The fact that Scott Brown has a basketball star daughter who appeared on American Idol reflects in a small way how American conservatism has changed. Many still believe that conservatives are hidebound reactionaries who can’t stand the idea of women flourishing in professional life, and Bob McDonnell’s thesis briefly resurrected that notion in public consciousness. But of course McDonnell’s worldview has changed since 1989, and today most of the independents and Republicans who tilt to the right see equality for women as central to American freedom. 

The polls also suggest that Brown performed very well with under-30 voters, which could mean that I won’t have to have another endless conversation about whether the right has lost Generation Y for good. My guess is that these voters in their late teens and twenties have scarcely any recollection of the Reagan years — we are now as far from the 1980s as Marty McFly was from the 1950s in Back to the Future – and they are very comfortable in the very mixed, very relaxed hybrid culture that’s emerged in the decades since and that’s embodied in shows like American Idol. 

The fact that America elected an African American president is a tremendous source of pride to these voters, I’m guessing. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that many feel disappointed with a technocratic president who hasn’t lived up to some of his more grandiose promises about transparency and a revival of grassroots democracy.

P.S. I originally wrote “tremendous source of proud.” Very embarrassing.