10 years ago, gay Americans could not get married and have it count in all 50 states
20 years ago, you could be made uninsurable because you got sick once
30 years ago, HIV was a death sentence
40 years ago, acid rain was still a problem
Dedicated public servants keep pushing good things forward
This is very true. They want a revolution & how can you justify a revolution if the United States isn't irredeemable (even if it's imperfect). I saw a post today implying the US was imploding (which just is not the case). Yes, Trumpism happened but so did the backlash to Trumpism.
Even if Trump loses, Trumpism won't go away. I am skeptical of the idea that this movement won't find another avatar once the orange guy croaks. And I worry it'll be a more electorally palatable one.
The problem with Trumpism is you win elections by winning people over. Sure, Trumpism may continue to exist but every year less & less people will find Trumpism appealing because they can't govern/their shared reality has alienated everyone under 50.
I mean, if you believe polling, Trump *isn't* alienating everyone under 50. And far-right movements around the world are often driven by young people; I don't see why America would be immune to that. (I'm skeptical of polls, but I at least need to acknowledge that they *could* be correct.)
I don't believe polling because we recently learned that several polling organizations are filling in for folks who don't have landlines/answer their phones by training LLMs on older data, then creating "AI" respondents that supposedly represent what people would say.
Which ones? There was an article speculating this as a possible use for AI. But that was it. Siena, Marist, Marquette, Emerson, etc., certainly do not.
Polling is indeed flawed. I think it's a mistake courting disaster to say that there's *nothing* there to say that Trump is making inroads with younger voters, particularly politically disengaged ones.
I am aware. I hope the polls are wrong this time, too! But it seems like a mistake to take it for granted that young people will just keep moving left, especially since subsequent generations of young people will have different formative experiences.
What we see in the primary elections is that 1: Democrats keep overpreforming polls. One of the reasons that is is because Trump attacked voting by mail in 2020 (so most Republicans vote ONLY on election day). 2: Trump LOST more of his base to a lady that dropped out than Biden did to uncommitted.
That's one theory that could turn out to be correct, and I hope it is. But as I said, I think you should at least consider that young people moving right is within the realm of possibility.
Most of my concerns are with straight cis men of that generation, not the LGBTQ people. We've seen that type of polarization happen in other countries.
The main reason polling isn't engaging with young people is because nobody under 50 picks up a phone unless it's someone they know (because scams have made anyone under 50 suspicious of numbers they don't know).
Polling doesn't just use phone calls these days. Pollsters are aware that people don't pick up their phones. Response rates are still bad, but pollsters reach voters through a variety of methods, including embedded surveys in mobile games.
No Republican has won the youth vote since GHWB. Trump is objectively a worse canidate than he was in 2016, 2020, and he's done absolutely nothing to win anyone over that didn't vote for him in 2020. Worse, the policy reasons young people don't like Biden (Trump is worse on by far).
I mean, I'm only a high school teacher, but even I've heard casual comments from students about how Trump gave them checks and Biden hasn't done anything for them. Those comments often get pushback from other students, but those conversations happen.
