‘A dying empire led by bad people’: Poll finds young voters despairing over US politics
https://www.semafor.com/article/05/28/2024/a-dying-empire-led-by-bad-people-poll-finds-young-voters-despairing-over-us-politics?utm_campaign=semaforreddit
‘A dying empire led by bad people’: Poll finds young voters despairing over US politics
https://www.semafor.com/article/05/28/2024/a-dying-empire-led-by-bad-people-poll-finds-young-voters-despairing-over-us-politics?utm_campaign=semaforreddit
33 comments
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They’re not entirely wrong. The democrats have been, to put it mildly, underwhelming. A lot of it hasn’t been their fault (congress isn’t ruled by the president, big money buys politicians, etc), but things haven’t gotten significantly better for a lot of people under Biden.
But if they don’t see that things will be far, far worse during the rest of their lifetimes if Trump is allowed to become a dictator and the US falls to fascism, then they’ve not been paying any attention the last 8 years.
Nobody wins elections in this country because the electorate is fickle and lets the pendulum swing way too easily. If you don’t win a super majority in the senate you’ve got one hand behind your back and if you’re democrats you have a partisan SCOTUS that will find any reason to veto any significant policy.
If Trump wins, young people may as well throw in the towel on America because partisan federalist society hacks are going to have a 6+ majority in SCOTUS for the rest of their lives.
Young people are dumb, even college educated ones, and short sighted. I’m in my early thirties so I’m not far removed from that stage of ideological purity testing.
You can’t truly accomplish anything politically to fix the direction of this country unless you sustain decades of spanking your opposition to overcome systemic problems and appoint good judges. If you’re going to be nihilistic and refuse to turn out for Biden because he’s not progressive enough then you’re just a trite self-fulfilling prophecy that deserves the Republican lording that is coming our way.
great news kids! the more you get involved the more you can change our system for the better.
Bad news everyone else …… apathy is pretty popular right now
I think folks tend to believe the society they are born into will last forever but the simple fact is they won’t
We are probably living through the beginning of the end of America as we know it and that isn’t meant to doom or anything.
I think another problem is unrealistic expectations. The youth is objectively wrong in saying it does not matter and nothing will change depending on who is elected. That is just naive. Things ARE better but when we are young and life feels so fast, change is slow. I know that is hard to hear when we want the world to be better but something we learn as we get older is that progress is a process. I am not who, what or where I was 20 years ago and things are exponentially better now because I have continued to make small improvements in my life. I don’t see immediate changes in my day to day but when I look back now, it is amazing to see how far I have come. It also could have gone a totally different direction with a lot of the decisions I was presented but I kept the mentality to make decisions that moved my life in a positive direction now matter how small it was.
We are at that crossroads in our nation. Biden represents a small positive change. To say things aren’t moving forward is disingenuous. He has made positive progress in almost every field. It’s just not going to feel life changing today but by the end of 8 years we will be in a better place than 4 years of Trump. These individuals need to really look at what Trump and his cronies are saying. If you imagine they only accomplish half of it, it’s still a massive loss for multiple generations. There isn’t even a choice really. Trump is a disaster of a human being and has already proven to be an inept leader. This narrative that has gripped the youth is just incorrect and it’s painful to watch them play with the idea of giving power to a man who has been our worst enemy. This cynicism will lead us to ruin.
Bad people always seem to win but it’s still worth fighting for
Well one party isn’t trying to do away with democracy so you could start by voting for them.
You have 70-80 year olds making decisions for the future of people 1/2 to 1/4 their age.
Therein lies part of the problem.
My nephew is not looking forward to politics. He’s 19 and hasn’t voted yet. He sees Biden as the 80 year old out of touch guy that he is, and then he sees the MAGA people acting like the worst kids imaginable. It’s tough these days.
If project 2025 goes, America goes.
As a woman I do not want to live in Gilead.
There is a politician in a state next to me saying women should not have the right to vote.
Texas is talking about the death penalty for abortions.
They are going after contraception and no fault divorce.
They will put anyone who doesn’t agree with them in camps. We’ve done it before to Japanese citizens after pearl harbor.
Republicans are predicted to control every branch of government.
We’re going to war. It absolutely matters who wins this fall.
Our whole lives are about to be destroyed.
We’ve been waiting decades for the boomer influence on politics to be outweighed and we arrive here, at a moment of complete desperation.
Young people don’t think politicians are corrupt, they know it. It’s an established, easily traceable fact. There are websites dedicated to tracking who gives them money, and how much, and you can then see how they vote on issues that align with their corporate sponsors.
The statesman is dead, the public servants are mostly lost, we’re in the era of influencer politicians.
“I disagree with a foreign policy issue and I can’t buy a condo so we may as well let Trump win to send a message.” Guess what that message is? That you’re an apathetic sucker who won’t fight back when the fight finally comes to you.
