NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
While it may be wise for younger people to study the analysis of older people, especially those with credentials in finance, government policy and election management and predictions, it is unreasonable to expect that.
"OK Boomer" expresses not just a joke about seniors living in the past, but also a considered conclusion that older commentators are simply unfamiliar with the perspectives and concerns of Millennials, Generation Z and Generation Alpha.
A quick reminder on the conventional age brackets that define the parameters of these generations. The Silent Generation includes everyone born in 1945 and earlier; Baby Boomers cover those born between 1946 and 1964; Generation X covers those born between 1965 and 1980; Generation Millennials (also sometimes referred to as Generation Y) arrived on the earth between 1981 and 1996; Generation Z runs from 1997 to 2012 and Generation Alpha from 2013 to 2024. Generation Betas are hopefully getting their one-year checkups or having safe deliveries across the country.
I’M FROM GEN Z. WE ARE THE ONES WHO HAVE TO STOP SOCIALISM FROM TAKING OVER
Because Generation Alpha doesn’t even begin to vote until 2032, the "demo" for election consultants should over-target with great care are the Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
The reason for focusing on voters born between 1981 and 2012 is that vast swaths of them have not formed a worldview yet or have done so only partially and are open to argument and messaging. Within this vast cohort are millions of people generally unwilling to defer to the opinions of older adults. They consume information from a thousand different sources, some with which older Americans are also comfortable and some with which Boomers and Gen X are not even familiar.
There is legitimate concern among Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha that "opinion leaders" older than 45 simply don’t grasp the vast chasm that separates their life experiences and circumstances from those of adults older than themselves.
Of course, voters from the Boomer and Millennial generations are going to be greatly impacted by the devastation of 9/11 and the Great Recession, and for them, national security and financial stability are going to weigh heavily on their voting choices for as long as they continue to vote. As a broadcaster who spent the first eight hours of 9/11 covering the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon live on the air, I can testify that those horrible hours left a mark that is never going to fade.
The second assault of the financial collapse that began in 2008 provides the other bookend of that era of anxiety that followed the false confidence that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991 gifted us. "The End of History" was a real thing for a decade, a decade which was really a holiday from history. Never expect people 45 and older to take security or stability of financial markets for granted.
But those shocks are also blinders on older voters, blinders which shield them from information flows and platforms on which the younger cohort gather and from which they develop their political views.
The triumph of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani tells us more about them than almost any other single data point. One example: 78% of voters aged 19-29 voted for Mamdani, compared to 18% for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and 4% for Republican Curtis Sliwa. Sixty-six percent of voters 30 to 44 voted for the candidate that is certainly a socialist and seems actually to be a committed Marxist (and his antisemitic credentials are hard to argue with.)
By contrast, "[with] voters [ages] 45 to 64, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo edged out Mamdani, 53% to 47%," according to ABC News exit polls. "A majority of voters 65 and older (55%) voted for Cuomo while 36% voted for Mamdani," was another finding that exit polling revealed. Now that’s a generation gap if ever you need to find an example of one.
Older voters can bemoan the fact that the younger cohorts have no memory of grocery stores in the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies — government-owned and operated grocery stores which were often empty and always barren of much choice. Russians stood in long lines to buy whatever was on sale.
But "OK Boomer" is the expected reaction to such facts as well as to recollections of "Ronald Reagan said…" Such appeals to history will mostly fall on deaf ears and for an obvious reason: Those ears are barely listening to analysts and commentators over 50, if they are listening at all.
Which is why I devote so much of my programming and online posts to promoting the voices of the ascendant center-right, people like Guy Benson, Spencer Brown, Jack Butler, Matt Continetti, Ben Domenech, Mary Katharine Ham, Eliana Johnson, Michael Knowles, Bethany and Seth Mandel, Alex Marlow, Katie Pavlich, Ben Shapiro and Matt Vespa as well as all "The Fellas" on the Ruthless Podcast. There are a score more, but you get the idea: Smart, funny writers who can also talk and do so with remarkable ease. They are also mainstream and credentialed.
By "credentialed" I mean journalists who possess experiences on which to draw, as well as the virtue of reading at least 10x the amount they write or say.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
The heart of my radio and Salem News Channel "demo" is 35-65, with more on the older shoulder than the younger. Lifting up serious, smart yet good-humored voices at or below the lower end of my demo, and indeed younger, is an imperative for me and should be for every older commentator. It should be something they see as part of their job — not a threat to their positions — if they are interested in keeping the Constitution and all that it guarantees strong and front of mind.
Passing batons is never comfortable for the folks staring retirement in the eyes. But it is the last duty of a generation of journalists raised by The Greatest Generation through the Cold War and the all-too-brief peace of the 1990s to encourage and promote the best of the rising "influencers."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The failure to do so condemns far too many to the clutches of extremists of both the left and right – to talking heads that are often loud and ignorant of all that has gone before them and who deal in grievance, not history.
The collective retirement of the Boomers and Gen X will be troubled if the ascendant left that seized America’s financial capital move from there to every deep blue region.
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
