Friday Morning Quarterback

The election is over and now it's time to figure out what happened. It's actually pretty simple: there's a group of older, rich white guys running the GOP and the closer you are to being them, the more likely you were to vote for them. Unfortunately for them, more and more people are less and less like them. 

Here's the problem with the GOP model: they're clinging to that cool-kid model of the '50s. (I know the GOP is completely not cool, but hold on for a minute.) The GOP thinks that everything is still like high school in the '50s. You have this group of popular kids: the star quarterback, head cheerleader, etc, and they run everything. It might be just a handful of kids, but everyone looked at them and were all, "if only we were them." They set the standard, ran student council, all of it. Very "Revenge of the Nerds". You didn't have to appeal to the minorities or gays or dope-smokers because they all actually wanted to be you and expected you to run things.

But now, for so many reasons (more minorities, people out of the closet openly, the internet showing someone that they are not alone), the "outcasts" don't want to listen to the self-proclaimed Big Man on Campus. As one of the folks I follow on twitter pointed out "it's no longer subversive to smoke pot at a gay wedding." The fringe folks are realizing that they're not so "fringe" after all. "You're not like the popular kids? Hey, me too!" Things like gay marriage are passing, mostly because most people don't care who other people are marrying. They certainly don't want other people to be making judgments about their lives. I think younger people (the ones that don't fully get the whole '50s mindset because that might as well be Victorian times) are confused about the idea of even voting on something like that. 

The GOP is genuinely befuddled that there are girls like me who don't want to be homecoming queen or cheerleader, even if it were offered to me. They don't understand that I actually do want to work and have a good job and not have to rely on a man to take care of me. They don't get that the gay guys don't secretly wish they weren't. (Even moreso, they don't secretly wish that meathead quarterback *was*.) I'm not saying that we're this super-tolerant society, but I do think that we are a society that, for the most part, really doesn't care what you are doing most of the time. Smoke dope? Whatever. Sleep with people your same sex? Shrug. You're not actually an American yet? If you're getting your work done and you're not causing trouble, what do I care?

That's the difference in message: The democrats say "we'll help you be what you want to be" whereas the GOP is "we'll help you be that 1950s thing!" Guess which one speaks to more people?