I think that’s the sort of intentional misunderstanding that takes place about young voters here.
Young voters were pro-Bernie earlier, because he was making proposals that at least actively proposed to solve the problems that existed in their lives. Now, they seem to be losing interest in the party in general.
See — most of them are NOT Democratic party members. Rather, they’re independents that tend to vote for the Democratic party, or just joined the party to vote for the things they care about. The percentages are roughly 44% independent, 35% Democratic, and 17% Republican, with the trend exaggerating each of these — Republican going down, but independent going way up.
www.people-press.org/…
They do need a reason to vote beyond just party, and don’t feel any obligation to vote for what they see as a constant wave of betrayals that have lasted their entire lifetimes. This is the same as the Baby Boomers by the way — they also didn’t vote until they saw reasons to, and that largely wasn’t until their older generation was largely gone from power.
Despite record national income, and booming economies, their generations are collectively the first ones across at least a century that have had worsening quality of life, life expectancy and other metrics falling for no good reason — other than just seeing resources kept isolated from them consistently over time.
They SHOULD feel angry about that.
But instead, they’re largely still respectful in shared company, but are kind of depressed as a group.
They do try, and they do vote in large numbers on occasion (Obama elections)— but every time they get swamped out by older voters that belittle and dismiss them decade after decade.
So yeah — anyone would get disengaged by a process that does that to them all their lives, then blames them for not getting a foothold in that process.
So, they find a candidate that works towards what they care about, push for that — then see the party literally push every other single candidate and movement within the party to unify against their interests, actively belittling them yet again.
And yes — I can see the response to this here already in this mean age 55+ website (likely older by now) — further belittling me for bringing this up.
But isn’t it on-its-face insane for a proportionally ‘liberal’ party to do this to their youth?
To choose yet another moderate candidate after a long string of candidates losing after refusing to call themselves liberal, then losing enthusiasm and the disaffected liberal vote?
It’s not Bernie losing that annoys me at all — it’s the dismissal and insult constantly lobbed towards those ideals.
It’s the utter madness of throwing away those priorities, and these people.
Have you looked at the approval ratings for Trump recently?
They haven’t been moving. They’re still at 42-43%.
Even now.
And he isn’t even campaigning.
This play of insulting the ideals and motives of Bernie Supporters is utterly bonkers.
Bernie Supporters aren’t supporting him because they think he can win now — but because it’s the only sane choice to still advocate for right now, in an insane lifetime of constant insults for their desires and needs.
You don’t help yourself by piling on further insults — especially right here, where you won’t even be heard by 99.9999% of them. Again — this is a website for the very old, and has been for a very long time.
If 30+% of your party still supports Bernie right now — that’s telling you something very, very important about unmet needs in your party, and how deeply priorities are being unmet.
Hatred and insult are not a fix for that.
And again — that’s only in the party.
Independents and the young are what you actually need to win — and lots of them are Bernie supporters. If it was only older voters, then Trump would win every single time.
So… maybe don’t spend 80% of your effort thinking up insults and clever ways to dig into Bernie Sanders supporters.
It’s only digging a hole — and it isn’t a hole for them. They feel little stake in any of this, especially now.
And here’s the other thing — Bernie is still going to be a Senator working for your interests, maybe don’t insult him or the policies he’s going to keep supporting.
Maybe encourage those same policies, and encourage others to support those same policies.
Unless you really, really hate the idea of younger folks getting a chance at a better existence with our shared policies — in which case, maybe consider the damage you’re doing to the world and its future with that mindset. These folks are literally your future, and the future of the things you care about.