2017: Whither Democrats?

Yep. None, zero, GOP priorities will help anyone other than the donor class.

You mean like reversing any progress on handling student loans, upwards redistribution of wealth and income, affordable health care and the like? Those affirmative policies?

Boomers suck.
Millennials suck.

Gen X forever yo!

I can support this.

Eh, I don’t think they really care about upwards redistribution of wealth. That’s a far left talking point, but most folks? Most folks don’t actually give a shit about that.

What folks care about is whether they themselves are doing better. If they are getting more money, they don’t actually care if some rich dude got even more rich.

Affordable healthcare could be useful, but really? Most of these kids are still on their parents’ insurance. They don’t really worry about that stuff. This is of course naive of them, and laughably it’s directly the result of Obama’s ACA, but they don’t really think about this because they don’t have to.

Student loan changes could be a legitimate issue for voting.
Marijuana legalization could be a legitimate voting issue.
The environment could be.
Gun control could be, but also brings along some baggage in that it antagonizes the right wing.

One thing though is that for a good chunk of these kids lives, the economy was kind of crap. And now it’s recovered. While Trump is certainly not the reason for that, the reality is that the economy is generally good now, so unless he tanks it with isolationist practices, folks will be happy with it.

I think that the left wing needs to focus on extremely concrete, tangible things. “Redistribution of wealth” is not that. It’s a losing issue.

They also lost support I think, though not as much (though they were in the 20’s so they do have much room for movement).

They should, and if you look long term, it matters more. Because the tax bill was crafted banking on the general ignorance and short sightedness of the media and populace. They set it so middle class people mostly shuffle around small variances. Some ahead, some behind, but broadly not a huge shift.

For 10 years.

Then it will balloon for middle class people. A big tax increase on middle and working class, so the rich get a big tax cut. But it doesn’t happen right away, so people forget that.

One thing young people are not good at is looking long term.

When 10 years is an impossibly long time period to you (literally half your life!), you can’t really grasp it very well imo.

Because of Obamacare’s extension to age 26?

Bottom line – an ignorant electorate will not defend its own interests, and is unworthy to maintain a democracy.

We saw that in 2016. If we all continue to be dumbasses, we’ll keep seeing that.

Millenials aren’t on their parent’s insurance anymore. Maybe they were in 2010. It’s 2018 now, they’re all like late 20s and early 30s.

Turns out, millennials are just as stupid/racist as every other generation, and are buying the Republican bullshit just like everyone else does.

Do they even vote?

An American Life, a story in 3 parts

  1. Look at these nerds, trying in school and knowing shit. Let me check my Insta. Prom is coming up, I wonder who I’ll take!
  2. I’m in year 6 of my 5 year plan for my degree in Exercise Science. Life is great. I broke my leg last week doing kegstands but my Dad has good insurance!
  3. I’m 30 and work at Dollar Tree. Thanks Obama! All those brown people have it way easier. This Trump guy is making a lot of sense.
  1. We are beginning to learn that surveys and polls – especially online surveys like this one – generate hugely problematic data points, because we’ve begun to see a phenomenon where persons in this age range tend to give deliberately misleading “troll” answers in online polls where they know there are no consequences (like a classroom grade) for answering in volatile ways.

  2. More interestingly to me, is seeing how perhaps part of this phenomenon happened in a microcosm. I think that young persons who do want to be engaged politically react badly when they see the deep partisan split in our country, and thus want to try to at least give lip service to not being beholden to any party. I don’t blame 'em.

But look at the evolving public stances of the Parkland teens. Their original message was deliberately phrased to be non-partisan and to try to steer well clear of political party labels. And then politicians of one party said “Yes, we agree with a lot that you have to say, and more importantly, we want to you say it a lot and loudly.” And the other party’s politicians and pundits said “Shut up and be high school kids.” And over the ensuing weeks, their message and outreach has definitely changed as these young persons become politically engaged and take in the lay of the actual land and what can (and can’t) be done within a few election cycles.

I strikes me as the “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual” statement in politics.

Definitely a parallel there, yep.

Here is the crazy thing to me. Trump is doing everything in his power to blow this country up - and yet he gets to surf along on the success of the Obama administration. Then he gets to smile and claim it is all his doing. When it blows up on his way out the door, he can blame the whole thing on whomever takes his place.

Never has their been anyone who epitomizes born on third and thinks he got a triple better than Donald Trump.

And despite his good amount of good fortune when it comes to economic underpinnings of the country, he still is only polling 40%

How can anyone in their right mind possibly say things are going well in the US right now, unless they’re in the top 1%? So bizarre.

Well, the economy is going well, Wall Street is insane and unemployment is down. None of that is Trump’s doing but as said up thread when the economy is doing well the president somehow gets the credit, and when it tanks he gets the blame.

Now I still think when people get around to doing next years tax return they may reconsider the whole tax cut thing, but that will be after the election.

Except here’s the problem, conservatives live in a lie fueled bubble, because by any measure the economy did fairly well under Obama. It’s just people didn’t believe it because Fox News lied and told them otherwise.

So with the Fox propaganda outlet its a ‘head I win, tails I lose’ for the GOP.

I don’t think we disagree. Nothing you said changes how people perceive things. I understand that to the hardcore fan boy it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, it is their guy/party to the end. That is true on both sides.

In a meat-and-potatoes way things are going OK in America at least for this middle-class guy. But soooooo much of one’s life ultimately comes down to employment or the lack thereof. It’s the linchpin of so much. So if unemployment is low, which it is, things could be a lot worse.

My beef with the current political moment is that it’s a) disintegrating our republican system, b) poisoning earth into uninhabitability, c) promulgating racism and pointless internal strife, and d) transferring more and more wealth to the wealthy while gutting social programs. At this precise moment these things all translate more to worry for the future than pain in the present, at least for this guy.