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Just like the death of the Republican party, we've been hearing this too for a decade now.
Millennials will be the next biggest voting block! Gen Y is pissed and going to change everything in the voting landscape!
So far, not a god damn thing. I mean, we're not seeing record turn out outside of one single election and in the last election we even saw that millennials increased their voting share to Republicans.
They may be mad but they're the exact same morons as the rest of America.
One thing to remember is that, even now, we live in a gerontocracy. The wave of younger candidates winning in primaries is a sign of things to come, but more than the voting population shifting to younger people, we're still waiting for the candidates and politicians themselves to be younger on average. Still so many very old people in the US senate/house.
The momentum was never there because we were all busy following the boomer path of trying to go to college to make aoemthing of ourselves and ended up in college debt for life and then got shat on, by the very people who raised us to take that path in good faith hoping it would work out the same for us as it did them but it fucking didn't.
It's 50/50 here ya know. Like we all had the chance to not do what they said to do or go against the paths we were raised to follow and do our own thing. They also failed to see the absolute state of the changing world and only focused on what benefits them.
Every single generation in the past 100 years has said the same thing. "My generation will fix it when we're in charge".
The God Damn boomers were the hippies from the 60s. What the fuck happened to peace and love?
My generation (Gen X), my goodness, we could see through all the bullshit. We're the original centrists.
Every single one of my children's Gen Z friends are all so woke they never sleep.
Turns out every generation is full of selfish shortsighted dumbasses just like the one before it. Just like "The Greatest Generation". Just like the boomers. Just like Gen X.
Faith in humanity...fading
The people who were hippies in the 60s are mostly still hippies today. Well, the ones who subscribed to the peace and love philosophy at least. Despite the media attention the hippies were never large enough to be a politically influential group in that generation. Most of the boomers grew up bullying the hippies.
Both my boomer parents were hippies. My Mom literally lived in a commune for some time in her early 20s. She voted for the T-Dog in 2016 because she wanted to see real change.
I used to chuckle when I was a kid the way my Dad would look at me and roll his eyes when my grandparents would talk about politics and religion. My Dad loves his MAGA hats now. And wonders why his grandchildren don't want to be around him.
My sample size of 2 says otherwise!
Counter anecdote: my parents are still far left. My mom was a local union rep, still attends protests, and is volunteering today.
My folks were hippies and my dad joined the service with long hair and retired 20 years later with less hair, fewer drugs and still farther to the left of his gay son (and I'm pretty much 'capitalism bad' at this point).
I'm a little jealous to be honest. I can barely talk to my dad anymore. He swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Everything he says is word for word from cable news or facebook.
Gen X got skipped in politics. The boomers refused to cede power, and it's like the Xers largely aged out of entering the political space.
Gen X chose to be the "I'm not really into politics" generation. As if electing our leaders was a spectator sport we could just not participate in. And then we all claimed to be too cool for political parties when we started noticing the world was really going to shit. Which is how we got centrists.
I know because that was me.
"My generation will fix it when we’re in charge”.
Except my generation hasn't had a chance yet to prove that they will. My generation is fucked.
I hope I'm wrong but it seems like the ratio of selfish stupid people is constant across generations.
Just like the correlation between disease and war being basically timed out perfectly.
She didn't say "boomers", fucking Fortune added that. And they reported this specifically to stir the bogus generational conflict.
AOC should not have mentioned generations at all, she's supposed to be uniting us against the billionaire class, and here she is quoted in a billionaire rag about this. I hope she does better, and soon.
That khumbaya idealist world is not happening. The other side actively weaponizes these conflicts successfully, if you keep pretending they don't exist you alienate everyone.
That's some big "all ~~lives~~ generations matter" energy you got there...
Generational warfare is counterproductive. I have much more in common with a working class boomer, than I do with a rich person who is my same age.
100% this. So sick of this shit.
And there is anger at being ignored
Hey now, being ignored is the Gen X identity, millennials don't get to steal that!
