Young voters are moving toward Harris and feeling less ‘meh’ about voting
Young voters are moving toward Harris and feeling less ‘meh’ about voting | Semafor
It helps if your two choices for president aren't Father Time and the Orange Rage Demon.
You dropped your p
My father eloquently described it as a battle between "a zombie who doesn't know what room he's in and the reincarnation of Zhirinovsky".
Don't believe the hype, FUCKING VOTE!!! Volunteer to give rides for those that can't make it to vote otherwise.
Believe this hype; You can make a difference.
I lived in Florida in 2000. If I had recruited a couple friends, and I knew people who would have been down, and we drove vans back and forth to the polls all day...
512 votes would have made a difference.
Awesome job!
What I mean by don't believe the hype is people tend to not vote when they think they're going to win in a landslide. Which of course, they would IF they vote. We ended up with Dementia Don the racist rapist with 34 felonies that can't complete a coherent sentence because Hillary was kicking his ass in the polls so voter turnout was lower.
Regardless, VOTE
On a side note: Just the fucking fact that people would need a ride to vote also shows that
a) Voting is too damn hard in the US. I know that the Republican party has been working (and keeps working) hard on making voting nearly impossible, because less votes is better for them, but seriously: make voting easier.
b) The US is extremely over dependent on cars. In the Netherlands almost nobody would drive their car to go vote, you use a bike. Why? Because the cities in the country are designed for people first, not for cars first. Start modifying your cities to not require cars. Add bicycle roads, actually invest in public transportation, add pedestrian walk ways. The US sucks for human beings, it's awesome for cars.
Voting is too damn hard in the US.
It's too damn hard in certain states.
I'm in California, and am signed up for vote by mail, which anyone can do. Ballot gets mailed to me well in advance, I can take my time filling it out and researching down ballot issues, and plop it in a mailbox when I'm done.
It's criminal to me that this isn't the norm.
Voting is bullshit here, thanks to the republikkklowns. I'm hoping when the VP becomes president, we can remedy some of that.
Your point on the cars. Your example country is 237 times smaller than ours. .42%. We have 342 million people compared to their almost 19 million. What works there won't work here. It would be great to step up public transportation but that's not the end all answer.
This is what I did for the 2018 midterms. Some of my friends didn't really get why I was so adamant, but I dropped their assess at the church and let them vote. It do work.
Yes, I was like "Oh, thank christ" when i saw this headline, but also fear this is right propaganda to relax voters. VOTE!
make it a landslide
That's the only way that democracy is not in imminent danger.
If fascism is only beaten by the same tight margin that more sane and humane (but still neurotic and cruel) conservatism was for the second presidential election in a row, that means that the second largest party in the richest and most powerful country in the world being a fascist party has become the norm rather than just an unusually persistent aberration.
Man I hope so. I remember thinking the Republican party was dead and would have to move towards the center back in 2008 when Obama was elected and had a super majority in the Senate. But rather than pivot, the GOP dug their heels in, obstructed as much as possible, and went even further to the right.
It became the norm in Vietnam and was confirmed under Reagan. The rest was just waiting for the WW2 survivors who remembered the dogwhistles to die.
This is a problem, but another problem is that today's politicians have learned to do fascist stuff without a fascist party. Accountability and transparency.
I hope she picks a good VP and not wet blanket like democratic establishment would want.
Tim waltz seems like a good pick. Seems to have a bit of the Bernie, no-bullshit, authenticity that plays well with independents.
My preference is as follows:
I DON'T think Harris should be pick Cooper, Beshear, Walz, or especially Newsom.
Walz is a great governor. I don't want to lose him as one, but I do think he'd be a great pick
I think Tim Waltz would be a great pick. Full authenticity. A no nonsense and non flashy Midwestern white democrat from a rural district who lead a surprisingly progressive agenda. Count me in
If you felt “meh” about doing the utmost to avoid Trump, you might just be an idiot,
Remember, if they're voting in their first election this year, there's a decent chance they were under ten before Trump emerged on the scene as a politician. They don't remember what it used to be like. They think this is normal.
Young people are not renowned for their wisdom.
Yeah, kids are allowed to vote (and go off to war, and get themselves into crippling debt) at 18 but their decision making doesn't mature until after they're 25. Maybe adulthood should start a little later.
Their elders have done such a bang up job, eh. So much wisdom and here we all are blaming and knocking young people having to inherit all this bullshit.
Neither are boomers, but we've spent the past 4 decades doing every last thing those shitheels want.
Yes, but. Let's not circle the firing squad.
Not before they have voted.
Voting is not your utmost. It's the bare minimum.
To whoever downvoted this: You won't make it in life.
Biden wasn't the utmost to avoid Trump.
Good.
Shocker, few can relate to an octogenarian running for office.
It has nothing to do with his age. His brain is on vacation. Bernie Sanders is older than Biden, but if he were the nominee we'd see the same enthusiasm as we're seeing for Harris.
This is the way. Age is just a number. Until it isn't. Biden could probably, with all the team around him, finish out a second term. But the demands of looking sharp in situations like debates (which are not really great tests for doing the job, but it's part of the performative bullshit clown show we put on for the low information voters and they will decide elections in our stupid system) was going to sink any chance of him winning this fall.
And Bernie apparently has all his faculties and has the EQ to understand the plight of many Americans. Counting someone like Bernie out only because of the number of times they went around the sun? Impossibly stupid. And, as I keep emphasizing, more and more likely to become entirely irrelevant as things like age reversal come online.
When faced with fascism, the relatability of the alternative is important. Gotcha.
That's how voters are. Democrats love to stomp their feet and say, "But voters should vote the way we tell them to, because we're right!"
Okay, maybe you are right, but if you want those votes, you have to give people what they want. And one of the things they want is a candidate who can speak.
Unfortunately, in part, it does
Decisions are made on the margins.
Politics is like a pendulum. The further it swings one way the further back the correction is after the results are realized.
I don't think the US can become a fascist nation. The business oligarchs have too much power and would quickly remove anyone who would be anything more than a puppet to control.
If you're complaining about all the people who are now coming on board you should probably just stfu and get on board with the new nominee and face the facts that people calling for Biden to exit were right and you were wrong. That it did matter and it made a huge difference.
I honestly thought it was a bad idea to pivot to Harris but I was happily proven wrong. There's so much excitement and energy surrounding her. Like a breath of fresh air. Glad to see it.
Woot woot!
She's not perfect. Like she's a cop and such.
Still, she's not raping folks. She's not grabbing them by the pussy..
It's bad. But all y'all better get on board. It can be a whole lot worse.
She got behind the "defined the police" movement until she was added to the Biden team and had to back his administration'stances.
A former prosecutor who called out how overfunded police agencies are sounds like someone with pretty decent perspective from both sides. She understands both the value and shortcomings of law enforcement.
I'm getting tired of all this calling Harris a cop. She was a prosecutor but you're equating her to ACAB.
Prosecutors are how you hold bad cops accountable, by prosecuting them. Do you condemn the prosecutors who put George Floyd's murderers behind bars? (They were amazing!). Do you condemn the prosecutors who are holding accountable people like the Jan 6 insurrectionists, trump, bannon, giuliani, etc?
Who do you expect to do these things or do you not care if justice is done? I'm sick of this double standard.
I think people get too tied up with this idea of the "perfect" candidate
No candidate was, is, or shall be perfect.
Every politician that you have the opportunity to vote for will have some aspect of their past or their platform that you (or other voters) will disagree with in some capacity. And I fear that this need for perfection in their candidate is fertile ground for others to manipulate people's attitudes towards not voting for an imperfect but otherwise good candidate.
Am I the only one sad because a “serious” publication allows a headline with “meh” instead of apathetic?
It’s in quotes, so I think they made it clear they were quoting something the young people might say.
I don’t know if they’re right that the 18-35s use that word very often, but I think that’s what they’re going for.
You're not alone, there are hundreds of Lemmy users who hold equally vocal opinions over details irrelevant to the point.
Seriousness is a plague.
I certainly hope you are.
Less meh?
You mean they are showing less voter apathy
You mean they are showing less voter apathy
No, it means they are demonstrating a decrease in emotional detachment from the civil and democratic process of advocating for leadership.
emotional detachment from the civil and democratic process
Now I am curious how you define voter apathy
Kinda. In the two-party first-past-the-post system, they were still not convinced they should vote which could actively make their futures worse. