A Moderate Viewpoint In a Conservative Desert

How the Right thinks they can convince Baby Boomers . . .

Conservative Radio has been doing a funny thing lately . . . They have been using language that I thought ended with the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War.  However, slowly but surely, they have been incorporating words that I haven’t heard in years to describe Kamala Harris and her policies.

Words like:  Commie, Communist, Socialist, Pravda Media, Marxist Radical, Stalinist and comparisons to Castro’s Cuba.

Even Donald Trump has recently been incorporating “Communist” in his rambling speeches to describe Kamala Harris.

I wondered, why are these fairly sudden comparisons and use of words not used with any regularity since the end of the Cold War being used now? 

I think I have an idea.

Older adults are more likely to vote.  In fact, according to research by the Pew Foundation, voter turnout in the 2020 Presidential election among voters 65+ was a whopping 71.9%.  This is compared to just 48% among the 18 – 25 age group. 

Another fact about older voters is they tend to become more conservative.

So, the highest propensity voters (those most likely to turn out for an election) are mostly Baby Boomers.  While Baby Boomers are outnumbered by younger generations such as Gen Xers and Millennials, they are more reliable voters.  In fact, I have read that the most coveted email addresses by political campaigns are those ending with yahoo.com or aol.com.  since these email addresses are more likely used by older adults.

What do these older voters have in common other than their age?  They lived through the Cold War and the Commie scares that continued until the fall of the Soviet Union.  Being a Baby Boomer myself, I vividly remember the “duck and cover” drills we had to do in grade school to avoid the effects of the “Bomb”.  Learning later that put your head between your legs and kiss you ass goodbye was probably a better description.  We had the Cuban Missile Crisis and the worldwide fight against Communism which was the alleged basis of the Vietnam War.  Commie, Communist, Socialist, Pravda Media, Marxist Radical and Castro’s Cuba have a special meaning to most Baby Boomers and we learned through our early years, that it was something to be avoided at all cost.

So, comparing Kamala Harris and her policies to the Commies and Marxist Radicals is a vivid reminder and a convenient “short-cut” to describing policies and people that Baby Boomers learned to avoid and dismiss at all costs.  It is a short cut way to scare these voters into voting for Donald Trump.

I predict we will hear more of the same throughout the remainder of this campaign and that Donald Trump himself will begin chanting against the “Commie” cause on a regular basis.