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Unless all these Gen Z kids actually fucking VOTE it won't matter, because Boomers fucking do.
Oh, you think the choices are trash? Well fucking vote in the primaries then. Get involved at a local level, and start promoting candidates that represent you. Don't just bitch and moan that the choice is between a codger and senile draft-dodger.
FPTP coupled with Electoral College means the only ethical vote is for the least problematic candidate.
Basic mafs. Simple as.
The reason nobody young is ever is involved with primaries is because it's driven by corporate lobbyists. How are the youth supposed to get involved with that when they are competing against billions of dollars? The choices will always be trash until we end the lobbying. It doesn't work with just promoting candidates that represent you. It involves massive sums of money that 99.9 percent of Americans will never touch.
Sanders came very close to winning the Democratic nomination two election cycles in a row, and his funding was largely individual donors, while Clinton and Biden were being funded by corporate interests. Sanders probably lost in 2016 because the DNC put it's thumb on the scale; he lost in 2020 because many primary voters didn't believe that he could win against Trump, and wanted a candidate that could peel away moderate Republicans. And that's a national level.
At a local level, there's a lot less money, so fucking start there, where it's not being driven by greed.
That is some revisionist history, because he did not. He did better than any openly socialist candidate has in 100 years, but because of the rules of the DNC was not actually in contention at any point.
He came closer to winning than any other nonwinning candidate did in those two primaries.
2nd place is always "close" to winning, in a way
If Bernie was about to win the primary at any point, they would have did him like they did Bobby.
By paying attention to the media, reading platforms, thinking critically, and making it out on voting day.
I literally have volunteered for local campaign offices every year since I turned 18. Don't use cynicism to justify laziness
When I was young, I participated in the primaries for Obama's first election (Texas...). I was more or less put in my damn place by the older members and not allowed to have an opinion. It was Hillary this or that and racist comments otherwise. Seriously, Gen Y & Z need to participate, vote, and get involved at the primary and electoral college level or nothing is ever going to change. Don't let those assholes decide who gets to run. I really really wonder what kind of impact those votes, in the areas that have true primaries, will have if we step up early.
We prefer millenial nomenclature thank you very much.
You don't need to get "involved" just go get registered and fkn vote, It has a much bigger net effect that holding up signs on a street.
Lobbyists are a crucial part of the political process as far as educating legislators and their staff. Legislators cannot possibly know the workings, let alone the body of statutory and case law at play, with every activity and industry legislatures have to regulate and facilitate.
Seems like you realize the money they spread around is the problem: bundlers, megadonors, super PACs, dark money, financial and agency disclosure laws, etc., that's where we need to start reforms.
It's unpopular, but yeah. Also, people forget that lobbying is, at it's core, a group of citizens with a particular interest in a specific area banding together to try and convince a politician that what they want is the best course of action. If BLM started lobbying seriously like the NAACP does (or did; I don't know how active they are now), they'd still be working for the same cause, and likely more effectively. Yeha, you need your ground game and people in the streets engaging in protests and demonstrations, but you also need people that will directly engage with lawmakers to get shit done.
People think of the NRA as nothing but a national organization working at the federal level, but for a long time--before they really started to suck under Wayne LaPierre--they did a ton of work with lobbying at the local level, and actively worked for what their membership wanted.
I agree there's a history of young people not voting, but every presidential election year there's a whole group of kids who were 14 at the time of the last election but are 18 for the current one.
Every four years since I can remember, that group of kids has been increasingly engaged politically, I think recent YouGov polls on this have been like very high, like 75% intend to vote and of those like 85% intend to vote more liberal candidates.
Trump was so bad, for everyone. Everyone remembers Trump's wanton child separation policy, his partisan Supreme Court picks, his COVID failures, and his constant lies and vitriol. Even small children can see Trump for what he is, maybe even with more clarity than most adults. Point, people who were ten years to seventeen years old at the beginning of Trump's presidency are eligible voters now. The Republicans see this tsunami coming at them. TV news has been calling it a blue wave to scare up red voters, but it's really a youth wave.
At the same time, older conservative voters are dying off. Republicans know they will never fairly win another popular presidential election. Their plan is to steal the White House with lawfare or outright terrorism.
Just be warned, not everyone thinks Trump was bad. A lot of people look at their economic situation prior to the pandemic, and think that it was pretty good, and so Trump must be okay. Sure, he raised taxes on the middle and lower class, but that was sold as a tax cut (...except that it was very, very temporary), and the hike went into effect under Biden.
The people who think Trump is good are lost causes. They bring nothing of value to anyone.
But if you want to win elections, that's what you have to contend with. You have to accept that no everyone is going to see things the way you do, and you need to convince them. If you aren't trying, then you lose.
Doesn't help when the people who run the primaries go to court to ensure that they do what tf they want. 🤷
Bud, that's politics. Our hope is to get these young kids engaged and then send them off to a law school that focuses on public interest law and restorative justice, instead of churning out more corporate defenders.
Growing up I'd here this phrase that I thought was some lawyer joke, "first thing we do, is kill all the lawyers."
I realize now it's not a joke, but part of a fascist's plan to legalize atrocity.
If enough young people are showing up in the primaries, then the DNC can't easily silence them without also alienating all of their other constituents. And while the DNC wants and needs large corporate donors and PACs, they need people voting for them even more. That's why Sanders was so dangerous to them; if he had won the 2016 or 2020 primaries, despite the DNC openly hobbling him, he would have upended their internal power structure. (And the 2020 primaries were relatively fair; Biden was seen as a safe and moderate candidate by a large number of moderates who were more worried about beating Trump than getting a more liberal Democratic candidate.)
Super this. Don't care what anyone privately identifies as as long as it includes "voter" in the tag cloud.
I live in the rural south. TBQH, I'd rather that most of the people around me didn't vote, since I'm pretty sure I know which way they're going to vote, and their votes will largely be to take away my rights.
Yeah primaries are absolutely important
Said every election since ever and nothing changes. Pipe dreams, like a general strike.
Nothing changes because the people that say they want real, significant change never show up in enough numbers to get shit done. If gen Z really gives a shit, then they need to all get out and fucking work for it. I've voted in every election and every primary I've been eligible to, since turned 22. If 100% of the gen Z kids that are eligible to vote showed up to the primaries, they could get any candidate through that they wanted. Primaries typically attract far, far fewer voters than the general election does; in some states, primary participation is as low as 3% or eligible voters.
Why is turnout always so low?
turnout for young voters (at least in US history) has always been low, people don't get into politics usually until they hit their 30s
Yeah, why? Follow up question, do you think it's possible to change this significantly, and if so how?
I suspect that it's a combination of things.
I think that one thing that would help is if your employer was required to give you paid time-off to vote in primary, local, state, and national elections, say, four hours of time, but only if you actually voted. I'll bet voting rates woudl skyrocket.
Do you not think that maybe neither party tries very hard to court the youth vote? It's not as if 18 year olds are donating to their PACs.
Maybe not, but those votes have votes, and those votes get you power.
Vote. Seriously. (If practical: get involved, too). The U.S. is currently in the middle of a large shift of generational power.
Many of these changes are fairly recent:
Looking forward, the numbers only get better for younger voters. There hasn't been a demographic shift like this in the U.S. in a long time (ever?). The current power structures can not be maintained for much longer. It is still possible for that shift to be peaceful. Please encourage the peaceful transfer: vote. Vote in the primaries. Maybe even vote for better voting systems. This time is unique, but change takes time. Don't let them fool you otherwise: that's just them trying to hold on to their power.
2020 had very flexible early voting and absentee voting and many people weren't going to work in person anyway.
Every prior year, being retired was a huge advantage for ability to go to the polling places and actually vote. It's easy to see how retirees would be represented disproportionately given that reality.
Well, they have voted more in the last few elections. Just gotta hope they don't get complicit and continue to show up.
Believing that nothing has changed is the most privileged form of cynicism in these threads. At ever conceivable time scale, there is plenty of progress.
There will never be a utopia. There will always be something to improve.
RIght, people just need to pick up a book and look at statistics on racism, sexism, etc and realize it's better than it ever has been but the MAGAs are on the rise, panicking, and trying to set up a dictatorship with Trump, so go vote or lose it all.
Personally, I am too emo to vote...