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Chapter 12 Who Will Party with Whom? The Shift in Public Opinion that follows a triggering event can be quite dramatic. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, as Americans rallied around their country and its commander-in-chief, more than two-thirds (68%) said the country was headed in the right direction. By November 2004, however, fewer than half of all Americans (45%) said they were satisfied with the country’s direction. Since then, the satisfaction level of Americans with the state of their nation has moved steadily downward almost every month. In April 2007, less than a third of Americans were satisfied with the current state of affairs in the United States—an average of 28 percent across the major national polls taken that month (Greenberg, Carville, and Ipararraguirre 2007). There is virtually no demographic variation in the perception that things in the United States are off track. Regardless of gender, age, race, socioeconomic status, or education, a large majority expresses dissatisfaction with the current state of American life. Democrats, of course, are least positive—about eight in ten Democratic identifiers are unhappy with the current situation in U.S. politics and society. But even a narrow plurality of Republicans also feels this way (46%) (Frank N. Magid Associates , May 2007). This level of intense political discouragement is reminiscent of the beginning of earlier realignments. Voters’ unhappiness with the status quo usually becomes evident before the country registers its final judgment on which of the two political parties it favors. Once that judgment is rendered in the course of at least one if not two presidential elections, with all the attendant emotion and involvement such contests bring to American politics, it establishes the relative standing of the two political parties for the next thirty to forty years. 203 Chap-12.qxd 11/21/07 3:46 PM Page 203 The United States is headed for another of the cyclical realignments that have characterized the country’s politics and elections throughout the past two centuries. Whether the specific realignment is idealist, as occurred in 1968, or civic, as we are about to experience, all these political makeovers have resulted in a significant alteration in the balance of competition between the nation’s political parties. In all but one of the five previous realignments, the weaker of the two parties in the forty years before the realignment became the dominant party for at least the next four decades. Every realignment has also resulted in significant changes in the composition of each party’s voting coalition, as important groups within society transferred their loyalties from one party to another, primarily to the benefit of the newly dominant party. This state of flux in public opinion, and the stakes involved in responding correctly to possible shifts in the electorate, creates painful stress on each party’s existing coalitions and ideological alliances. Normally , only a decisive intra-party fight between its potential presidential nominees can resolve the tension.The strategic choices each party makes as the Millennial Generation begins to assert itself in the electorate will therefore determine each party’s success or failure for the next forty years. Breaking Up Is Hard to Do The hardest time to change strategic direction is when an enterprise or organization is doing well. Record companies ignored the rise of peer-to-peer distribution of digital music until the only option they could think of in order to hold onto their old business models was suing their disappearing customers. MTV rode Generation X’s demand for a TV channel devoted to its music and lifestyle to the height of corporate success. But the cable network missed the turn in the market when Millennials asked for digital music on their PCs that they could mashup and share with their friends online. Broadcast television networks took note of the plight of their music industry brethren and began to experiment with new formats and new distribution platforms for their content, but only in carefully controlled experiments that didn’t jeopardize their existing revenue streams. Only a few visionaries in the entire media industry, like George Lucas, an evangelist for digital movie production, were willing to give up their past successes and embrace the new world order. For instance, Th e N e w A m e r i ca n P o l i t i ca l L a n d s ca p e 204 Chap-12.qxd 11/21/07 3:46 PM Page 204 [3...

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