percentage points ever separated the Democrats from the Republicans. By contrast, since 2006 the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats has risen significantly while the number saying they are Republican has fallen. In the most recent Pew study, conducted early this month, the Democrats held a clear 52% to 35% lead over the Republicans in party ID, a 13-percentage point shift toward the Democratic Party since 2004. And, only 21-percent of American voters are "pure" Republicans, a group that consists only of those willing to call themselves Republicans and does not include independents that say they lean toward the GOP. This is the smallest number of "pure" partisans for either party in any survey ever conducted by Pew.

Given the distance of the Republican Party from the current American political mainstream, and the increased sense of party loyalty felt by many Americans, it shouldn't be surprising that most of the public is reticent to see President Obama compromise with Republicans on important public policy questions as Gerson suggests.  In a March CBS/New York Times poll, a clear majority (56%) wanted President Obama to pursue the policies he promised in the campaign rather than working in a bipartisan way with Republicans (39%). An even larger majority (79%) wanted Congressional Republicans to work in a bipartisan way with the President rather than sticking to Republican policies. By refusing to do so, it is the Republicans and not Barack Obama who are now polarizing American politics and, as a result, it is they who are polarized from most of their fellow citizens as well.

The gender gap-the tendency of women to vote more often for Democrats and men to prefer Republicans--has been a feature of American politics for decades. But even that seemingly immutable feature of America's political landscape has begun to shift. As Obama expanded his already large margin of support among Millennials, his surging support also earned him an even split with Clinton among women. Now a survey conducted last month by the Millennial Strategy Program of Frank N. Magid Associates demonstrates how the emergence of the new Millennial Generation (voters 25 years old and younger) is closing the gender gap in American politics.  
The phenomenon of a wide difference in party preferences and political attitudes by gender stemmed from the rise of the Baby Boomer Generation in the late 1960s. When idealist generations, such as the Boomers today and the Missionary Generation about eighty years ago, dominate the electorate, the political debate tends to focus on divisive social issues. The battle over women's suffrage at the turn of the 2Oth century is an early example. More recently, the debate has focused on the basic societal, familial, and economic roles of the sexes, along with educational and career opportunities for women, and reproductive issues.
Reflecting these debates, Boomer men and women early on developed very different political attitudes and preferences that persist to this day. According to the Magid study, a plurality of male Baby Boomers (39%) are self-identified Republicans, while just under a third call themselves Democrats (32%). By contrast, half of female Boomers (50%) say they're Democrats and only 20 percent are Republicans. Similarly, by a ratio of 1.75:1 Boomer males say they are conservative rather than liberal or progressive (35% vs. 20%). On the other hand, slightly more Boomer females call themselves liberal or progressive rather than conservative (25% vs. 23%). Majorities of Boomer women say they will vote for Democratic presidential (56%) and congressional (51%) candidates, while the voting preferences of Boomer men are split about evenly between the two parties.

On Saturday, MySpace, MTV and the Associated Press sponsored a live broadcast of candidate interviews with questions coming from young voters in the audience. Barack Obama was there on time, "fired up and ready to go." But the two leading Republican candidates, John McCain and Mitt Romney, failed even to appear. Hillary Clinton was late, forcing MTV to ad lib through fifteen minutes of otherwise empty airtime. These are hardly major blunders in the middle of a hectic Super Tuesday campaign schedule, but the actions of the candidates illustrated once more, why Obama is surging among an emerging generation of young voters.

This is not the first time Republicans have had a hard time generating much enthusiasm for campaigning for the votes of Millennials-- those 25 and under--who get much of their campaign information from social networks. It took two tries and the anguished cries of that party's leading bloggers before they agreed to a rescheduled YouTube debate. Even then, the GOP candidates insisted on seeing the questions in advance before answering them on live television.  With authenticity and transparency key traits that Millennials seek in candidates, this unwillingness to put it all out there continues to drive young voters into the hands of the Democratic Party.

In a January 2008 national online survey conducted by the Millennial Strategy Program of media research firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, 48% of Millennials say they expect to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee this November, while only half as many (24%) plan to vote for the Republican. By a similar 2:1 margin, Millennials also say that they're likely to vote for the Democratic over the Republican congressional candidate in their district (46% vs. 23%).

Hillary Clinton took a crash course in Millennials in five days in New Hampshire and at least got a passing grade. Chelsea joined her on the campaign bus to talk to Millennials the campaign quickly assembled to give the candidate some personal feel for this new, dynamic generation. And then on election night, all the older generation figure heads were gone, replaced by faces of young voters waving American flags. Even President Clinton was given only  a chance to give her a congratulatory kiss before he was ushered to the side of the stage. Obama still won Millennials 2:1 and the youth of New Hampshire still turned out in record numbers to help give Obama the support he needed to finish a close second. But at least for now, both candidates recognize the need to win the support of this new generation to finish first in November. So the question is, what will Edwards do about the youth vote?

