Similar improvements for Trump among younger voters were cited in CNN’s 2024 exit polling of more than 22,000 voters. In the last election, Biden beat Trump in this demographic by 23 points. This year, Harris’ lead over Trump among those aged 18 to 29 was 13 points, a 10-point dip in the key demographic.
I’ve been saying this for a long time. Before Trump even. The left could not rely on liberal youth defaultism forever. I hate being right.
What really drove it home the direness was nobody else has been seeing it. Culturally younger people are just different some how. I mean every generation has its idiosyncrasies but people just couldn’t get past that idea. Sounded like I was speaking in tongues to them I’m sure.
I could not put my finger on it. It’s not the current slate of political issues like housing or whatever. It predates this. I used to chalk it up to internet skull fucking kids minds in ways the older generations cannot grasp.
I had hoped the political mega minds would be able to hone in on these things. Turns out they’re all fucking clueless. Just winging it.
Everything has to be a meme. Lower taxes, healthcare, or racism isn’t exciting. Couches, weird, eating pets and out of context outbursts get way more engagement. Mostly, because people have given up.
Anyone who hasn’t read Kill all Normies by Angela Nagle, buy a copy (and ignore the name, it’s anti-Trump). It’s written about the first Trump election but seems more relevant now than in 2017.
The Right was able to weaponize online spaces far better than the Left, against all conventional wisdom that the Dems were the party of the young people and the Repubs for the older ones.
I hear Hamas is modeling their insurgency after the vietnamese, so I’m reading Kill Anything That Moves about how the US prosecuted counter insurgency operation in vietnam, and why and how they won.
We should probably all start reading and prepping about how to keep safe under unsafe regimes.
Does anyone have another Kill the ______ book recommendation so I can complete the trifecta?
Great, now I’m at the point of the post election grief cycle where I’m getting a bunch of books to try to figure out what happened. I remember this phase from 2016. Thanks for the recommendation for my list!
It’s convenient that they’re already all written because we’re repeating history.
It’s really short, I read the entire thing last night, but it probes into the right-wing online space deeper than any other scholarly resource I’ve read.
Unaffordable higher education, lifetime debt, unaffordably housing, no real chance of owning a proper house, no prospect of employment which might pay for a comfortable life, a life their parents and especially their grandparents afforded easily.
Gee I wonder why young people are so pissed off.
Yup and electing Trump will definitely make that better. Good luck with that.
Don’t get me wrong, you want to watch the world that’s unfair to you burn? That’s fine by me, I’ll bring the chocolates and marshmallows, just don’t want to hear the youngins complain about the heat.
Especially since the fucking asshole CEO of BlackRock that is buying all the homes to have us rent forever is one of the top 10 Trump donors… Any hope of homeownership in my lifetime is completely gone.
I dont know that that is even what his supporters want. Like half my co-workers vocally support him, and they seem to legitimately believe that he will just wave his magic wand or whatever and make gas and electricity and groceries cheaper, and make crime go away, and that then all the democrats will admit he wasnt so bad after all. Im not even sure what is worse, disillusioned anger being directed in completely counterproductive places, or whatever sheer delusion believing every promise in his word salad is
Why are you surprised that Trump voters are mentally defective?
Because these same people I know act pretty normal, even reasonable, whenever Trump isn’t the matter at hand. It’s like Trump comes up and suddenly a switch comes on in their brain and they’re cheering for him like a football team. It’s bizarre and surreal and infuriating to see them act that way about a man that makes me fear for my life and that of people I care about.
Yup and electing Trump will definitely make that better.
What other options were there? Electing the “go on like this” candidate? Or protesting, getting ignored or vilified by the media and thrown in jail?
In a world without options I can’t blame anyone for wanting to burn it all down.
Biden tried numerous times with loan forgiveness. It was the conservative judges that kept blocking it.
Loan forgiveness isn’t a solution. It’s something the immediately help, but it does nothing ti address the growing costs of the higher education that is needed for any sort of comfortable life.
Hey if you don’t want the status quo while slowly getting the progressives into office then hey that’s your guy’s choice here.
I’m old enough to remember that the crazy train that is MAGA took over twenty plus years of my life to get to this end game, putting their money and efforts on the long game that’s won them whatever the fuck this is.
But hey again, if you think that was your only choice, which it isn’t, that’s fine and you want to fascist it all the way down, cool just don’t fucking complain after this. Heck I might even throw in a little fuel on the fire myself.
I didn’t have any choice in this, but I’m still gonna be fucked by it.
Are you not an American citizen? Or are you under 18?
I’m not an American citizen. But the US military budget makes whatever the fuck you do in your country my problem, too.
Weird that you would be here bothsidesing rather than recognizing that the party that was just elected will cause many more military issues all over the world. American politicians will probably never reduce the size of our military (too much lobbying influence), but the only path to doing that would be to put Democrats in and progressively push them to be more progressive.
We all are man, we all are.
Hey if you don’t want the status quo while slowly getting the progressives into office then hey that’s your guy’s choice here.
Why are you talking like this person is personally responsible for Trump winning? And what progressives? When the party platform is shifting to the right every election? Not saying electing Trump is the right answer but any solution that includes maintaining the status quo is failing or has already failed.
Even it that was true, „go on like this“ is better than „make it worse“.
