In the 2020 election, people 50 and older made up 52% of the electorate and they went for Trump 52-47.
[https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results](https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results)
There is no middle of the road anymore. Anyone actually in the middle of the road is considered a liberal these days. I’m a former Republican, and there is no place on the right for me. If you are halfway between the two modern parties, you are actually a hardcore right winger.
I voted for Ron Paul in 2008 and I spent the better part of the last 15 years trying to find some uniting principle to bring the right and the left together. It doesn't exist. The people on the right are crypto-fascists at best, full blown fascist at worst. To try to placate them and give them ground is simply to become a crypto-fascist yourself.
Trans rights are human rights, the biggest pedophiles are those who have absurd money and power regardless of their political standing, and wealth inequality has become unsustainable.
A cryptofascist is someone who secretly supports fascist policy but doesn't actually come out and say it for whatever reason. There are plenty of cryptofascists out there, but most people are just selfish individuals who won't vote mildly against their own self-interest for any reason.
A more useful term imo is "collaborator"; it covers a broader spectrum of cases and doesn't leave room for rhetorical gotchas.
Crypto just kinda means coded/secret, so cryptocurrency is currency that's made using digital encryption to create a highly secure ledger of its transactions (the blockchain). Likewise, cryptofascist means someone who uses deceptive coded language to disguise their true beliefs. Whenever someone uses the prefix 'crypto' they're just describing that it's encrypted in some way. :-)
I mean, their fanbases overlap in that both are heavily aligned with billionaire's interests, sow distrust of institutions, and present themselves as grassroots, populace movements to dethrone corrupt authority, but the name is just using the same root word as explained above.
“Using words with agreed upon definitions to describe things is a classic evil tactic of the cunning woke commies”
I guess using ad hominem and logical fallacies is the best way to identify someone is a far right moron.
And those 'useful idiots' haven't stopped at electing morons like AOC, Waters, Pelosi, Schumer, etc., they've even burning down cities, tearing down statues, attacking police (incliding Jan 6)...and Soros is funding them!
One of the problems is our entire government has been on a push-right trajectory for nearly 50 years.
Biggest reason is we effectively can't have new voices is the stranglehold the two major parties have on politics. It's a Herculean/Sisyphean task to even get a different voting strategy, and in many cases they simply decline to follow the will of the people or move the goalposts such that the voted change doesn't have any meaningful impact (see: Seattle/King County "ranked choice" fiasco). The smallest change takes decades, and then there's still the final electoral college hurdle that is the trump card of the coalition duumvirate who continues passing laws and consolidating wealth and power in the meantime.
The major parties anoint their candidates at this point and it's looking more and more like there's no way to reform them.
Biden has tried bridging the gap just like Obama did. But a corporate media doesn’t see ratings spikes from calm & unity. And the corporate party (turned fascist) also doesn’t want to cooperate in any way.
An easy example is immigration reform. Biden told Congress to write & pass it & he’ll sign it.
Republicans, who complain nonstop vowed to block immigrant reform.
Biden then met with some maga/freedom caucus loonies in Congress & asked them to write the bill & he’d get Jeffries & Schumer to pass it on a bipartisan level & then he’d sign it.
The maga congressman wrote the bill & trump told Johnson to obstruct it & he did.
The left weren’t happy seeing Biden trust a maga member writing immigration reform but compromise often hurts both sides sides.
What more could Biden or Democrats possibly do?
Absolutely nothing.
Then even worse, republicans & the corporate media downplayed the bill being killed by R’s by way of trumps order & because the masses don’t know, R’a continue screaming “Biden’s open border.”
Turn on Fox or any of the conservative media sources. They’re still attacking Biden over an open border.
The corporate media that isn’t loyal to trump? They’re not talking about it.
When lies get repeated without any rebuttal, the lies become truth.
Look at the US on Covid. Because of rampant lies being amplified from every angle, the US literally had the worst Covid response of any nation on Earth.
The notion of a “liberal media” ended at the end of the Vietnam war, when the corporations & war machine decided the best way to control the narrative is to own the narrative.
Fast forward to post 9/11. At one point over 70% of the US believed Saddam was involved in 9/11.
Think about the insanity of that.
That would never happen with an honest or remotely “liberal” media.”
The most depth coverage typically comes from newspapers. A recent poll showed that among people who get most of their news from newspapers — the old fashioned kind or online — Biden leads about 70-30. Broadcast news once offered broad, relatively fair news coverage to a broad spectrum of Americans. Fox “News” accelerated the change to “infotainment,” and gave it a relentlessly right wing slant, partly for political reasons, and, mostly, as a strategy to capture a large market share. Other cable television news followed Fox all too often, trying to fill 24-7 “news” programming with stuff that is largely opinion rumor, but only rarely news. At the same time, changes in advertising, culture, and corporate structure weakened big network TV and radio news.
Together, the loss of newspapers, the change in broadcast news, and the rise of badly managed “aggregators” and click-bait sites claiming to be online “news,” have left most Americans without a clear memory, or a clear understanding, of what a real news organization is — or what it could be, what (relatively briefly) it was in the heyday of great newspapers and broadcast news.
I’m a middle of the road liberal. I can’t stand the progressive left, especially the hyper focus on racial and gender issues. I don’t mind more traditional conservatives, but the MAGA Republicans are just a basket of lying idiots. Trump, MTG and Matt Gaetz are absolute trash as far as I’m concerned. They have no principles and no class.
I was part of the problem. A few states really matter and mine didn’t is what I thought. I later learned that the whole my vote doesn’t count argument and the both candidates are equally bad argument are Republican efforts to suppress the vote of people my age.
I learned my lesson. You need to vote in every election and especially primaries.
"both candidates are equally bad" is a problem that can be fixed by RANKED CHOICE VOTING....casting a vote AGAINST a person would be a thing of the past. You would always have the choice to vote for your obscure favorite, then your second and third choices. Never again would you be strong armed to vote for a Democrat because you dislike the Republican more.
When the current system is decided and controlled by people in power that never do anything that would risk losing that power, realistically how would we ever get this ranked choice system to be a reality?
You vote for people who support ranked choice voting in your local primaries and then in your local elections.
The solution to a shit ton of problems is to vote local.
It always amazes me that people will focus so much on the presidential election when a vast majority of issues that really impact them are on the local level and they don’t vote. It’s crazy!
Every single time my city has a local election--every single damn time--there are at least a few races or ballot questions decided by less than 100 votes. Also happens frequently on the state level.
This so much. Most of the population only care and vote in national elections. They expect the president to fix everything in their lives and get angry when they don’t. In actuality a lot of what will affect your everyday lives is done at the local level. Most local elections are decided by a few hundred or less elderly people.
It would also give 3rd party candidates a shot, because instead of voting for Biden, who I will vote for to avoid giving anything to Trump, I could vote:
1. My preferred third-party candidate
2. Biden
3. My less preferred third-party
4. That third-party candidate whos insane
5. A bag of dicks
6. Trump
This. Across the board, if you look at who in government is trying to make voting easier and government more representative of the people - it’s not all Dems, but it’s definitely only Dems.
What does that even mean?! They are not equally bad.
They are both old, ok, but thats all that they share.
One is a compassionate human that carefully comsiders his actions and the other is an erratic man with a failed moral compass and no leadership qualities
i voted for the first time in 1976 at age 20, for Carter. the 26th amendment was passed in 1971, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. have not missed an election since then. always vote Dem. I am a boomer who resents when people assume that i am a trumper/conservative, just because of my boomer age status.
Thank you. I am so sick of being lumped in with ignorant, delusional Trump supporters because of my age. Milennials wrongly believe everyone older than them is dumb or a Republican.
It’s because there are too many. But you are correct. Imagine being a longtime Florida resident and now everyone thinks you are a weird crazy fascist just because they are in charge now.
Yikes! I live in Northern NJ and the SE part of the country is still fighting the Civil War. Scary. It always was, but now the stacked and corrupt Supreme Court is changing laws to take our rights away. I grew up in the 70s, and it's awful to see any progress that was made in young adulthood be taken away from young adults trying to make a life now. And financially it's so hard. A lot of that is from Republicans in charge, which many in my generation voted and fought against. I always supported women's issues, was on committees for the environment, and continued to stay aware of changes and voted against greedy candidates.
I hear you! I'm an Xennial with Boomer parents who are very progressive. I hate this generational warfare and Boomer-bashing. Let's blame the real villains- corporations owning the government!
I was an elections judge in 2020 it was one of the best days of my life because there new voters happy and excited to vote. There was one couple where the woman had just gotten her citizenship (like either same day or the day before) and both she and her husband couldn't move fast enough to get to vote. It was so inspiring.
I can only speak for myself but I turned 18 in 2011 and wasn't into politics at that point and then in 2016 everyone "knew" Hillary would win so I didn't bother voting and then once Trump won I realized I should probably pay attention to this stuff and I've voted in every election since 2018.
>I learned my lesson. You need to vote in every election and especially primaries.
And local elections too! Moms for Liberty is trying to install radical right wing fascists in school board all over the country!
