remember like 10ish years ago there were a bunch of stories about polling that showed young people were not committed to democracy?
unfortunately, ignoring that issue entirely did not fix it.
Like it or not, the Democratic electoral strategy of “democracy is on the ballot” may not be successful because many Americans have already lived most of their lives in a marginalized majority without a functioning democracy. It is a slogan penned by a tone deaf and privileged political class.
Drives me up the wall. They keep trying to squeeze the middle-classed lite conservative minority instead of aggressively going after the youth vote, which could yield dividends in many future elections
I get that there's data that young ppl don't reliably turn out for various reasons but I don't think any of the reasons are insurmountable. They do require political will and some resources to attack
I agree in that I think Dems do a lousy job of party building and fighting for votes everywhere, but I mostly think this polling was a reason for reforms before fixing anything became completely polarized.
100%
I got off on my own tangent but you're talking about a different problem. Sorry!
Lack of democratic legitimacy is upstream of a lot of our problems. Ppl who've lost faith in the system aren't wrong. What's concerning is the % who are being radicalized by the right
This is dated, but the overall picture of nonvoters suggests voting increases with assets. People vote when they have something to protect.
That makes locking in young voters hard. College voting being higher, for example, can be seen a function of seeing their education as an asset.
To be fair, the DNC doesn't want the youth vote.
They fight what we want and tell us we don't understand politics.
And then libs get mad when they don't participate.
What are we getting? More austerity and mandated health insurance that doesn't cover everything?
I’ve seen elsewhere that voting is also sticky with community college, employer-covered health insurance, and home ownership, so it is an expression of privilege but the buy-in can happen early. Not just about “youth.”
It may just be a simple as the “skin in the game” cliche.
Exactly.
But even for community college students - who are not coming from circumstances of privilege overall - having access to something you value that the government will protect/provide under the right circumstances increases the likelihood that you will vote.
It’s the New Deal lesson.
