But there's a voting cohort between Generation Xers and boomers that bears watching. They're the not-so-young Generation Jones. If they're not "the lost generation," they're invisible to most of our culture commentators. The Joneses, who were born between 1954 and 1965, are usually included in the boomer cohort, but Jonathan Pontell, a pop culture consultant who coined the name, says that's a mistake. He thinks the Jonesers may be crucial in next week's congressional elections.
"Coming of age politically in the late 1970s and early 1980s," he says, "Jonesers were the much discussed 'ReaganYouth,' and are the most conservative U.S. generation by a considerable margin." He credits Jonesers, particularly the women, with tipping the election for George W. in the swing states two years ago when they comprised approximately a quarter of the electorate.
They are disproportionately represented among theme voters, such as NASCAR enthusiasts, Office Park Dads and Soccer-Security-Mortgage Moms. They cluster around issues of "moral values," and were polled as pulling away from conservative candidates after the Foley scandal. Now the latest polls show that they have conspicuously returned to the Republican base (apologies to Peggy Noonan).
What makes them different from the boomers is that during their formative years, while their older brothers and sisters were indulging the hedonistic pleasures of Woodstock, they were at home watching the Brady Bunch and supping on mashed potatoes with both parents at the dinner table. They were not traumatized by the Kennedy assassination, but terrified by Jimmy Carter's Iranian hostage crisis. They weren't interested in kicking Richard Nixon around, but were grateful to Ronald Reagan for restoring America's strength in the world.
All labels, generational or otherwise, are handy for pollsters but ultimately misleading. We're more likely to identify with those who share the nostalgia for our youth, especially the connections of music, whether Frank Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Jim Morrison or Madonna. Pop icons don't always tell you much about voter preferences, but Bob Dylan famously observed that "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Next week we're likely to learn which candidates kept up with the Joneses.