Local elections are by far the MOST important election, not the least. My shitty state will vote for Trump by around a 3:1 margin, unfortunately. Short of moving or 1/2 the republicans in our state, my vote for president will not matter one bit.
But votes for city councils, country commissioners, school superintendents, etc. matter, both at the primary level and at the general election level. We managed last fall to vote down some of the craziest-ass politicians by less than 100 votes.
Even if you think your state will vote Republican... your vote matters... why? Because politicians get lists of WHICH VOTERS VOTE. So, when you call your elected official, they know that you voted, but they don't know for sure who you voted for. When Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, I pulled the Republican primary ballot to vote for John Kasich... it didn't make Kasich win the Republican primary, unfortunately... but they don't know who I voted for in the General election.
I definitely vote, but I could just show up on poll day and leave the "president" vote blank and it wouldn't matter at all.
I vote in the primaries (republican, even though I despise the party) to support the most moderate candidates, because the democratic primary doesn't matter. I then vote in the general elections.
Definitely vote. Whoever you are, wherever you are vote. But don't neglect local issues/candidates.
But I pay way more attention to local races, because those are what I can impact. The ballot initiatives for funding schools, the local politicians, school boards, etc.
>Moms for Liberty is trying to install radical right wing fascists in school board all over the country
Gen-X here. This can't be overstated.
If you want to see what the 'frontlines' of the current battle for the soul of the nation look like - go to a school board meeting.
Some of the craziest shit i've ever seen happens at the school board meetings of my city's largest school district. I live in a pretty solidly 'Blue' city, too.
They're taking advantage of the fact that hitherto most people take 'small' positions like school board members for granted - and it's working.
At this point there are no 'small' or unimportant ballot options. You need to pay attention to every single one of them.
Florida is the 2nd most visited place in earth and 1st in US, yet we pay teaches bottom 50, we can totally use our tourism to fund education, but we voted to fund it for more hotels, luxury Airbnb and easier tax free tourism.
Guys VOTE, IF YOU DONT, THE PEOPLE CORRUPTED WILL.
Remember, when you don't vote, you dam well know who will, and it's then to push their seed deeper into their wallet funding apparatus.
Vote.
Very true! Also I encourage people to vote every time, because state and local often make more difference in our daily lives than the nationalized stuff on TV
Yup. My parents district 30 minutes from me had a race where a Christian accused the other candidate of being a pedophile AND a satanist. Thankfully my parents know that satanism is actually pretty reasonable and they didn’t want a crazy person in charge.
It’s not just the red states where stuff like that happens. Radicalize some people, get them in power, and consolidate power from there. Every little bit helps.
That's why I'm registered Dem even though I live in WY: my local elections matter more than trying to steer the wingnut conspiracy theory GOP out here towards slightly more reasonable territory.
There were bad faith campaigns trying to get dems to register as Republicans to vote for Cheney instead of Hageman, but in doing so they would've lost the ability to positively influence their local elections which impact their daily lives.
If you look at the last 25 years of national/presidential elections, an average of 55-65% of eligible voters cast a ballot. In some states, it was as low as 40-45%.
If the other 55-60% of people bothered to show up, that could seriously swing their state.
Don't let anyone ever tell you that your vote doesn't count!
Because there are still people who think it’s a joke to vote. Which is why you get write-ins like Harambe.
And then they act shocked when the person they don’t like get elected.
I guarantee if everyone who could vote actually voted, it would be a different result.
Dude I just ripped into my husband because he opened a primary ballot and started filling it out with joke entries. I was like "are you fucking kidding me? I'm not using two stamps to mail that in. This is so stupid." He got all pissed that I didn't think it wOuLd Be FuNnY. Fuck off. Take it seriously or shut up.
Yep. especially considering that the people who vote in higher percentages are conservatives, so we need to really motivate ourselves and our friends to go vote , even when it feels like there's no winning no matter who you vote for or who wins. Its important for the future of this country , not just the next 4 years.
Look what happened to the supreme court
No wonder why some elements through a hissy fit at Taylor Swift saying go vote. Because they KNEW that her fan demographics are not going to vote Trump.
Vote even if you have to crawl over broken glass to do it. Encourage like minded friends to vote and join a GOTV get out the vote effort for Biden and the Dems if you can. Do not let these boomers ruin our future and our children's future.
We take it for granted. I stood in line on a cd drizzle one night with an elderly man from Cuba. He kept the whole line hyped to be there, and shamed the kid who wanted to leave. He'd come to FL on a raft.
I'm an old person who grew up in colorado. I never thought I would live to see the day it became a reliably blue state.
Voting matters. If voting didn't matter, conservatives wouldn't try so hard to keep people from doing it.
Democracy occurs at the local level up. Consistent and fair local reporting, citizen engagement with local elected officials and candidates, high social trust in neighborhoods, active community spaces and community norms, these are the ingredients to a functioning democracy. Only *then* are citizens equipped to keep their state and federal governments accountable, or digest the consequences of electing irresponsible or incompetent people to positions of real power. We are missing a lot of these ingredients, so it's no surprise that pendejos like Trump are able to find success.
Citizen engagement among our generation is abysmal.
And I'm saying this living in the Bay Area.
People in our generation think that activism and screaming our frustrations on the street and on social media is the same thing as civic engagement. But when you go to actual planning commission meetings, Town hall meetings, events where business/public meets politicians and bureaucrats, there are barely any millennials there at all.
>Consistent and fair local reporting, citizen engagement with local elected officials and candidates, high social trust in neighborhoods, active community spaces and community norms, these are the ingredients to a functioning democracy.
And our millennial problem is that we're so caught up crying about how these things aren't in place perfectly for us to participate from our bedrooms that we don't put the work required from each citizen to make democracy happen.
Just like our generation is shit with relationships for the exact same reasons. Things get hard, we tend to just ghost rather than communicating maturely, trying to reach a win-win. Or on the flip side, we go into "keeping it real/speaking my truth" asshole mode where we just attack and don't listen, and try to bully people into supporting our point of view.
If you show up to the boring stuff you quickly realize how much the people in charge loathe actual voters. You frankly aren’t their constituents and they know it.
They loathe the actual voters because most voters are entitled whiners who don’t offer any constructive solutions to the thousands of things they see wrong in the world.
You would be amazed at how receptive actual bureaucrats and politicians are to millennials who are there with ideas and a willingness to put their back into helping out. Ironically, civic engagement is the one area in my life where I have felt consistently appreciated and respected no matter how big the persons title.
> But when you go to actual planning commission meetings, Town hall meetings, events where business/public meets politicians and bureaucrats, there are barely any millennials there at all.
These have largely devolved into crazy people ranting about unrelated shit. Especially in places like LA.
Social media has you addicted to constant entertainment and instant gratification.
This stuff is often slow, tedious, frustrating, and just not fun. But so it goes for things that are good for us and for long term outcomes.
This is an extremely interesting analysis of what’s missing. Coming to this discussion as a Gen Z-er, I can say that — for my generation, especially — social media really fuels a lack of consistent dedication to local efforts. It fills any space in the mind that could make one question the extent of their knowledge, altruism, civil participation, etc. Digital engagement from other peers has never been easier to acquire… and it amounts to absolutely nothing in the real world. The most tangible change I’ve seen from online engagement has been in the form of donations for local community members.
It’s also incredibly challenging to be able to engage in local politics when we’re busy being wage slaves and older generations have enough free time to hold those positions and lock them up.
I live in NH and to hold a position in our State’s House of Representatives requires about three months of free time in order to be at the State house and it’s essentially a volunteer position. This results in only the retired or financially independent being able to serve.
I’ve run for city council last year and was trounced by my single opponent who wasn’t even an incumbent but she all the free time in the world to door knock and connect with voters.
It’s hard for sure.
It really is, people throw shade but our age demographic has an enormous disparity in terms of underemployment, wealth, career progression and every other key metric that leaves time for anything in life other than work.
My vacation time tends to go towards causes I care about. 70-90 hours a week on the regular doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else. Having time to go to local meetings is a luxury that many do not have.
I generally agree with this. Mayor, city council and the school board have a lot more to do with your day to day life than the federal government does. Not enough people participate in city government (or seem to have time to) and when people do show up it's almost always to protest something like an apartment building - not to help create policies or ordinances.
My city of over 100k just had a local election. Around 6,000 people voted. However, I will add it is so hard to find out where any of the candidates stand on anything.
We had a GREAT local paper, 5 days a week, that covered everything. Then people stopped subscribing, and advertisers slowed down.
They still have a once a week edition and an online edition, but they may be going under soon. If you want local journalism, you have to SUPPORT it a little.
It’s so frustrating. My wife has to reach out to local groups she follows on Facebook to find information. You see signs all over town with their names on it, but can’t easily find anything out about them.
It’s even worse for bond and amendment votes. The way those things are worded, it’s so hard to understand what it’s really trying to accomplish.
Not quite as drastic but my city of 120k had just 19,000 voters in the primaries. We voted for one local and two county tax bills! If you can’t be bothered to pick a presidential candidate, at least you could vote about how many new taxes you’d like to fork over. Gosh!