Despair is for chumps and reactionaries.
Then a massive amount of young people need to go out and vote.
This is a failing in education and imagination.
Every kid should have a fear of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust by high school. I don’t mean this to be cruel either. What I mean is, every kid should be able to look around and appreciate that there is *is* a hell on earth that *is* possible as a result of election results.
That, at minimum, should let them know things matter. And of course, the idea that elections aren’t majorly consequential is just total bullshit. Things were mostly so great under Clinton and Obama that people got bored and elected for charisma rather than continued prosperity.
And it’s Fucking tragic that young people, and *most* of the country, doesn’t know Joe Biden passed the biggest bill to combat climate change in American history.
I just can’t stand lazy brainwashed apathy. It’s definitely not the kids’ fault, we all need to try and improve the media shitstorm we’re engulfed in.
I understand feeling like things can’t get better. What actual moron looks at our country’s decent into the stupidest version of fascism and thinks it can’t get worse?
THE IDIOT SAID DO HERD IMMUNITY ABOUT A PANDEMIC.
He literally said to kill the maximum number of people.
You guys think he’s not gonna make shit worse?
That you can’t find worthy candidates to rally around who isn’t 100000 years old is super scary. Whoever gets enough money from corporate interests and whatnot to blast their campaign ads non-stop wins, no matter their age or aptitude in general, I guess. Amazing democracy!
Then vote for fucks sake.
Getting rid of Trump Would help push things in the right direction
The education needs to be, yes you get poor results when congress is basically 50-50 and you change presidential parties often. There is no cohesiveness, there is no reason why the minority party should give an inch (“country first” has been thrown out a long time ago).
Here’s the thing, do you like rights? Do you want Joe’s to get a better shake? There is only one party choice, but it’s going to take a long time to fix this and it needs a super majority. The problem is the mixed politics, it hampers the adjustments that are needed. This is why R’s are trying to end democracy with themselves in charge, then they will have the super majority with corporate needs being catered to and not the people. Wake up. It sucks for reasons beyond both are just bad. One’s better than the other for common folk.
Greatest Generation (born 1901-1927)**
– Estimated population: Less than 2 million
Silent Generation (born 1928-1945)**
– Estimated population: About 23 million
Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964)**
– Estimated population: About 72 million
Generation X (born 1965-1980)**
– Estimated population: About 65 million
Millennials (born 1981-1996)**
– Estimated population: About 72 million
Generation Z (born 1997-2012)**
– Estimated population: About 67 million
Generation Alpha (born 2013 and later)**
– Estimated population: Still growing, approximately 25 million as of recent estimates
If a conservative estimate of 21 million Generation Z can vote, that means that there are 160 million eligible voters younger than the boomers. The boomers, Silent and Greatest total 97 million. Stop fucking whining about Boomers and vote.
Trump IS a boomer. If you hate boomers so much vote for Biden
I can’t quite put my finger on it but something feels suspicious about this article. I’ve never heard of the source, for example, and the headline is conjecture from whoever led this poll. His quote is doesn’t necessarily reflect the outcomes of the results we read about, it’s hyperbolic.
Just be careful. We’re about to get an onslaught of disinformation as the elections near. Just like Russia Times (aka RT) was thrown all over reddit in 2016.
the parallels between the US and rome right before the fall are shocking
Congress is sitting at ~10% approval.
Supreme Court has about ~40% approval with a plurality viewing it as corrupt and unethical.
Both main candidates have < 50% approval.
Demographics on both sides view this as an existential threat to the country.
A rising number believe that climate change is too far gone and society is doomed.
Yeah.. <surprisedpikachu.jpg>
Politicians work for lobbyists not the people.
The repeal of Glass Steagall is the worst piece of legislation of my lifetime. So many problems over the past 15 years can be traced back to the repeal of Glass Steagall.
> “No matter who wins elections, nothing changes”
This kind of polling question is stupid. It breaks all the rules of good polling.
It’s too open-ended but it’s anchored towards a *negativity bias*. The one answering the question gets philosophical and overwhelmed in their own mind.
*Obviously* things change through elections. But there’s an implication here that something *deeper*, or *hidden* is unchanged.
If I were in the business of playing dirty and trying to irk out a win in an election by getting people to think despairingly, I would foster polling like this.
Young voters are welcome to participate whenever they want to actually have a say.
Bernie Sanders got destroyed in the 2020 election cycle because his base simply did not turn out to vote for him in the primaries. Young voters shouldn’t complain if they can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum.
This has to be addressed at a *systematic* level, otherwise there’s no space in the political environment for decent politicians to win and serve the interests of their constituents. Three starting points:
* ranked choice voting
* democracy dollars / campaign finance reform
* end gerrymandering
Gen X chiming in here… we’ve felt this way for a while now.