THE I'AM EFFECT

Two years ago, I wrote about the Roe Effect. The Roe Effect, in a nutshell, claims that of the 40 million + abortions since Roe v. Wade, the majority of them were from liberal mothers and their “lost children” would have, for the most part, grown up to be liberals and vote Democrat. Hence, Democrats have lost millions of voters they can NEVER get back.

I know, it’s like a terrible car accident – you don’t want to think about it, but you can’t help yourself.

In yesterday’s Opinion Journal, Arthur C. Brooks wrote of another Effect, let’s call it the “It's all about me”(I'AM) Effect. Here’s what he says:

“Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.”

Now, to be sure, some of the baby imbalance comes from the Roe Effect, but not all of it for sure. The self-centered liberals of today are much more concerned about their own creature comforts to give them up to have children. Kids are expensive in all sorts of ways, not just monetarily. You’re life becomes centered around them and you can’t just pack up and go away for the weekend anymore. Vacations to the Bahamas are impossible and going out to dinner becomes a production. Self-centered people would never give these up for ten to fifteen years. And that's just the normal left; of course, then there’s the angry left. Look at this quote from the article:

“As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation."

“Wonton breeding”? This is why liberals have abortions, to them the baby is not a person, it’s a breeding problem that needs resolution. And don’t get me going about “overpopulation”, Malthus and Ehrlich have been discredited over and over again, "overpopulation" is just a scare tactic to use when no real argument exists.

Anyway, the baby imbalance isn’t going to get any better for the Democrats:

“Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.”

Ah, the unintended consequences. They’ll get you every time.