What? You mean young voters can’t relate to their “crazy … Uncle Joe,” as Barack Obama suggested in the Freudian Slip of the Year? The deuce you say. And get off my damn lawn, too.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press takes note today that while Democrats won the youth vote as expected in the midterms, the margin turned out a lot narrower than expected. Not only did Republicans make some gains in this age demographic, younger voters appeared less enthusiastic and engaged. That should send up warning flares for Joe Biden and Democrat leadership, Will Weissert reports:

Young voters who have been critical to Democratic successes in recent elections showed signs in November’s midterms that their enthusiasm may be waning, a potential warning sign for a party that will need their strong backing heading into the 2024 presidential race.

Voters under 30 went 53% for Democratic House candidates compared with only 41% for Republican candidates nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping national survey of the electorate. But that level of support for Democrats was down compared with 2020, when such voters supported President Joe Biden over his predecessor, Donald Trump, 61% to 36%. And in 2018, when Democrats used a midterm surge to retake control of the House, voters 18 to 29 went 64% for the party compared with 34% for the GOP.

Biden’s party nonetheless exceeded midterm expectations, holding the Senate and surrendering only a small Republican House majority. The president himself hailed young voter turnout as “historic.” Still, the trend line for younger voters may be an early indicator of the Democrats’ challenge to maintain the coalition of Black people, women, college-educated voters, city dwellers and suburbanites that has buoyed the party in the years since Trump won the White House.

Ahem. That coalition has “buoyed” Democrats since Richard Nixon won the White House. Those demos have become so important that Democrats have turned demographics into policy, which has led them into a box canyon of wokery in recent years. Their agenda has become drenched in CRT-related policies and idiotic panders like the student-loan debt forgiveness plan, most of which benefits the wealthier at the expense of the poor.

Speaking of Biden’s Academia bailout, it didn’t work as advertised if this data is accurate. It may have worked well enough for Democrats to win some close races, but it’s more likely that races got closer than they otherwise would thanks to a lack of enthusiasm from younger voters. The GOP dropped the ball in this cycle due to candidate recruitment issues and the 2020 election distraction, which let Democrats off the hook by turning out other demos in a relatively high-interest midterm cycle.

A decline in support from younger voters, or even worse a transfer of those votes to the GOP, would be a disaster for Democrats in 2024 and beyond. It would sap the party of its organizing strength, and it would accelerate a cycle in which voters tend to move toward the center or conservatism as they grow older and acquire wealth. And the likelihood of this happening grows stronger as the agenda of the Democrat Party moves further from its class-based economics and more toward the radical determinism being pursued in racialist/ethnicist terms and conflicts between those groups for priority increase.

In fact, it may grow even if Democrats reverse course. Weissert quotes one analyst who believes that high inflation and wage destruction turned out to be one of the driving factors in the shift. Given that we can expect more of the same next year, even if somewhat less spectacularly bad rates, younger voters may well run ahead of Democrats in abandoning the Woke Republic agenda.

It may be simpler than this, however. How do you get young people excited by a party that’s been led by octogenarians? Until recently, everyone at the top ranks of the Democrat Party had been born before rock & roll, including and especially Crazy Uncle Joe. Most of them came from old Democrat bastions on the coasts, and that much is still true. Is it any wonder that voters born in the last thirty years might not be excited by candidates and party leaders that were eligible for Social Security before the voters got out of kindergarten?

If that’s true for Democrats, though, it’s almost as true for Republicans. Their leadership has grown ancient, and their presumed front-runner for the White House is almost as old as the man who replaced him. Both parties have clung to their Boomers tighter than Warren Beatty gripped Natalie Wood in a movie they all remember but which came out before even I was born. If parties want to engage younger voters, they’d better start putting out candidates and leaders at least somewhat close to their age. With Democrats stuck running Joe Biden again in 2024, the GOP has a real opportunity to appeal to youth — if their primary voters choose to look forward rather than backward beginning next year.