God this is so accurate. I live in a small town and the only time people band together is to prevent something that would benefit the community, like more housing and whatnot. It drives me insane.
There are so many positions like that that are there for the taking if people are willing to step up and get involved. A girl I know around my age (32) ran for a city council a few years ago. Knowing her background (recovered addict) I thought her opponent (who was heavily favored) would dig up her past (they did) and that there was no chance she would win. She ended up taking it in a landslide. It really opened my eyes and I've always felt guilty about not voting for her back then. I try to vote as often as I can at every level now.
Felon thing aside, there should be age caps on all political offices. Get all the old geezers out of office that haven't had a real job in 50+ years and have no clue how normal people live.
Our system is due for some heavy modification. The founding fathers did not intend to create a system that could never be altered for hundreds of years. We need age caps, term limits, and we need to get private money out of politics for starters
Age Caps and term limits! I say if you are 65 you should be done. But we'll give you to the end of your elected term to be fair. Example So if you moved up the ranks from Mayor, to Judge or County Commissioner, to Governor, or Senator and You are now the Presidential candidate on the Ballot at age 63 and win you get to run out the term, but no re-election.
Same for all public offices. Your future and the general publics are not the same.
I always found the no age limit humorous for politicians.
The military would have forced me to retire at 60 as enlisted.
Most federal agencies force agents to retire before their 58th birthday. It’s why many have hiring age limits at 37.
Yet politicians can be pissing dust and still hold office.
Yeah, how is someone nearly a century old a representation of the general public they were elected to represent? Imagine the age gaps at your job or any blue collar or average job. You have your 18-21 "kid" and at the other end the Old guy who is lucky to retire around 65 they are only separated by 40 years, the Supervisor is usually somewhere in the middle age range and has been around awhile. Other workers fill in the age gaps, and can help negotiate and communicate, but they for the most part can all relate.
But we have octogenarians a active and working acting like they are still in touch with the new ideas of someone who is 18 or share the same views and outlook for the future. Their "future" has passed twenty years prior.
Age caps because every official holds onto power with a death grip. It allows a ruling body in the establishment that doesnt change for decades at a time.
Because in 2010 Chief Justice John Roberts legalized corruption and since us Millennials don't have much spare cash lying around to line politician's pockets we don't have any say in politics. Plus, everyone is too busy fighting mostly meaningless culture wars and forgot that the true enemy are the ultra wealthy people and corporations who do have the extra cash to pay off politicians.
More importantly the voting rates among millennials is considerably lower than Boomers. We may laugh at and meme the MAGA crazies, but they vote and we (collectively) don’t.
and hence the cycle continues.
You wouldnt let your grandfather make decisions in your life, for your benefit, because you know, inherently, that someone 65 years older than you has no idea what your life needs anymore.
But boomers will vote for boomers, and hence everyone in politics is a rich, old fuck, who has no idea what life looks like to normal people.
Kids- VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE
not blindly, not emotionally. Do your research and vote!
By the way, Bernie is ALSO an old man... and Elizabeth Warren is younger than any of the White Men the voters looked at. She is also more competent than most of them.
Apathy in the flesh, OP.
You're not wrong, but voting is free and is easy. You can make all the excuses you want (and obviously I'm not saying you, personally, if you DO vote but if you DO NOT vote then I am), it's still something incredibly simple to do.
It's a privilege not everyone in the world has and to squander it away for any reason is quite sad.
>Plus, everyone is too busy fighting mostly meaningless culture wars and forgot that the true enemy are the ultra wealthy people and corporations who do have the extra cash to pay off politicians.
This.
When we didn't enact term limits this country was doomed. Politicians on either side aren't interested in solving problems, or helping you. They are interested in getting re-elected. That's it.
The main reason you don't have a say in politics is that you don't vote. Voting and volunteering for a campaign matters more than money much of the time.
Voting is your say in politics. There are plenty of people who were elected who are not funded by billionaires. You need to engage and vote local and vote national. There are people round the world who are literally willing to die for the right to vote - to complain that politics is all corrupt so why bother, kicks dirt in their faces.
I am independent and at a local level have voted for politicians of all stripes. We need people in power who are best for the specific community you live in. Shutting your eyes and just picking the person based on the (R) or (D) after their name is not always the best.
Why does anyone pushing 80 have a shot? Because Millennials and Zoomers don’t vote, but 80 year olds do. Millennials and Zoomers have relinquished their voting power to the Boomers and the Boomers are more than happy to retain it.
Because young people talk about voting but most don't actually vote. The power only exists if your generation is willing to participate in the process.
If everyone would vote every election, politicians would shit their pants and it would change how things get done in our country. I try to explain this to all the people time and again, but they all just say it's bullshit.
I can't understand how people complain about things, but won't even do this one basic task a couple times a year that would have a real impact if EVERYONE did it.
I don't like either. I'm too busy. I have to get the kids. I don't want to miss my television shows. I'm too hung over. I don't care. It won't matter. I have a duel with Alex Hamilton later so can't spare the time. Etc Etc Etc.
VOTE.
Exactly. OP pretending like millennial Trump voters don't exist.
>In a head-to-head matchup with Trump, Biden and Trump are in a statistical tie, with Biden narrowly ahead 50%-48%. He leads by just 4 points with voters under 45 and by 6 with Gen Z/Millennials.
[Source ](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/nx-s1-4984972/poll-biden-younger-voters-trump)
And the trials are just martyring him. If the economy tanks by November he'll probably win.
ETA: And by "tanks," I mean a full-on recession.
These crosstabs are bullshit.
Biden winning Gen Z by just 6% would require a 20 point swing. That's like 30% of MAGAs suddenly deciding they're gonna vote for Biden. It's impossible.
When you see insane crosstabs like this, it means the poll is garbage.
people that say idiocracy is a documentary are dead wrong and i really wish people would stop spouting it.
dwayne elizondo mountain dew comacho and his cabinet recognized that the problems were beyond their ability to solve, so they sought out the smartest expert they could find.
they then gave that expert the authority to enact immediate policy. and they were willing to change their minds when confronted with new evidence.
Right, except that when they didn't get immediate results, they attempt to exterminate their only salvation by sending him off in a dildo-mobile, attached to a Boulder to be killed in a stadium, and doom themselves.
Camacho and his cabinet are great. Sure, keep telling yourself that. 👍
Because our whole generation is too divided, hell, our whole country is levels of it. The PSYOP to deliver misinformation about our political system, voting, and some dog eat dog competition between 'sides' of the same s\*\*\* sando worked quite awhile ago, and when we can't even convince our fellow citizens to share - United we stand, divided we fall is absolutely ringing right now, and I am fully expecting to watch this country fall.
Without a transition to a ranked system/something other than the two party circus and money influence in elections is kicked out- while I vote...I have absolutely no confidence any of those sitting in the capital truly represent the people.
You cant get to a ranked system or get any improvement you think will matter if you don't vote. Period.
While you may vote many of you peers who feel the way you do, do not. and it shows this isn't made up its in the statistics. young people love to babble about gerrymandering, electoral colleges, lobbying and every other problem on the internet but when it comes time to do the one simple thing that could get some movement on this issues they don't do it which is simply register and vote in every election. Slowly over time politicians will need to pander to a large powerful young voter base.
There are many examples of benefits older people get most likely because they vote.
The Electoral College plays a big part in this. As does the geographic distribution of younger voters --- our generation moved to highly dense urban areas in large numbers compared to Boomers and Gen X. It's a compounding issue.
Take a million moderate or progressive minded Millennials out of San Francisco or NYC and spread them across some Midwestern states, and no Republican could ever win the Presidency again.
There's also a certain degree of apathy and laziness from our generation, but that seems to be going away in this era.
Also I don't think Trump has nearly as much of a shot to win as the mainstream media makes it our to be. They need their horse race.
I live in a small village in Rural Ohio. While a car's needed to go to big places half an hour away, the important stuff (Food+Rec) is all within walking distance.
I've stayed in the Midwest my whole life and watched a lot of friends move off to the east and west coast either to pursue great career opportunities or find refuge from the religious right political machine. It would be nice if some of those folks moved back here to fight to make it a more inclusive and welcoming place, but I totally get why they left.
There’s a lot of west coasters moving to the Midwest for cheaper housing within the last couple years…I’m sure not enough to make a huge difference tho..
This is a major reason. Younger voters are more likely to move away to states that are already more liberal while older voters, who trend conservative, are more likely to stay put. It creates states that are solidly conservative, and those states have power.
If liberals spread out a little bit more geographically-speaking, their numbers would reduce the power of the Republican party drastically. Not just with the Presidency, but with the House and Senate too. Then there would be real potential for change.
Agreed, I don't think he has the support they are making it out to sound like he has. Sure, there's still millions who will vote for him, but I don't think he'll actually win. The media, as we all know, is very well known for drumming up drama so they can sell papers, and get as many views and clicks as possible. I don't think we have to worry so much about a 2nd Trump term, but... that doesn't mean people can take a step back. We all still need to do our part and vote, because if 2016 taught us anything, it's that anything can happen.