I saw this firsthand in the precinct I attended, what Morley is taling about in this post. Penn, I heard in an interview after the caucuses, acknowledged the strategic error. Jerome.

Morley Winograd is co-author with Michael D. Hais of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics.

Despite all their efforts to put a positive spin on their Iowa showing on the plane to New Hampshire, the Clinton team couldn't avoid acknowledging the most important mistake they made in Iowa--discounting the youth vote.

Not only did Clinton lose to Barack Obama by an almost six to one margin among Millennial Generation (those under 25) caucus attendees, but also her weakness in this age group was the key to her overall loss among women. While Hillary carried the over 45 female vote 36%-24%, Obama won women under 45 by a 50%-21% margin and the surprisingly strong turnout among young caucus goers turned that margin into an overall defeat among the female constituency Hillary was counting on the most. Had she and her team only read their history, they wouldn't have been surprised by this outcome.

Every eighty years a "Civic" generation, like the GI Generation and now the Millennials, comes along with a determination to use their size and their facility with communication technology to change the political culture of America. 2008 will be the first election when Millennials, the largest generation in American history, born between 1982 and 2003, will be eligible to vote in sufficient numbers to tip the political scales to candidates who they favor, but they have already made their presence known to those analyzing election data, not just the latest poll results. They, along with the last remaining members of the GI Generation, were the only age groups to cast majority votes for John Kerry in 2004. The YouTube inspired involvement of Millennials in the Senate races in Virginia and Montana was the difference in those two close elections, returning Democrats to majority status in 2006. But those initial tremors are minor compared to the tsunami of change that Millennials will set in motion in the 2008 elections.

Jaded pollsters, like Clinton's Mark Penn, and columnists, like Thomas L. Friedman, who have been waiting for the emergence of a sizeable youth vote and youthful activism for decades, completely ignored this emerging phenomenon believing that today's youth would disappoint those hoping for any sign of political commitment, just as people under 25 had done ever since the 1970s. But that attitude, common among Baby Boomers who believe the entire world should think and act the way they do, represents a significant misreading of history.  Gen Xers, who adored and still revere Ronald Reagan and distrust government, were responsible for the decline in voter participation among young people in the 1980s and 1990s, but as studies by Harvard's Institute of Politics have demonstrated, ever since 9/11 today's youth have voted in increasing numbers, at a growth rate that surpasses that of all other generations. Now that they have a candidate like Barack Obama who appeals to this generation's partisan passion for changing America, their impact will reverberate across the country as loudly as it did in Iowa last week.

A careful observer of the Obama and Clinton campaigns' youth turnout efforts could have seen the results coming. Hillary's team were told to invite young people over for a night of watching TV shows like Gray's Anatomy or The Office, and use that opportunity to engage them in a conversation on the issues. Obama's team went about finding its cadre of supporters by using their website, built off of the FaceBook operating system or platform, in tune with Millennial's social networking habits. Once they found potential supporters, Obama's team didn't ask them to watch television, something Millennials do infrequently, unless it's on their laptop with shows downloaded from the Net, but to hang out at the local bar. There Michelle Obama, or "the closer" as her husband calls her, asked them to come out on caucus night and change America's politics forever.

Clinton's attempt to make her gender define the nature of the historic change in this election missed another important trait of Millennials. This generation is the most gender neutral, race-and ethnicity-blind group of young people in American history. Only sixty percent of Millennials are white; twenty percent have an immigrant parent; and, ninety percent have a friend of another race. While Baby Boomers are justifiably proud of their idealistic efforts on behalf of civil rights and women's rights, Millennials take diversity as a given and tolerance as the only acceptable behavior. That's why, on caucus night, young women voted for Obama and his message of hope, while older women felt motivated to support the first credible female candidate for President.  Once again, the Clinton's circle of Boomer advisors just couldn't understand why everyone wasn't thinking and behaving like they did. .

The generational differences in the two candidate's teams were embarrassingly obvious during their speeches to their supporters on caucus night. A collection of Silent and Boomer Generation former leaders, from Madeline Albright to Wesley Clark, not to mention Bill Clinton, was planted behind Hillary. Obama's backdrop was his kids, his wife and throngs of young supporters who knew that their efforts had created an historic moment for the country. Given this generational bias, really a blind spot in their thinking, it's hard to believe Hillary can fix her problem with Millennials before the final campaign showdown on February 5, let alone in the few days between Iowa and New Hampshire. But if she can't find a way to appeal to this emerging generation quickly and on its own terms, she will become the first, but certainly not the last, candidate whose failure to recognize the historical pattern of generational cycles in American politics has cost them their future.  

Morley Winograd is co-author with Michael D. Hais of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics (Rutgers University Press, March 2008)