Don't Count On A Leftward Push From Millennials

On its own, Friday's momentous Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage doesn't prove that Americans are becoming more liberal. But the five justices who joined the majority were clearly reacting to a breathtakingly rapid shift in public attitudes toward gays. Add a growing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing, legalized drugs, transgenderism and criminal justice reform and you have an undeniable change in the social weather. What's next, you may wonder? A woman president?

What's happening here can largely be chalked up to generational change. The silent generation, by far the most conservative age group when it comes to social issues, is dying off. The baby boomers, though more liberal than their parents, became less so than its most nostalgic members sometimes imagine.

Meanwhile, millennials who never knew a world without gay congressmen and women C.E.O.s don't see why these issues are even being debated. Technology, especially social media, has enhanced their worldview. It has opened up new venues of self-expression and magnified the voices of once ignored groups.

Still, technology may not have the same liberalizing effect in the economic realm. If this generation has no memory of Ozzie and Harriet, it also has no memory of Fordism and collective bargaining. The Uber generation is used to images of the start-up life. They are likely to have less patience with regulations and powerful interest groups that inhibit innovation than their parents and grandparents. Traditional Democratic allies like teachers unions and taxi commissions could elicit less sympathy from a generation of freelancers, consultants, subcontractors who, for better or worse, assume they will have to make their way in a sharing economy.

Polls don't tend to ask questions about these sorts of issues, but surveys of millennials do show some unexpected tensions in their political thinking. The most recent Harvard Institute of Politics survey of 18- to 29-year-olds, for instance, found that despite their overall preference for Democrats, millennials are not keen on environmental policies that would come at the expense of jobs, don't particularly like affirmative action and perhaps most surprising, are supportive of bringing in ground troops against ISIS. The survey also affirmed this generation's intense mistrust in the federal government, which may help explain their continuing distaste for Obamacare.

Still, predicting generational shifts can be a fool's game. Just ask the anti-establishment baby boomers who launched a social revolution - and then helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

This piece originally appeared in the New York Times Room for Debate

This piece originally appeared in New York Times Room for Debate