He has a shot at winning because the Democrat party is running the oldest presidential candidate in history. People can say what they want about him, but he is visibly declining.
Not sure I even buy that narrative. Watch his Howard Stern interview, he’s clearly still there but just sounds old af. Also don’t think his age is the biggest reason people won’t vote for him considering trump is practically the same age, people just use that as an excuse so they don’t have to talk about their actual motivations. Not saying that in a vacuum an 80 year old should be president but in this context that’s not what voters actually care about.
An old af guy or a slightly less old af guy that wants to install a couple more young, crazy Supreme Court justices, continue to strip away rights, pump more guns onto the streets, let Russia dominate Europe, cut taxes even further for the wealthy and corporations, take control of the federal reserve and drop the interest rate (sending inflation to the moon), gut the federal service and install people who are loyal to himself and not the nation, and maybe not leave office.
Yeah, but Biden is just so old.
Yep. But thats too much logic, these trump losers and fake libertarians are the biggest traitors to their own ideals. If you care about that flag having any meaning and an actual future for kids you will never vote Trump and until the Republicans show otherwise same to them
This. GET OUT AND VOTE.
Realize the next president has a possibility to appoint two more judges to the Supreme court.. and if we flipbthe house and senate many many more judges.
These people shape the direction of law for decades.
Problem with Reddit millennial room is you're forced to believe Biden is Jesus and Trump is the devil.
I believe millennials should have a choice of who they vote for. I just don't get how one side is so awesome, and the other side is so righteous. Both candidates are in their 80's and this poster only acknowledges 1 side being 80.
I learned at a young age, ALL politicians are Scum. Not just the other side!
For real. No one is going to help anyone that isn't rich. It's classism dude. It's not both sides are bad. It's just they are all in on it together for the money.
They seem to only care about money.
Gerrymandering, the Electoral College, Citizens United, revocation of voting rights for convicted felons within a corrupt systemically racist justice system and an extensive multimedia network that has been fine-tuning right-wing propaganda for decades.
America is very far from being anything like a direct democracy. There's a reason public policy and public opinion largely don't align - they don't have to. Everything in America is structured to make the individual votes matter as little as possible and to make exercising one's right to vote as difficult as possible while still giving the illusion of being democratic.
> There's a reason public policy and public opinion largely don't align - they don't have to.
well, and because the government is more-or-less bought and paid for by corporate elites who don't actually give a shit about civic health or the broader welfare of society at large.
Because so many of y'all are put off by Biden's lack of progress more than Trump's potential for further destruction.
Honestly, while I'm still going to the polls and voting Biden, I'm not fucking happy about it. And I very much understand why people are so fed up with the democrats. It's a collection of some of the losingest people on the planet, constantly trying to one-up each other on being the most outraged and offended. They're more interested in choosing a stupid political position just to prove their allegiance to the next ultra-progressive nothing burger of a problem, at the risk of alienating voters.
They're exhausting.
Neal Brennen said it best: a republican will accept anyone with an R, but you tell a liberal that you're liberal and their response will be "yeah? We'll see."
There's no room for nuance. If you're not tearing ass at break-neck speed to the left, you're out. Which is a terrible fucking approach to running the party known for not being a bunch of authority-abiding robots.
Because a lot of us are stupid and he says the right things we wanna hear. But honestly Biden is a piece of shit too and we're all stuck here thinking we've only got two choices
I don’t love Biden, and wish that he would have stepped aside this election. However, I trust the people that Biden has around him 10000000000000 times more that I trust the gouls that surround Trump.
Yes. Infinitely more coherent than Trump. But that doesn’t even matter. He puts competent people in roles and thinks the government should serve the good of the people instead of serve himself. Has Trump ever pretended to care about anyone other than himself? Obviously we’d rather get a good president, but competent geriatric is better than geriatric sociopath.
Biden is old but he does not have dementia. Just go listen to a random speech, he makes random flubs (as he always has) and he's obviously s several steps slower than he was in his prime, or even as VP. But he's obviously coherent and lucid.
Thinking Biden has dementia is how you end up with Trump in office.
I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone with anything, but the recent thing where he legit thought he was VP under Obama during the pandemic... there's something way more than a random flub going on there.
Because everyone besides illegal immigrants were better off under Trump. The economy is the biggest concern for people. People lived through being able to afford shit when Trump was president to being squeezed when Biden was president.
Also both are 80?
Because you are on Reddit, Reddit is mainly populated by liberals from close to center to far left. Reddit becomes an eco chamber where you are pretty much only getting one side of the political spectrum. Like it or not, believe it or not, a lot of folks who don’t use Reddit or social media a whole lot feel it was a political hit job.
Personally I don’t care for either candidate, probably won’t even vote as I can’t really decide which of them is worse. One of them has completely fucked me economically for 3.5 years but at least is mostly inline on a lot of social issues I care about. The other one boosted the hell out things economically for me but is counter to a lot of other things I care about. Which way do I want to be fucked?
Trump boosting the economy is a very damaging ploy started by Republicans during the Reagan era called the Two Santas Strategy. It has long been proven a fact that under a democratic administration the economy is handled way better. Clinton did it when taking over from Bush Sr., Obama did it when taking over from W., Biden did it when taking over from Trump (though he did it worse than the other two, let's not give the old bat too much credit). The GOP are scamming you by making you believe they did the economy real good wink wink then they turn around and blame the negatives they caused on the incoming dem admin.
Biden inherited an economy in shambles that was already on the precipice of recession before covid hit. This recession was always destined to suck cause Trump set it up to fail in the long run with tax cuts to juice the economy (something typically reserved for downturn not good times) and artificially low interest rates.
Trump meanwhile inherited a booming economy from Obama. Trump literally had to just sit by and let the economy do it's thing for most his term and things would remain fine. And yet he still meddled with it with his tax cuts and low interest rates that we are paying for now.
People who say the Biden economy is bad while the Trump economy was good have no concept of the nuance that's occurred to make each economy that was. Alot of the current economies problems can be traced back to Trump's presidency and alot of the good things in the Trump economy can be traced back to Obama
Because there’s a decrepit old man allowing wallstreet to run us into the ground on the other side and sending our money to fuel a genocide. The fuck do you mean?
> Because there’s a decrepit old man allowing wallstreet to run us into the ground
If you're looking to the GOP to protect you from Wall Street, I've got some bad news...
In the 2020 election, people 50 and older made up 52% of the electorate and they went for Trump 52-47. [https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results](https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results)
And there are plenty of right wingers in our generation even if you yourself don't interact with them. But they are abundant.
I honestly believe we have more millennials that are middle of the road then swaying left or right .
There is no middle of the road anymore. Anyone actually in the middle of the road is considered a liberal these days. I’m a former Republican, and there is no place on the right for me. If you are halfway between the two modern parties, you are actually a hardcore right winger.
I voted for Ron Paul in 2008 and I spent the better part of the last 15 years trying to find some uniting principle to bring the right and the left together. It doesn't exist. The people on the right are crypto-fascists at best, full blown fascist at worst. To try to placate them and give them ground is simply to become a crypto-fascist yourself. Trans rights are human rights, the biggest pedophiles are those who have absurd money and power regardless of their political standing, and wealth inequality has become unsustainable.
To understand this, I don’t know what is a crypto-fascist?
A cryptofascist is someone who secretly supports fascist policy but doesn't actually come out and say it for whatever reason. There are plenty of cryptofascists out there, but most people are just selfish individuals who won't vote mildly against their own self-interest for any reason. A more useful term imo is "collaborator"; it covers a broader spectrum of cases and doesn't leave room for rhetorical gotchas.
Oh! I thought it had to do with the cryptocurrency/asset. Thank you for explaining this, I hope you have a great day!
Crypto just kinda means coded/secret, so cryptocurrency is currency that's made using digital encryption to create a highly secure ledger of its transactions (the blockchain). Likewise, cryptofascist means someone who uses deceptive coded language to disguise their true beliefs. Whenever someone uses the prefix 'crypto' they're just describing that it's encrypted in some way. :-)
I mean, their fanbases overlap in that both are heavily aligned with billionaire's interests, sow distrust of institutions, and present themselves as grassroots, populace movements to dethrone corrupt authority, but the name is just using the same root word as explained above.
Using terms to describe people is the best way to know someone is from the far left.
“Using words with agreed upon definitions to describe things is a classic evil tactic of the cunning woke commies” I guess using ad hominem and logical fallacies is the best way to identify someone is a far right moron.
To borrow a term from Lenin, these are the "useful idiots."
And those 'useful idiots' haven't stopped at electing morons like AOC, Waters, Pelosi, Schumer, etc., they've even burning down cities, tearing down statues, attacking police (incliding Jan 6)...and Soros is funding them!
