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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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politics
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If only we could get more people, especially young adults, to care about politics. Those asshats would get eradicated in the primaries.
A big part of the problem is that the damn DNC doesn't have anybody worth anything. They're all a bunch of geriatrics whose platforms are so uninspiring that the only reason people vote for them is because of how vile their GOP opponents are.
If there were no possible way that anybody in the GOP could win and two DNC candidates were running against each other, I'm not sure I could even be bothered to vote, they're all equally bland and useless. They're practically the embodiment of "business as usual".
On one side you have a party whose entire platform is essentially "we're going to burn everything down and in the ashes rebuild all the worst parts of the 20th century, from robber barons to slave plantations with a little neo-nazi spice for flavor". Then on the other side you've got "we'll slightly improve things, but not too much because we don't want to step on the toes of the ones signing our paychecks, and we'll actively oppose anyone who makes too big a wave".
As a lifelong democrat, I have to agree. The DNC is running scared, just like the RNC, but for different reasons. And yes I could be called a geriatric.
But I believe the problem is that we need to stop worrying about stepping on toes, maintaining a status quo that has never really worked, and has always favored the rich. I think we need a real, true blue, dyed in the fur ass-kicking braying Donkey to shake things up and say, "to hell with pleasing the moderates, we're gonna lead this nation into the 21st century whether it likes it or not." We need someone willing to be extremely far left enough to shake up people and wake them up and get truly progressive on their asses.
That's not a voter problem, that's an elected representative problem...
But it's almost impossible for an incumbent to lose a primary. It was only like a decade ago that the DNC was openly threatening to black ball any organization/business that worked on a primary campaign against a Dem incumbent.
While they no longer (at least openly) make those threats, they still say they're a private party and can pick sides. They can also use PAC donations meant for the general and instead use it to keep Dems like Manchin safe from more progressive primary challengers.
We need a fundamental change to our political system, because an insane amount of control is in the hands of private organizations beholden to absolutely no one with zero oversight.
To circle back to the status quo comment, the richest people at the top of the status quo keep giving a shit ton of money to those private organizations. It's an uphill fight, because "winning" isn't just Dems controlling the government. It's also replacing the vast majority of them, not just in office, but the ones behind the scenes running the party too.
I think they get that, and that's why they fight progressives in primaries harder than Republicans in generals.
We also need to change funding for elections and elected officials. Most of us could never run because we're too poor and so that only leaves the most wealthy/properly supported of us to take the time and risk to run for any office which just entrenches the "wealthy establishment control" of all political parties.
They'll get deep tissue lead poisoning before the primaries.
Do you think a new party further left would gain serious traction, particularly with the youth? I'd love to see it happen but I have my doubts.
Yes, but it's not possible with first past the post. We desperately need proportional voting, it's the only way we'll break the stranglehold that the DNC and GOP have on US politics.
The lack of Ranked Choice has likely caused untold damage. It has to happen before any other real change can occur.
Happened with Bernie. There are just too many middle aged folks who preferred Biden.
That and the DNC just barely tolerates Bernie. They like him because he attracts actual progressives to the DNC, but if they think he might actually get any kind of control they throw everything they have at crushing him. Look at how many dirty tricks they pulled when he was running against Hillary. I strongly suspect they would kick him out of the party before they actually let him win a primary.
Right. We need a democratic party who would elevate a Bernie Sanders type and not isolate him.
A third party will never work.
That's why Bernie spent like half a century telling people that and motivating younger generations to get involved in the entire political process on a grass roots level. Then slowly replacing the people who are currently running the party.
If that works, then maybe someday that new party would have the votes to fundementally overhaul our political system and get rid of the bullshit private parties.
But until that happens, both the major parties will always care about donations more than anything else.
A new party will always fail in the US, especially when the choice is always against a party that wants to destroy the country
It's happened before. It can happen again. Nothing happens for decades, then decades happen in weeks.
A third party hasn't had a legitimate chance at winning an election in over 100 years.
The US is pretty much a bad election or two from becoming a fascist theocracy, so I sure as hell hope no third party tries to split votes for the democrats.
We're in survival mode now, but hopefully we can ride out the cult and actually have some breathing room to look at other options.
This is true. It's depressing but true. We have to hang on for a few more years. Maybe 2 cycles at the most. The hardcover right wing base is dying. And it is dying fast. I did the math awhile back because nobody else did.
Every single day 8,000 boomers and above die, and 12,000 people turn 18 and those numbers are actually accelerating. If you use existing data to estimate conservative/liberal and likely voters within those groups it works out to a delta of 10,000 per day on a national scale. That's 5,000 votes switching every single day. That might not seem like alot but it's 300k a month, 3.6 million per year, and 7.2 million since the 2020 election. And that pace is accelerating. Between 2020 and 2024 it's a 15 million vote difference. By 2028 it's 30 million. It used to be that people age into conservatism. But that is not happening with millennials. The demographics are changing, and changing quickly.
Their days are numbered. We just have to hold on for a few more years.
Blaming young people is a great way to convince them to vote for you.
In case you didn’t know… Boomers held the largest voting block for all but the last election or two. So if your gojng to play the generational blame game, why don’t you blame people who’ve been creating policy for the last 60 years or so.
I didn't see anyone blaming, I read that comment as saying that younger people significantly disagree with the Christian right, so if we could get more of them voting we'd be able to trounce the generally older folks who vote GOP.
It's a little oversimplified though. If you look at the demographics of the last presidential election, there were lots of older people voting for Biden and younger people voting for Trump. Not the majority, but the difference isn't as stark as a lot of people think.
This. I wasn’t blaming anyone.
I really am talking about primaries. There is a huge gap between who votes in primaries and general elections.
I think that even Republican primaries would be different if they had to cater toward a younger group.
And all the people that have responded are right. Boomers are a huge chunk of the voting bloc. But they don’t care about us and they won’t live long enough to see the repercussions. Overwhelming them in the primaries would help us more in the short term. I’m not sure we can make it another twenty plus years.
The only part I'll take exception to is the "they don't care about us" part. I'm a very liberal boomer, and I'm not at all alone. If you look at the election demographics, more boomers voted Trump than Biden, but the percent difference was small. Lots of boomers do care about housing costs, environment and climate change, living wages, etc. And it's not just the ones who have trouble making ends meet.
Again, I said, "primaries." Nothing to do with general elections.
I'm just using that data to show that the notion of boomers as overwhelming MAGA supporters is very far off.
Of course it’s far more complicated.
The reality is “young people don’t vote” has been a dog whistle for blaming “kids” (gen z haven’t been kids for a while now.) for the way things are.
Lamentation about young kids not voting is just another way boomers have passed the buck on issues that have been a problem since before my parents were alive, and in any case, millennials and gen z have been voting at unprecedentedly high levels when we were “the kids” compared to prior generations when they were.
The reality is that boomers have dominated politics relative to other generations and a lot of the disengagement perceived comes from being outright ignored- nevermind being told that one is ignorant and should just shut up and vote the way they tell me to.
You want young people engaged, then engage them and expend effort on advancing their interests. Corpo dems always act like Bernie was a fluke. It wasn’t. He’s one of the few voices we have in the senate that doesn’t look at us as a means to collecting more bribes from corporations.
They've been saying that the whole time, just like "people don't want to work".
So sadly I don't think that's going to work and that the system is more fundamentally broken.