By Emily Stacey, Voice of Oklahoma
The past month in American politics has been tumultuous, but the Democratic National Convention in Chicago proved to be a watershed in the future of electoral politics.
The shift in the mood in the Democratic Party from burden to jubilation comes after President Joe Biden’s historic decision to drop out of the 2024 campaign and endorse the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to replace him on the party’s ticket.
The decision drew immediate backlash from the Republican candidate, who wanted to campaign against an octogenarian who was struggling to stay in office. He was so confident after the nightmarish debate that his campaign touted the real possibility of flipping traditionally blue states red.
The conversation quickly turned to Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial makeup. As a biracial woman, born and raised in Oklahoma, I felt that when I was younger, I felt alienated or unqualified for the opportunities that were open to me as an adult scientist.
A family member recently confided in me that he felt Harris “just didn’t do enough” to be president, a view that has been pervasive in some circles and in some media that seems like a clear way of saying that because of who she is, her resume, which to anyone hiding behind a veil of ignorance would make her perfectly qualified to hold the highest office in the land, is invalid.
Questioning the identity and ethnic “authenticity” of a multiracial person should never be a subject of debate on a national forum, especially when such debate and questioning is led by a group of uniformly-appearing men.
The ethnic composition of the United States is diverse and becomes more diverse every day.
From 2021The largest racial or ethnic group in the United States was the “White, Non-Hispanic population” at nearly 58% of the population, but that number has declined from 63.7% in 2010. Hispanics/Latinos make up 19% of the population, while African Americans make up 12%. About 4% of the American population identifies as multiracial, making the United States a more diverse and politically convoluted country today than it was in the recent past.
This diversity was on full display at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
As a millennial woman of color who has been studying global politics for two decades, I am stunned by the deliberate exploit of popular culture to appeal to a notoriously underrepresented and underserved segment of the electorate: youth, especially youth of color.
What we who were paying attention saw at the DNC was a sea change in the future of American electoral politics: The Harris-Walz campaign is not a Boomer-led campaign aimed at Boomers. For the first time in my lifetime, we are witnessing a true generational shift toward Millennial-led campaigns that directly appeal to the two younger generations of voters: Millennials and Gen Z.
These two generations now make up the majority of the voting population in the United States, and it’s high time the two major political parties started speaking to us in a meaningful way.
Pew Research Center July 2019 reports, Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, made up a total of 72.1 million, or 21.7% of the population. The total Boomer population is 71.6 million, or 20.3% of the population. When it comes to Generation ZAbout 24 million of that cohort were eligible to vote in the 2020 election, and even in 2018, the youngest generation made a splash in the polls. In the 2018 midterm elections, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z cast 62.2 million votes 60.1 million votes staffed by baby boomers and older generations.
What we have seen in the case of one political party is evidence that not only a fresh incarnation of leadership is necessary, but also a fresh purpose and “atmosphere.”
What makes me think this change happened? You don’t have a roll call vote with a DJ, where each state adopts a theme song featuring an artist from that state without a millennial. Oklahoma’s delegation was announced to a Garth Brooks song. Atlanta rapper Lil Jon performed for the Georgia delegation that had pledged its votes. And we heard the deliberate and targeted exploit of Snoop Dogg, Tupac and Kendrick Lamar’s most-streamed song of 2024 on the floor of the Democratic National Convention.
This convention proved to be a turning point for future campaigns, as it prevented candidates and political parties from returning to Boomer-style politics in airplane hangars in future elections.
The Democratic Party has struck at the heart of the current American consciousness and exploited the need for fun, happiness, joy, pleasure, and dancing like no one is watching — or like everyone is watching, if you’re on national television.
It’s a sentiment and a vibe that resonates with certain segments of American society, but as I said at the beginning of the article, this is not your grandfather’s campaign.