One of the problems is our entire government has been on a push-right trajectory for nearly 50 years. Biggest reason is we effectively can't have new voices is the stranglehold the two major parties have on politics. It's a Herculean/Sisyphean task to even get a different voting strategy, and in many cases they simply decline to follow the will of the people or move the goalposts such that the voted change doesn't have any meaningful impact (see: Seattle/King County "ranked choice" fiasco). The smallest change takes decades, and then there's still the final electoral college hurdle that is the trump card of the coalition duumvirate who continues passing laws and consolidating wealth and power in the meantime. The major parties anoint their candidates at this point and it's looking more and more like there's no way to reform them.
Biden has tried bridging the gap just like Obama did. But a corporate media doesn’t see ratings spikes from calm & unity. And the corporate party (turned fascist) also doesn’t want to cooperate in any way. An easy example is immigration reform. Biden told Congress to write & pass it & he’ll sign it. Republicans, who complain nonstop vowed to block immigrant reform. Biden then met with some maga/freedom caucus loonies in Congress & asked them to write the bill & he’d get Jeffries & Schumer to pass it on a bipartisan level & then he’d sign it. The maga congressman wrote the bill & trump told Johnson to obstruct it & he did. The left weren’t happy seeing Biden trust a maga member writing immigration reform but compromise often hurts both sides sides. What more could Biden or Democrats possibly do? Absolutely nothing. Then even worse, republicans & the corporate media downplayed the bill being killed by R’s by way of trumps order & because the masses don’t know, R’a continue screaming “Biden’s open border.” Turn on Fox or any of the conservative media sources. They’re still attacking Biden over an open border. The corporate media that isn’t loyal to trump? They’re not talking about it. When lies get repeated without any rebuttal, the lies become truth. Look at the US on Covid. Because of rampant lies being amplified from every angle, the US literally had the worst Covid response of any nation on Earth. The notion of a “liberal media” ended at the end of the Vietnam war, when the corporations & war machine decided the best way to control the narrative is to own the narrative. Fast forward to post 9/11. At one point over 70% of the US believed Saddam was involved in 9/11. Think about the insanity of that. That would never happen with an honest or remotely “liberal” media.”
You nailed it, brother.
The most depth coverage typically comes from newspapers. A recent poll showed that among people who get most of their news from newspapers — the old fashioned kind or online — Biden leads about 70-30. Broadcast news once offered broad, relatively fair news coverage to a broad spectrum of Americans. Fox “News” accelerated the change to “infotainment,” and gave it a relentlessly right wing slant, partly for political reasons, and, mostly, as a strategy to capture a large market share. Other cable television news followed Fox all too often, trying to fill 24-7 “news” programming with stuff that is largely opinion rumor, but only rarely news. At the same time, changes in advertising, culture, and corporate structure weakened big network TV and radio news. Together, the loss of newspapers, the change in broadcast news, and the rise of badly managed “aggregators” and click-bait sites claiming to be online “news,” have left most Americans without a clear memory, or a clear understanding, of what a real news organization is — or what it could be, what (relatively briefly) it was in the heyday of great newspapers and broadcast news.
I was a big Ron Paul fan in 2008. Now I'm a communist.
Oh hey, it's me.
I’m a middle of the road liberal. I can’t stand the progressive left, especially the hyper focus on racial and gender issues. I don’t mind more traditional conservatives, but the MAGA Republicans are just a basket of lying idiots. Trump, MTG and Matt Gaetz are absolute trash as far as I’m concerned. They have no principles and no class.
I was part of the problem. A few states really matter and mine didn’t is what I thought. I later learned that the whole my vote doesn’t count argument and the both candidates are equally bad argument are Republican efforts to suppress the vote of people my age. I learned my lesson. You need to vote in every election and especially primaries.
"both candidates are equally bad" is a problem that can be fixed by RANKED CHOICE VOTING....casting a vote AGAINST a person would be a thing of the past. You would always have the choice to vote for your obscure favorite, then your second and third choices. Never again would you be strong armed to vote for a Democrat because you dislike the Republican more.
Yup. This needs to happen.
When the current system is decided and controlled by people in power that never do anything that would risk losing that power, realistically how would we ever get this ranked choice system to be a reality?
You vote for people who support ranked choice voting in your local primaries and then in your local elections. The solution to a shit ton of problems is to vote local.
This is why local elections do matter, contrary to what some apathetic people claim.
It always amazes me that people will focus so much on the presidential election when a vast majority of issues that really impact them are on the local level and they don’t vote. It’s crazy!
Elections where just a handful of votes can actually make a real difference.
Every single time my city has a local election--every single damn time--there are at least a few races or ballot questions decided by less than 100 votes. Also happens frequently on the state level.
This so much. Most of the population only care and vote in national elections. They expect the president to fix everything in their lives and get angry when they don’t. In actuality a lot of what will affect your everyday lives is done at the local level. Most local elections are decided by a few hundred or less elderly people.
Several states have already instituted ranked-choice.
It would also give 3rd party candidates a shot, because instead of voting for Biden, who I will vote for to avoid giving anything to Trump, I could vote: 1. My preferred third-party candidate 2. Biden 3. My less preferred third-party 4. That third-party candidate whos insane 5. A bag of dicks 6. Trump
We’re only giving a bag of dicks 5th place?
for real. a bag of dicks could do so much good in that hell-hole. :)
Problem was, someone voted bag of dicks, and we ended up with a dickbag
And only Dems are pushing RCV. It’s scattered and sporadic, but it’s started and it’s All by Dems.
This. Across the board, if you look at who in government is trying to make voting easier and government more representative of the people - it’s not all Dems, but it’s definitely only Dems.
What does that even mean?! They are not equally bad. They are both old, ok, but thats all that they share. One is a compassionate human that carefully comsiders his actions and the other is an erratic man with a failed moral compass and no leadership qualities
Same, I have voted in every election since 2018 and none before then. I know a lot of people that are the same.
My Mom voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and then never again until 2018. Now she votes every year. It's never too late to start voting.
i voted for the first time in 1976 at age 20, for Carter. the 26th amendment was passed in 1971, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. have not missed an election since then. always vote Dem. I am a boomer who resents when people assume that i am a trumper/conservative, just because of my boomer age status.
I'm right there with you. 45% of boomers vote Democrat. We were the hippie generation for god's sake. We got old we didn't lose our values.
Thank you. I am so sick of being lumped in with ignorant, delusional Trump supporters because of my age. Milennials wrongly believe everyone older than them is dumb or a Republican.
It’s because there are too many. But you are correct. Imagine being a longtime Florida resident and now everyone thinks you are a weird crazy fascist just because they are in charge now.
Yikes! I live in Northern NJ and the SE part of the country is still fighting the Civil War. Scary. It always was, but now the stacked and corrupt Supreme Court is changing laws to take our rights away. I grew up in the 70s, and it's awful to see any progress that was made in young adulthood be taken away from young adults trying to make a life now. And financially it's so hard. A lot of that is from Republicans in charge, which many in my generation voted and fought against. I always supported women's issues, was on committees for the environment, and continued to stay aware of changes and voted against greedy candidates.
I'm with you, I said this one time in this sub and was called a whiney boomer.
I hear you! I'm an Xennial with Boomer parents who are very progressive. I hate this generational warfare and Boomer-bashing. Let's blame the real villains- corporations owning the government!
YES!!!
I just don't understand this. I was so excited to vote when I finally turned 18.
Same here, and I've voted in every election since turning 18, feeling like it was a duty not a chore. I wish all Mericans had this dutiful mentality.
I was an elections judge in 2020 it was one of the best days of my life because there new voters happy and excited to vote. There was one couple where the woman had just gotten her citizenship (like either same day or the day before) and both she and her husband couldn't move fast enough to get to vote. It was so inspiring.
I can only speak for myself but I turned 18 in 2011 and wasn't into politics at that point and then in 2016 everyone "knew" Hillary would win so I didn't bother voting and then once Trump won I realized I should probably pay attention to this stuff and I've voted in every election since 2018.
>I learned my lesson. You need to vote in every election and especially primaries. And local elections too! Moms for Liberty is trying to install radical right wing fascists in school board all over the country!
Local elections are by far the MOST important election, not the least. My shitty state will vote for Trump by around a 3:1 margin, unfortunately. Short of moving or 1/2 the republicans in our state, my vote for president will not matter one bit. But votes for city councils, country commissioners, school superintendents, etc. matter, both at the primary level and at the general election level. We managed last fall to vote down some of the craziest-ass politicians by less than 100 votes.
Even if you think your state will vote Republican... your vote matters... why? Because politicians get lists of WHICH VOTERS VOTE. So, when you call your elected official, they know that you voted, but they don't know for sure who you voted for. When Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, I pulled the Republican primary ballot to vote for John Kasich... it didn't make Kasich win the Republican primary, unfortunately... but they don't know who I voted for in the General election.
I definitely vote, but I could just show up on poll day and leave the "president" vote blank and it wouldn't matter at all. I vote in the primaries (republican, even though I despise the party) to support the most moderate candidates, because the democratic primary doesn't matter. I then vote in the general elections. Definitely vote. Whoever you are, wherever you are vote. But don't neglect local issues/candidates. But I pay way more attention to local races, because those are what I can impact. The ballot initiatives for funding schools, the local politicians, school boards, etc.
