The Reason Why the Home Depot Boycott Was Doomed to Fail Before It Even Began Is Simple

(AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)

Earlier I covered the fact that the co-founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, was revealed to be a Trump supporter who plans on donating millions to Trump’s campaign for 2020 just like he did for Trump in 2016. This sparked a trending Twitter hashtag “#BoycottHomeDepot” which, upon exploring the hashtag on the site for a bit, produced far more backlash against supporters of the hashtag than agreement with it.

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As I wrote Tuesday morning, what’s likely going to happen is that Home Depot may actually experience a small spike profits due to people shopping there out of spite. It happened with Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby, and there’s no reason to believe Home Depot won’t experience the same bump.

But even if people don’t go to Home Depot to troll the outrage brigades on the left with their wallets, Home Depot likely won’t suffer one lost cent due to the internet hashtag and it’s for a very simple reason.

The people who are boycotting Home Depot don’t go to Home Depot.

Let’s break this down. The solid majority of people who would support a hashtag like this, or even know what a hashtag is, are around Millennial aged. I’m sad to say, as a member of that generation, that millennials are too often inept when it comes to skills older generations easily understood.

In 2014, author and economist Neil Howe wrote a piece in Forbes detailing studies that showed millennials are sorely lacking life skills despite the fact that they are the most educated generation the world has ever produced:

In fact, Millennials are unfamiliar with a broad range of life skills. They are less likely than older generations to know how to sew, make basic home repairs, or drive manual-transmission cars. With GPS always at their fingertips, many never really learned to use physical landmarks to guide them. Some can’t even imagine how people functioned before mobile IT. One Millennial wrote an article asking older people how they used to look up information, meet up with friends in public places, and handle getting lost without smartphones. A Boomer responded that he visited the library, scheduled meet-ups, and learned to read a road map.

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Millennials can’t be fully blamed for this. Technology has advanced so far that needing to learn these things hasn’t become as important as it used to be. If a millennial presses the right buttons on their smart phone, someone will show up to their door and fix whatever problem they’re having with their home. Howe even makes mention of this:

Generational traits are also contributing to this attitudinal shift. Millennials tend to trust “the system” and don’t mind relying on digital infrastructure for everything. Boomers and Xers are more likely to think that one day it might fail them. So they have backup plans. As one “modern survival” blogger put it in a post about the younger generation, if and when everything goes wrong, “there are so many that will just be so clueless. No common sense and no skills.”

Back to the Home Depot boycott. A lot of the people expressing rage at the fact that someone would dare to support Trump openly are likely the same ones that, should something break in their home, would call a person to come fix it. That blue collar worker who is going to fix the problem is going to have to go somewhere to get the materials necessary to fix the problem.

Chances are he’s going to go to Home Depot. Everything he would need he can find it there in one spot.

And that man likely supports Trump. According to the Washington Examiner, blue collar workers like Trump, and even those whom were expected to go to Biden ended up heading in the opposite direction. This includes the older generations who are more likely to visit Home Depot themselves:

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In a survey of key battleground states conducted after Biden entered the 2020 Democratic primary, Trump not only has a 46%-44% edge, but he has a 26-point lead among non-college educated workers earning $75,000 or less, considered the blue-collar base and a Biden target.

What’s more, the battleground state survey from WPA Intelligence showed that Trump does better with Biden’s other main support group, older voters, and has a 48%-44% lead over Biden in Florida, dubbed the Democrat’s “firewall.”

The Home Depot boycott, despite its status as a viral trending hashtag, is about as hollow and hefty as a Wiffle ball.

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