‘Baby boomers’ now hold the key to election success

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 17

‘Baby boomers’ now hold the key to election success

From

PETER PRINGLE

in Washington

Will 1986 mark the beginning of the end of the Reagan era? And, by year’s end, will the Democrats be in total control on Capitol Hill? Such questions seem far too grand and complex to have quick answers, even ones that might emerge over 12 months, but pollsters and political pundits have set the tom-toms beating out a string of numbers showing that the midterm elections in November could have far greater consequences than usual. White House aides have aknowledged their iown concern about November by taking exception to a Soviet proposal to move the next round of summit talks to September, or even October, instead of June. President Reagan’s advisers don’t want to risk a fizzle like the Geneva summit on the eve of polling. “For me, it’s the critical election of the decade,” says a leading pollster Dick Wirthlin, speaking not only personally. All the various self-interests apart, the Democrats have a great opportunity to recapture some faded glory. A total of 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate, 36 of the 50 state governorships, and thousands of seats in the House of Representatives and state legislatures are open. The Democrats could: • Take control of the senate (they already have control of the House); • Win back the Governor’s mansion in California and hold those in Texas and Florida. (These states together account for more than half the nation’s population gain in the 1980s);* Put to rest the nagSng question of the 84 election: has e republican Party, after 50 years, become the choice of the majority, or, in pollsters’ jargon, has there been a “realignment.” Even since Reagan’s 1984 landslide

— he won as many states (49) as, the total number of states won by Democratic Presidential candidates in the five elections starting with 1968 — Democratic leaders have been busy offering prescriptions for the future of the party. Democrats in both houses of congress have responded with marked shifts away from traditional liberal positions. For example, the Domocrat-led house approved increased funding for the Midgetman missile and “star wars,” and repealed the Clark amendment barring military intervention in Angola. A leading liberal Democrat such as Stephen Solarz, of New York, successfully proposed aid to hon-Communist Cambodian resistance forces, and Congress as a whole approved “humanitarian” aid to the “Contras” fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Such is the blurring of the traditional political positions that it is now often tough to distinguish between representatives of the two parties. This means, say the pollsters, a huge increase in floating voters who will choose candidates with less regard to party labels and more to candidates’ records and images. This may also mean, at least at the national level, the sophisticated efforts at fundraising by both parties (the Republican Party raises and spends six times as much as the Democrats) will become less significant. Some pollsters say that this is a year when all politics is local — most recently, they add, superpower summitry has numbed the electorate and the voters have no great interest either at the national or international level.

Scurrying to shore up their own chances at the local level, the Republicans have launched a multi-million dollar effort, known as the 1991 plan, to try to end the Democrats’ traditional strength at the grass roots. The aim of the plan is to win control of a number of state legislatures, carry out some massive gerrymandering after the 1990 census, and win back control of the House. With so much at stake the party strategists are looking more closely than before at non-tradi-tional voting blocks, and they are stressing the importance of the “baby boomers,” roughly the generation now over 25 and under 40. It is said they might hold the key to america’s political future. Pat Caddell, who conducted Democratic presidential campaigns for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Gary Hart, says the baby boomer generation “grew up believing it was going to reshape the world.” It is still a huge political force and could make up 60 per cent of the electorate in 1988. Caddell, himself a baby boomer, says his generation has a collective social conscience, a collective sense that it could do great things, yet it is leading a life right now that is fairly mundane in terms of changing the world. Caddell maintains: “Neither party has reached this generation in a way that would allow it to become a central power force. The one that does will likely be the majority party for the rest of the century.” Copyright — London Observer Service.