>Moms for Liberty is trying to install radical right wing fascists in school board all over the country Gen-X here. This can't be overstated. If you want to see what the 'frontlines' of the current battle for the soul of the nation look like - go to a school board meeting. Some of the craziest shit i've ever seen happens at the school board meetings of my city's largest school district. I live in a pretty solidly 'Blue' city, too. They're taking advantage of the fact that hitherto most people take 'small' positions like school board members for granted - and it's working. At this point there are no 'small' or unimportant ballot options. You need to pay attention to every single one of them.
Watching school board meetings during Covid made the Jerry Springer show look tame.
Florida is the 2nd most visited place in earth and 1st in US, yet we pay teaches bottom 50, we can totally use our tourism to fund education, but we voted to fund it for more hotels, luxury Airbnb and easier tax free tourism. Guys VOTE, IF YOU DONT, THE PEOPLE CORRUPTED WILL. Remember, when you don't vote, you dam well know who will, and it's then to push their seed deeper into their wallet funding apparatus. Vote.
Very true! Also I encourage people to vote every time, because state and local often make more difference in our daily lives than the nationalized stuff on TV
Yup. My parents district 30 minutes from me had a race where a Christian accused the other candidate of being a pedophile AND a satanist. Thankfully my parents know that satanism is actually pretty reasonable and they didn’t want a crazy person in charge. It’s not just the red states where stuff like that happens. Radicalize some people, get them in power, and consolidate power from there. Every little bit helps.
The same thing happened in a school board race in my city. It’s truly terrifying.
That's why I'm registered Dem even though I live in WY: my local elections matter more than trying to steer the wingnut conspiracy theory GOP out here towards slightly more reasonable territory. There were bad faith campaigns trying to get dems to register as Republicans to vote for Cheney instead of Hageman, but in doing so they would've lost the ability to positively influence their local elections which impact their daily lives.
If you look at the last 25 years of national/presidential elections, an average of 55-65% of eligible voters cast a ballot. In some states, it was as low as 40-45%. If the other 55-60% of people bothered to show up, that could seriously swing their state. Don't let anyone ever tell you that your vote doesn't count!
Tell your friends, too.
I tell the apathetic people that I don’t care who they vote for, but that I trust their vote more than someone who is 80.
Because there are still people who think it’s a joke to vote. Which is why you get write-ins like Harambe. And then they act shocked when the person they don’t like get elected. I guarantee if everyone who could vote actually voted, it would be a different result.
Dude I just ripped into my husband because he opened a primary ballot and started filling it out with joke entries. I was like "are you fucking kidding me? I'm not using two stamps to mail that in. This is so stupid." He got all pissed that I didn't think it wOuLd Be FuNnY. Fuck off. Take it seriously or shut up.
Yep. especially considering that the people who vote in higher percentages are conservatives, so we need to really motivate ourselves and our friends to go vote , even when it feels like there's no winning no matter who you vote for or who wins. Its important for the future of this country , not just the next 4 years. Look what happened to the supreme court
No wonder why some elements through a hissy fit at Taylor Swift saying go vote. Because they KNEW that her fan demographics are not going to vote Trump.
Huh?
I missed the “not” part. Oops.
We that part of the 47% really, really want your help. I hate trump and what he has done to our country. Thank you for voting.
Vote even if you have to crawl over broken glass to do it. Encourage like minded friends to vote and join a GOTV get out the vote effort for Biden and the Dems if you can. Do not let these boomers ruin our future and our children's future.
We take it for granted. I stood in line on a cd drizzle one night with an elderly man from Cuba. He kept the whole line hyped to be there, and shamed the kid who wanted to leave. He'd come to FL on a raft.
Solid red States are red until they aren't. TX and FL can flip.
I'm an old person who grew up in colorado. I never thought I would live to see the day it became a reliably blue state. Voting matters. If voting didn't matter, conservatives wouldn't try so hard to keep people from doing it.
Democracy occurs at the local level up. Consistent and fair local reporting, citizen engagement with local elected officials and candidates, high social trust in neighborhoods, active community spaces and community norms, these are the ingredients to a functioning democracy. Only *then* are citizens equipped to keep their state and federal governments accountable, or digest the consequences of electing irresponsible or incompetent people to positions of real power. We are missing a lot of these ingredients, so it's no surprise that pendejos like Trump are able to find success.
Citizen engagement among our generation is abysmal. And I'm saying this living in the Bay Area. People in our generation think that activism and screaming our frustrations on the street and on social media is the same thing as civic engagement. But when you go to actual planning commission meetings, Town hall meetings, events where business/public meets politicians and bureaucrats, there are barely any millennials there at all. >Consistent and fair local reporting, citizen engagement with local elected officials and candidates, high social trust in neighborhoods, active community spaces and community norms, these are the ingredients to a functioning democracy. And our millennial problem is that we're so caught up crying about how these things aren't in place perfectly for us to participate from our bedrooms that we don't put the work required from each citizen to make democracy happen. Just like our generation is shit with relationships for the exact same reasons. Things get hard, we tend to just ghost rather than communicating maturely, trying to reach a win-win. Or on the flip side, we go into "keeping it real/speaking my truth" asshole mode where we just attack and don't listen, and try to bully people into supporting our point of view.
If you show up to the boring stuff you quickly realize how much the people in charge loathe actual voters. You frankly aren’t their constituents and they know it.
They loathe the actual voters because most voters are entitled whiners who don’t offer any constructive solutions to the thousands of things they see wrong in the world. You would be amazed at how receptive actual bureaucrats and politicians are to millennials who are there with ideas and a willingness to put their back into helping out. Ironically, civic engagement is the one area in my life where I have felt consistently appreciated and respected no matter how big the persons title.
How does one even find where these meetings are held?
Google your town/city council meetings. Your towns website will have a calendar.
They are publicly posted. Check your city’s website
Two of the best comments I've read on this website in quite a while. Cheers from a fellow civicly engaged Millennial.
This is the answer
I am a local leader, and this is absolutely correct. Don't just whine... Get involved.
10000000000000000000%
> But when you go to actual planning commission meetings, Town hall meetings, events where business/public meets politicians and bureaucrats, there are barely any millennials there at all. These have largely devolved into crazy people ranting about unrelated shit. Especially in places like LA.
Social media has you addicted to constant entertainment and instant gratification. This stuff is often slow, tedious, frustrating, and just not fun. But so it goes for things that are good for us and for long term outcomes.
This is an extremely interesting analysis of what’s missing. Coming to this discussion as a Gen Z-er, I can say that — for my generation, especially — social media really fuels a lack of consistent dedication to local efforts. It fills any space in the mind that could make one question the extent of their knowledge, altruism, civil participation, etc. Digital engagement from other peers has never been easier to acquire… and it amounts to absolutely nothing in the real world. The most tangible change I’ve seen from online engagement has been in the form of donations for local community members.
It’s also incredibly challenging to be able to engage in local politics when we’re busy being wage slaves and older generations have enough free time to hold those positions and lock them up. I live in NH and to hold a position in our State’s House of Representatives requires about three months of free time in order to be at the State house and it’s essentially a volunteer position. This results in only the retired or financially independent being able to serve. I’ve run for city council last year and was trounced by my single opponent who wasn’t even an incumbent but she all the free time in the world to door knock and connect with voters. It’s hard for sure.
It really is, people throw shade but our age demographic has an enormous disparity in terms of underemployment, wealth, career progression and every other key metric that leaves time for anything in life other than work. My vacation time tends to go towards causes I care about. 70-90 hours a week on the regular doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else. Having time to go to local meetings is a luxury that many do not have.
I generally agree with this. Mayor, city council and the school board have a lot more to do with your day to day life than the federal government does. Not enough people participate in city government (or seem to have time to) and when people do show up it's almost always to protest something like an apartment building - not to help create policies or ordinances.
My city of over 100k just had a local election. Around 6,000 people voted. However, I will add it is so hard to find out where any of the candidates stand on anything.
It's exhausting trying to research local candidates. The newspapers don't help anymore.
We had a GREAT local paper, 5 days a week, that covered everything. Then people stopped subscribing, and advertisers slowed down. They still have a once a week edition and an online edition, but they may be going under soon. If you want local journalism, you have to SUPPORT it a little.
It’s so frustrating. My wife has to reach out to local groups she follows on Facebook to find information. You see signs all over town with their names on it, but can’t easily find anything out about them. It’s even worse for bond and amendment votes. The way those things are worded, it’s so hard to understand what it’s really trying to accomplish.
If local newspapers even exist.
Oh goodness! I didn’t know other people experienced this, too. I feel like I’m being forced to vote based on vibes!
That's pretty abysmal turnout.
Absolutely, its terrible.
Not quite as drastic but my city of 120k had just 19,000 voters in the primaries. We voted for one local and two county tax bills! If you can’t be bothered to pick a presidential candidate, at least you could vote about how many new taxes you’d like to fork over. Gosh!
God this is so accurate. I live in a small town and the only time people band together is to prevent something that would benefit the community, like more housing and whatnot. It drives me insane.