Even framing it as an active choice is wrong. People who become disillusioned with life and don’t feel like politics has answers for their problems just stop engaging and stop thinking about it as something important. It wasn’t an active choice, they just didn’t care.
This. I get people are angry but they need to step back and look at this for what to was. It was a bad Democrat campaign, from a party that is out of touch with voters. I don’t blame Harris for this, I think she was a decent candidate given an impossible task.
The Dems did not contest Biden running despite obvious health concerns, then let him hold on til the bitter end dismissing all concerns, then had a coronation for Harris. Not very democratic and yet they made this election about democracy. And then they focused on abortion, as the main issue.
Yet voters concerns in the exit polls were clear - the number one issue was the economy. The dems failed to sell their message on the economy, they let Trump control the topic.
Why then vote for the guy who will kill any chance of having any sort of non post apocalyptic future ever again?
I’d imagine a certain percentage just want to do it as punishment. If they have to suffer and feel hopeless, everyone else can too. My guess is the biggest percentage, though, just have no idea what is going on and what any of this means.
Yeah, Gen Z had better not talk about the lack of housing or how hard it is to make a living again after this. Whatever happens, you all made your bed and you best hope that you’re getting what you voted for.
Typical boomer leadership. You lot shit the bed trying to take bribes and sell everyone out, then blame everyone but yourselves when you end up failing at literally everything, as if every Democrat owed you compliance with your horrific BS.
The democratic party lost ground in literally every single demographic thats measured, but you want to finger point as if one group is to blame. None of you should be in charge of anything.
When will you learn that the party was a coalition and that you dont have the power to go it alone and succeed, hrm? And that the right wingers are not your friends, and reaching across the aisle to people who want plainly evil outcomes is not some sort of virtue-- it just makes you weak and prone to lose. You have to make people want to come to you, no make deals to sell out your own to entice them onboard.
This is the sort of attitude that gifts power to repulicans ever more.
Instead of blaming voters, blame the Democrat party. It needed to appeal to voters concerns and needs. It needs to ask why it failed to convince younger voters, and address what their priorities are.
The obvious answer at the moment is the Dems failed to campaign well on the economy. Harris defended the last 4 years as a success but for many lower income people of all ages it will not feel that way. Middle class voters who own their own homes were shielded more from inflation than renters whose housing costs due rent inflation sky rocketed as well as all other living costs - they were hit doubly hard.
The Dems decided to focus on women’s reproductive issues and a fear of democratic loss, and hoped women would come out and vote balancing our other groups. This failed. It’s clear Harris and the Democrats should have campaigned hard on economic change and offered a different vision to trump.
So don’t blame voters. Blame the Democrats for this and many other failings in this election (no real contest at their primary, Biden hanging on til late with patronising dismissal of concerns over his health by the Dem leadership, and then a coronation of Harris who also inherited Bidens team rather than had time to build her own campaign).
Looking at the overall vote count the Rep vote seems largely similar to 2020, or slightly up, but the democratic vote has fallen significantly. This is largely due to the Democrats failure rather than due to Republicans success.
Weird how Republicans do literal nothing to help their voters but they still turn out. Democrats at least make marginal improvements but don’t do everything that every one of their voters wants, so the voters don’t turn out. It’s the voters’ fault.
Republicans give them the red meat they want. They piss off the people they hate. Their campaigns are all about making the base happy.
We need a lot of stickers that say “Trump 2024 - You Did This” put it on gas pumps, in front of stores, hospitals…
Honestly they’ll probably provide massive subsidies to the oil companies to lower the price of gas while preserving the 2017 tax cuts and proposing more for rich people while Gen Z’ers will lose their college forgiveness but get a very temporary, very low tax cut.
Apparently young Americans don’t want a future.
People who supported a genocide shouldnt be lecturing anybody about anything after their poor campaign platform alienated the voters and lost the election.
Young Americans know to Never take advice or criticism from people you dont respect.
I’m sure they do. Shame they chose poorly.
Basically democrats are losing: the youth, minorities, and the working class. They’re gaining among white college-educated. They’re also mildly gaining among women, but they were already the party of choice for non-white women. Crazy to see the democrats becoming the party of white privilege.
When the initial disbelief wears off a little it becomes more clear that the democrats are not a very good alternative for people. If they were they should have won this by a landslide. Their current path seems like a dead end and they need some new thoughts.
This is a global problem, too.
The majority just wants bread, and all the left offers is morality.Maybe your left, I think the global left is trying to offer a lot more than that. Don’t conflate Dems with useful politicians.
Tbf, Democrats are centrist not left. It’s just us politics collectively is so right leaning you folks don’t have a real representative left leaning 3rd party. A real left party would institute policies to give everyone access to bread (so long as it isn’t in short supply). It’s absurd a country as big and rich as the US has such poor social support programs.
Morality is easy in some sense, it just requires thinking to figure it out, and in practice being the moral choice when the other side is this bad requires doing basically nothing at all. Retooling the economy to increase the wealth of average people, directly against the forces of the already wealthy seeking to suck up all the available wealth for themselves, is both much harder and requires being given an amount of power that’s rarely won these days.
all the left offers is morality.
Gun waving, immigrant banning, genocide supporting, is… morality?
Absolutely. And nobody seems able to stop the trend. We’re in dire need of some good thinking right now.
Dems lost among the white college educated this cycle.
They fucked themselves. Trump will absolutely further the killing of the planet with reckless abandon.
