1/It& #39;s interesting that Trump& #39;s hardcore support base is turning out to be, not Boomers, but conservative Gen Xers.

As a Xennial (almost old enough to be Gen X), I feel like I have some insight into these folks& #39; politics... https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1305902714581254146">https://twitter.com/Noahpinio...
2/Here are the election maps for 1980, 1984, and 1988.

It& #39;s hard for us to realize now how dominant the Republicans were in that era.

Republican dominance was normal. It was the status quo. It was just the way things were.
3/White people were still an overwhelming majority of Americans in the 70s and 80s, when the Xers were young.
4/Gen Xers also grew up during a Great Awakening of Christianity, when Evangelicalism was on the march.

That trend didn& #39;t reverse until the 1990s.
5/Where Boomers grew up with riots, the Vietnam War protest movement, the Great Society, etc., Xers grew up in a nation that was rapidly stabilizing under conservative rule.

This, I think, is the key; Xers have little collective memory of either instability or liberalism.
6/Since the 90s, white conservative Xers have been seeing "their America" disappear, as Christianity declined, diversity skyrocketed, and Democrats became competitive.
7/Gen X wasn& #39;t an overwhelmingly conservative generation, of course, There were plenty of Xers (including white Xers) who rebelled against that conservative America. And Bush& #39;s failures pushed Xers to the left overall.

But for Xers who ARE conservative, it& #39;s the Apocalypse.
8/Also, remember that people tend to move to the right a bit as they age. That& #39;s true of Boomers, but it& #39;s also true of Xers. Age may now be undoing the leftward Xer shift that Bush wrought. https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1304869318732152832">https://twitter.com/MattGross...
9/Gen X are the "forgotten generation", but white conservative Gen Xers seem to form the backbone of Trump& #39;s hardcore supporters, and so I think it& #39;s important to understand the psychology of why these people are so freaked out about the direction America is headed.

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