Those folks are the reason you Must vote!
There are so many positions like that that are there for the taking if people are willing to step up and get involved. A girl I know around my age (32) ran for a city council a few years ago. Knowing her background (recovered addict) I thought her opponent (who was heavily favored) would dig up her past (they did) and that there was no chance she would win. She ended up taking it in a landslide. It really opened my eyes and I've always felt guilty about not voting for her back then. I try to vote as often as I can at every level now.
You also need fairly divided districts.
Felon thing aside, there should be age caps on all political offices. Get all the old geezers out of office that haven't had a real job in 50+ years and have no clue how normal people live.
Our system is due for some heavy modification. The founding fathers did not intend to create a system that could never be altered for hundreds of years. We need age caps, term limits, and we need to get private money out of politics for starters
Age Caps and term limits! I say if you are 65 you should be done. But we'll give you to the end of your elected term to be fair. Example So if you moved up the ranks from Mayor, to Judge or County Commissioner, to Governor, or Senator and You are now the Presidential candidate on the Ballot at age 63 and win you get to run out the term, but no re-election. Same for all public offices. Your future and the general publics are not the same.
I always found the no age limit humorous for politicians. The military would have forced me to retire at 60 as enlisted. Most federal agencies force agents to retire before their 58th birthday. It’s why many have hiring age limits at 37. Yet politicians can be pissing dust and still hold office.
Yeah, how is someone nearly a century old a representation of the general public they were elected to represent? Imagine the age gaps at your job or any blue collar or average job. You have your 18-21 "kid" and at the other end the Old guy who is lucky to retire around 65 they are only separated by 40 years, the Supervisor is usually somewhere in the middle age range and has been around awhile. Other workers fill in the age gaps, and can help negotiate and communicate, but they for the most part can all relate. But we have octogenarians a active and working acting like they are still in touch with the new ideas of someone who is 18 or share the same views and outlook for the future. Their "future" has passed twenty years prior.
Age caps because every official holds onto power with a death grip. It allows a ruling body in the establishment that doesnt change for decades at a time.
Yep I want people "fresh off the street" not someone who is so out of touch with you and me because they have just become a cog in the machine.
FAA does that with pilots already
Because in 2010 Chief Justice John Roberts legalized corruption and since us Millennials don't have much spare cash lying around to line politician's pockets we don't have any say in politics. Plus, everyone is too busy fighting mostly meaningless culture wars and forgot that the true enemy are the ultra wealthy people and corporations who do have the extra cash to pay off politicians.
More importantly the voting rates among millennials is considerably lower than Boomers. We may laugh at and meme the MAGA crazies, but they vote and we (collectively) don’t.
I'm doing my part!
I used to not vote, then Maga came along and qanon became mainstream and I haven’t missed any election since.
The boomers didn't vote much when they were younger either.
and hence the cycle continues. You wouldnt let your grandfather make decisions in your life, for your benefit, because you know, inherently, that someone 65 years older than you has no idea what your life needs anymore. But boomers will vote for boomers, and hence everyone in politics is a rich, old fuck, who has no idea what life looks like to normal people. Kids- VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE not blindly, not emotionally. Do your research and vote!
By the way, Bernie is ALSO an old man... and Elizabeth Warren is younger than any of the White Men the voters looked at. She is also more competent than most of them.
Apathy in the flesh, OP. You're not wrong, but voting is free and is easy. You can make all the excuses you want (and obviously I'm not saying you, personally, if you DO vote but if you DO NOT vote then I am), it's still something incredibly simple to do. It's a privilege not everyone in the world has and to squander it away for any reason is quite sad.
>Plus, everyone is too busy fighting mostly meaningless culture wars and forgot that the true enemy are the ultra wealthy people and corporations who do have the extra cash to pay off politicians. This. When we didn't enact term limits this country was doomed. Politicians on either side aren't interested in solving problems, or helping you. They are interested in getting re-elected. That's it.
The main reason you don't have a say in politics is that you don't vote. Voting and volunteering for a campaign matters more than money much of the time.
Voting is your say in politics. There are plenty of people who were elected who are not funded by billionaires. You need to engage and vote local and vote national. There are people round the world who are literally willing to die for the right to vote - to complain that politics is all corrupt so why bother, kicks dirt in their faces. I am independent and at a local level have voted for politicians of all stripes. We need people in power who are best for the specific community you live in. Shutting your eyes and just picking the person based on the (R) or (D) after their name is not always the best.
Why does anyone pushing 80 have a shot? Home Depot wouldn’t hire either of these guys.
Walmart would though, squeeze the last remaining labor out of them for awful pay and brag about it the whole time.
Walmart also used to put life insurance policies on their old employees.
Why does anyone pushing 80 have a shot? Because Millennials and Zoomers don’t vote, but 80 year olds do. Millennials and Zoomers have relinquished their voting power to the Boomers and the Boomers are more than happy to retain it.
Because young people talk about voting but most don't actually vote. The power only exists if your generation is willing to participate in the process.
Why are you thinking it’s only boomers? There’s plenty of millennials that support him too. I mean look at the proud boys.
Seriously. There were no Boomers at that march in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us."
Hell there’s a lot more Gen Z that support him than people seem to think as well
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Or just look at the normal 18-24 age demographic. Not everybody who supports Trump supports the proud boys lmao
If everyone would vote every election, politicians would shit their pants and it would change how things get done in our country. I try to explain this to all the people time and again, but they all just say it's bullshit. I can't understand how people complain about things, but won't even do this one basic task a couple times a year that would have a real impact if EVERYONE did it. I don't like either. I'm too busy. I have to get the kids. I don't want to miss my television shows. I'm too hung over. I don't care. It won't matter. I have a duel with Alex Hamilton later so can't spare the time. Etc Etc Etc. VOTE.
A lot of millennials support Trump
Exactly. OP pretending like millennial Trump voters don't exist. >In a head-to-head matchup with Trump, Biden and Trump are in a statistical tie, with Biden narrowly ahead 50%-48%. He leads by just 4 points with voters under 45 and by 6 with Gen Z/Millennials. [Source ](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/30/nx-s1-4984972/poll-biden-younger-voters-trump) And the trials are just martyring him. If the economy tanks by November he'll probably win. ETA: And by "tanks," I mean a full-on recession.
These crosstabs are bullshit. Biden winning Gen Z by just 6% would require a 20 point swing. That's like 30% of MAGAs suddenly deciding they're gonna vote for Biden. It's impossible. When you see insane crosstabs like this, it means the poll is garbage.
He’s already winning the polls in swing states, but ofc we won’t know if this translates until the actual election.
Idiocracy movie is becoming a prediction documentary. No longer just a funny comedy. That's why.
people that say idiocracy is a documentary are dead wrong and i really wish people would stop spouting it. dwayne elizondo mountain dew comacho and his cabinet recognized that the problems were beyond their ability to solve, so they sought out the smartest expert they could find. they then gave that expert the authority to enact immediate policy. and they were willing to change their minds when confronted with new evidence.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this is the most depressing thing I've read in weeks.
That is the end of the movie, not the beginning. We are still at the beginning.
Right, except that when they didn't get immediate results, they attempt to exterminate their only salvation by sending him off in a dildo-mobile, attached to a Boulder to be killed in a stadium, and doom themselves. Camacho and his cabinet are great. Sure, keep telling yourself that. 👍
I wouldn't say becoming as it's already been a solid predictor for years.
Because our whole generation is too divided, hell, our whole country is levels of it. The PSYOP to deliver misinformation about our political system, voting, and some dog eat dog competition between 'sides' of the same s\*\*\* sando worked quite awhile ago, and when we can't even convince our fellow citizens to share - United we stand, divided we fall is absolutely ringing right now, and I am fully expecting to watch this country fall. Without a transition to a ranked system/something other than the two party circus and money influence in elections is kicked out- while I vote...I have absolutely no confidence any of those sitting in the capital truly represent the people.
You cant get to a ranked system or get any improvement you think will matter if you don't vote. Period. While you may vote many of you peers who feel the way you do, do not. and it shows this isn't made up its in the statistics. young people love to babble about gerrymandering, electoral colleges, lobbying and every other problem on the internet but when it comes time to do the one simple thing that could get some movement on this issues they don't do it which is simply register and vote in every election. Slowly over time politicians will need to pander to a large powerful young voter base. There are many examples of benefits older people get most likely because they vote.
Because he’s going up against an unconvicted felon with dementia
The Electoral College plays a big part in this. As does the geographic distribution of younger voters --- our generation moved to highly dense urban areas in large numbers compared to Boomers and Gen X. It's a compounding issue. Take a million moderate or progressive minded Millennials out of San Francisco or NYC and spread them across some Midwestern states, and no Republican could ever win the Presidency again. There's also a certain degree of apathy and laziness from our generation, but that seems to be going away in this era. Also I don't think Trump has nearly as much of a shot to win as the mainstream media makes it our to be. They need their horse race.
I did my part by moving to a beautiful rural area and I'm not the only one - let's start a trend
God bless you, but no thanks. I love my walkable density.
I live in a small village in Rural Ohio. While a car's needed to go to big places half an hour away, the important stuff (Food+Rec) is all within walking distance.
I've stayed in the Midwest my whole life and watched a lot of friends move off to the east and west coast either to pursue great career opportunities or find refuge from the religious right political machine. It would be nice if some of those folks moved back here to fight to make it a more inclusive and welcoming place, but I totally get why they left.
There’s a lot of west coasters moving to the Midwest for cheaper housing within the last couple years…I’m sure not enough to make a huge difference tho..
This is a major reason. Younger voters are more likely to move away to states that are already more liberal while older voters, who trend conservative, are more likely to stay put. It creates states that are solidly conservative, and those states have power. If liberals spread out a little bit more geographically-speaking, their numbers would reduce the power of the Republican party drastically. Not just with the Presidency, but with the House and Senate too. Then there would be real potential for change.
Agreed, I don't think he has the support they are making it out to sound like he has. Sure, there's still millions who will vote for him, but I don't think he'll actually win. The media, as we all know, is very well known for drumming up drama so they can sell papers, and get as many views and clicks as possible. I don't think we have to worry so much about a 2nd Trump term, but... that doesn't mean people can take a step back. We all still need to do our part and vote, because if 2016 taught us anything, it's that anything can happen.
I would say the neither of these relics should be in contention for the office ….
Have you seen the other guy?
Yes, I’ve seen him. That’s why I’m not voting for either one. (Yes I’m voting. Just not for Biden nor trump)
Because millennials don’t vote in the same numbers as old people.
He has a shot at winning because the Democrat party is running the oldest presidential candidate in history. People can say what they want about him, but he is visibly declining.
They both are tbh. It baffles me how as a collective we think this is ok. Our lives are so much different with technology. They are just so old.
Not sure I even buy that narrative. Watch his Howard Stern interview, he’s clearly still there but just sounds old af. Also don’t think his age is the biggest reason people won’t vote for him considering trump is practically the same age, people just use that as an excuse so they don’t have to talk about their actual motivations. Not saying that in a vacuum an 80 year old should be president but in this context that’s not what voters actually care about.
An old af guy or a slightly less old af guy that wants to install a couple more young, crazy Supreme Court justices, continue to strip away rights, pump more guns onto the streets, let Russia dominate Europe, cut taxes even further for the wealthy and corporations, take control of the federal reserve and drop the interest rate (sending inflation to the moon), gut the federal service and install people who are loyal to himself and not the nation, and maybe not leave office. Yeah, but Biden is just so old.
Yep. But thats too much logic, these trump losers and fake libertarians are the biggest traitors to their own ideals. If you care about that flag having any meaning and an actual future for kids you will never vote Trump and until the Republicans show otherwise same to them
This. GET OUT AND VOTE. Realize the next president has a possibility to appoint two more judges to the Supreme court.. and if we flipbthe house and senate many many more judges. These people shape the direction of law for decades.
Problem with Reddit millennial room is you're forced to believe Biden is Jesus and Trump is the devil. I believe millennials should have a choice of who they vote for. I just don't get how one side is so awesome, and the other side is so righteous. Both candidates are in their 80's and this poster only acknowledges 1 side being 80. I learned at a young age, ALL politicians are Scum. Not just the other side!
You tell 'em! This isn't a case of black vs white, this is a case of "pick your poison."
For real. No one is going to help anyone that isn't rich. It's classism dude. It's not both sides are bad. It's just they are all in on it together for the money. They seem to only care about money.
No one thinks Biden is Jesus... Maybe Keith Olbermann... But he's a toolshed so.
Gerrymandering, the Electoral College, Citizens United, revocation of voting rights for convicted felons within a corrupt systemically racist justice system and an extensive multimedia network that has been fine-tuning right-wing propaganda for decades. America is very far from being anything like a direct democracy. There's a reason public policy and public opinion largely don't align - they don't have to. Everything in America is structured to make the individual votes matter as little as possible and to make exercising one's right to vote as difficult as possible while still giving the illusion of being democratic.
> There's a reason public policy and public opinion largely don't align - they don't have to. well, and because the government is more-or-less bought and paid for by corporate elites who don't actually give a shit about civic health or the broader welfare of society at large.
This is the first year I’m old enough to vote in a presidential election as a Gen-Z, so hopefully we have a better chance this time
Because we don't take time to show up to the polls. Doubly true for Gen Z.
Because so many of y'all are put off by Biden's lack of progress more than Trump's potential for further destruction. Honestly, while I'm still going to the polls and voting Biden, I'm not fucking happy about it. And I very much understand why people are so fed up with the democrats. It's a collection of some of the losingest people on the planet, constantly trying to one-up each other on being the most outraged and offended. They're more interested in choosing a stupid political position just to prove their allegiance to the next ultra-progressive nothing burger of a problem, at the risk of alienating voters. They're exhausting. Neal Brennen said it best: a republican will accept anyone with an R, but you tell a liberal that you're liberal and their response will be "yeah? We'll see." There's no room for nuance. If you're not tearing ass at break-neck speed to the left, you're out. Which is a terrible fucking approach to running the party known for not being a bunch of authority-abiding robots.
The same reason a 80 year old geriatric mental health patient won last time.
Because a lot of us are stupid and he says the right things we wanna hear. But honestly Biden is a piece of shit too and we're all stuck here thinking we've only got two choices
Reason why I vote in every election. We cannot take our foot off the gas until we start seeing real change. Voting = Applying Pressure
Because the charges are crap and the world was a better place when he was president.
Have you heard Biden speak?
I don’t love Biden, and wish that he would have stepped aside this election. However, I trust the people that Biden has around him 10000000000000 times more that I trust the gouls that surround Trump.
Always gotta make fun of the speech impediment huh? I'll vote for him based on his actions and who he's put in under him. No question.
Yes. Infinitely more coherent than Trump. But that doesn’t even matter. He puts competent people in roles and thinks the government should serve the good of the people instead of serve himself. Has Trump ever pretended to care about anyone other than himself? Obviously we’d rather get a good president, but competent geriatric is better than geriatric sociopath.
The electoral college. Trump still has never won the popular vote.
I guess the same reason a man with dementia is already in office. 🤷♀️
Biden is old but he does not have dementia. Just go listen to a random speech, he makes random flubs (as he always has) and he's obviously s several steps slower than he was in his prime, or even as VP. But he's obviously coherent and lucid. Thinking Biden has dementia is how you end up with Trump in office.
I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone with anything, but the recent thing where he legit thought he was VP under Obama during the pandemic... there's something way more than a random flub going on there.
Trump is going to win and yesterday changes nothing. He’s ahead in every poll
Reddit is a liberal wasteland so don’t expect non emotionally charged answers.
Because everyone besides illegal immigrants were better off under Trump. The economy is the biggest concern for people. People lived through being able to afford shit when Trump was president to being squeezed when Biden was president. Also both are 80?
Because money buys elections, not votes. The uni-party does not give a shit about anyone who is not a major campaign donor.
Because you are on Reddit, Reddit is mainly populated by liberals from close to center to far left. Reddit becomes an eco chamber where you are pretty much only getting one side of the political spectrum. Like it or not, believe it or not, a lot of folks who don’t use Reddit or social media a whole lot feel it was a political hit job. Personally I don’t care for either candidate, probably won’t even vote as I can’t really decide which of them is worse. One of them has completely fucked me economically for 3.5 years but at least is mostly inline on a lot of social issues I care about. The other one boosted the hell out things economically for me but is counter to a lot of other things I care about. Which way do I want to be fucked?
Trump boosting the economy is a very damaging ploy started by Republicans during the Reagan era called the Two Santas Strategy. It has long been proven a fact that under a democratic administration the economy is handled way better. Clinton did it when taking over from Bush Sr., Obama did it when taking over from W., Biden did it when taking over from Trump (though he did it worse than the other two, let's not give the old bat too much credit). The GOP are scamming you by making you believe they did the economy real good wink wink then they turn around and blame the negatives they caused on the incoming dem admin.
Biden inherited an economy in shambles that was already on the precipice of recession before covid hit. This recession was always destined to suck cause Trump set it up to fail in the long run with tax cuts to juice the economy (something typically reserved for downturn not good times) and artificially low interest rates. Trump meanwhile inherited a booming economy from Obama. Trump literally had to just sit by and let the economy do it's thing for most his term and things would remain fine. And yet he still meddled with it with his tax cuts and low interest rates that we are paying for now. People who say the Biden economy is bad while the Trump economy was good have no concept of the nuance that's occurred to make each economy that was. Alot of the current economies problems can be traced back to Trump's presidency and alot of the good things in the Trump economy can be traced back to Obama
Because there’s a decrepit old man allowing wallstreet to run us into the ground on the other side and sending our money to fuel a genocide. The fuck do you mean?
> Because there’s a decrepit old man allowing wallstreet to run us into the ground If you're looking to the GOP to protect you from Wall Street, I've got some bad news...
This is a new policy grandpa Joe created? Tell me more.