For we who grew up tall and proud
In the shadow of the mushroom cloud
Convinced our voices can't be heard
We just want to scream it louder and louder and louder
— Queen, Hammer to Fall
Recently we reviewed in these pages' election returns by generation showing that Vice President Kamala Harris won a majority of most generations but decisively lost Gen X, and thus the election as a whole. We Gen Xers shrugged off the daily looming prospect of global thermonuclear annihilation. Latchkey kids had more pressing things to concern themselves with. Worse still, we survived the cultural oppression of the Baby Boomers and their allegedly “classic” rock playing the same seven songs on infinite radio repeat. Punk, funk, new wave, alternative, grunge — please just give us something else to listen to!
But I digress; in addition to our shared childhood experiences, many in Gen X were the parents of school-aged children during the COVID-19 dumpster fire. This made many see red far more than even having to listen to Stairway to Heaven 18,589 times. K-12 traditionalists/reactionaries might hope to wait out the Gen X generation — some of us have become grandparents — we can’t live forever. Delightfully, still greater challenges for the status-quo tribe loom in the immediate future.
Polls, like the one above from Ed Choice, show that both Millennials and Gen Z show higher support for school choice than either Gen X or Baby Boomers. This is hardly surprising. There were only three channels on television (four if you count PBS) when Gen X was young, and we were thrilled when cable television came along and provided an additional 50 or so channels. Young people these days can stream anything, anytime, anywhere. Future generations will not even understand the phrase “cutting the cord” as they won’t have ever experienced a cord to begin with.
It's hard to imagine public education remaining one-size-fits-all in a world of ubiquitous customization. Democracy can be terribly unforgiving to candidates who attempt to give voters what they think they need rather than what they want. Ultimately this points to a bipartisan future for K-12 choice.
Chuck Todd for instance noted on election night:
Both Florida and Texas have been very aggressive about expanding school choice. Where have Republicans made the greatest gains among Hispanic voters? Florida and Texas. So, education, the economy, those issues, bread and butter issues, and that is how they talk to them. I’m not saying Democrats weren’t, but the cultural issues don’t play as well with Hispanic voters as they may with college-educated whites or even African Americans.
Political parties don’t generally volunteer to play the role of the nail indefinitely; it’s better to be a hammer. Gen Xers are old enough to have seen a bipartisan coalition for choice come, and to have seen it go. Will we see an effort to get a new bipartisan coalition rushing headlong as a new goal, or will we be waiting for the hammer to fall again?
Stay tuned.
Vice President Harris received more votes from every generation of Americans except Gen X, but as it happens the loss of Gen X proved decisive. Gen X, Americans born between 1965 and 1980 (which includes your humble author) are of an age to have been the parents of school aged children during the COVID-19 fiasco/goat-rodeo.
Uniquely among generations, President-elect Trump carried both men and women of Gen X. Right about now readers of a certain Gen Xish age may be humming a certain Gen X anthem. Something about having the right to choose and an unwillingness to surrender it. Feel free to belt it out in your head:
This did not exclusively play out at the national level. Over the past 10 years, for example, donors have sent an unimaginable amount of political funding into Arizona. Much of the resulting rhetoric and activity fixated upon bellyaching about school choice. As the smoke clears on the 2024 election, we find that Arizona’s 11 electoral college votes were never decisive in either the 2016, 2020 or 2024 presidential elections. Meanwhile the three “blue wall states” of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin moved in unison to determine the winner for the third election in a row. Opportunity cost is a harsh mistress.
In addition to serving as a costly sideshow in the presidential race for the third time, Arizona’s Republican Party will add to their majorities in both the Arizona House and the Arizona Senate. The battleground legislative races included a number of very tight outcomes. The parents of private choice program children outnumber the membership of the Arizona Education Association by six or more to one.
That ratio will only continue to grow. Having fallen on the losing side of the crucial 2024 legislative races, the president of the Arizona Education Association described her own organization as “union thugs.”
Hmmm…both parties might want to think about competing for the votes of families with school-age children. Those who find themselves aligned with “thugs” might want to consider losing the zeroes and getting with the heroes. If not, the beatings might just continue until morale improves. In the meantime, color this Gen Xer happy that parent power is REAL, and it is SPECTACULAR!