But seriously, although the whole "generation names" stuff is BS, people are influenced by what things are like when they were growing up. People who had access to the Internet when they were kids are naturally going to see the world differently than those who didn't.
It has also been a consistent fact that older voters vote more. So, as "Millennials" get older, they'll probably vote more, like every group does.
The real question is whether those votes will matter. I'm not going to claim that there's no difference between democrats and republicans. But, in the past the democrats and republicans that won their primaries were both heavily constrained in what they were allowed to do after taking office by powerful special interest groups. So, a democrat might be more likely to vote for something like more federal funding for the arts, and a republican might be more likely to vote for something like more tax cuts (without lowering spending of course), neither one would likely vote for an increase in the minimum wage because the people who fund their campaigns don't want that to be considered.
This time, it could actually be different. There's enough anger out there that people who aren't owned by the wealthy are surviving the primary process. Some "traditional" democrats are either finding their courage, or are getting scared of what might happen to them if they don't stand for the things their constituents care about.
some still are. they were never made to grow up
In my opinion that is not a problem specific to only millenials.
its definitely not. our nation is composed of many many different minds and bodies. no single description covers everyone. and there is no shame in not joining a fight you dont believe in, nor is there for being a "cheerleader" . everyone plays a part in change even if you think youre keeping your hands to yourself
This is not old versus young, plenty of old heads want what the younger gen wants.
This is class warfare. The Epstein class has been attacking the rest of us for ages with impunity. The first strike came from Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.
I appreciate what AOC does in most respects, but this is a miss for her. We can’t afford this divisive messaging and she needs to be told this.
Accountability to the people for ALL politicians.
There is no war but the Class War.
This is not old versus young, plenty of old heads want what the younger gen wants.
She said millennials are getting more politically active...
And you're attacking her because she's divise?
By any chance do you consider the phrase "Black lives matter" divisive and think "all live matter" is better?
Logically that's what you're saying, I just would prefer not to make that assumption, so just trying to clarify.
Edit:
And in the spirit of clarity, this is her quote that you said is divisive:
“Millennials are not punk kids anymore. We’re grown adults with mortgages and kids,” she said. “And we—that generation is starting to be decisive at the polls. And there is anger at being ignored, sidelined, having our economic futures mortgaged by the generations that came before us on everything from the economy to climate. And we’re taking the reins.”
She’s not wrong…
So, she didn't say "boomer". But she did frame it as a generational issue.
It really has nothing to do with age. In fact that's backwards. It's about people who have been in power too long, and are coincidentally old. They aren't corrupt because they're old, they're corrupt because they're in power, and they're old because they've been in power a long time. Too long. Bernie is rare because he's avoided becoming corrupt, his age is coincidental.
We need term limits for Congress. That won't stop the corruption but it will mitigate the damage they can do, and help prevent them from becoming entrenched and forming damaging long-term alliances with other corrupt politicians and billionaires.
You might say, "voting is the term limit", but voters are notoriously terrible at spotting corruption, and of course, the politicians do everything they can to hide it.
It's a generational issue...
For the entirety of America's recent decline, Boomers have been the largest voting demographic.
They were the ones active in primaries dragging both parties parties right and fucking up almost every aspect of American society.
No one is saying the problem is every single person in that demographic.
But it is 100% that demographics fault. Because they're the ones that spent a literal lifetime voting for it.
The problem isn't just the boomer politicians, it's all the boomer voters who see voting for anyone younger than themselves as a personal insult.
They're openly age discriminating against anyone younger than them, but anytime you get generations attempt to discuss it, boomers crawl out of the fucking woodwork saying "this" is why they can't do the thing we were just saying you can't do
Unfortunately decades of far right am talk radio pipeline adapted very well to gel with online platforms. Then they were able to cleverly take advantage of algorithms to "red pill " people. Younger generations are generally more liberal than their parents but far Right strategies have made a big dent in that.
Plenty of boomers who actually marched for civil rights out there, and plenty of young people stanning turning point usa and mourning charlie Kirk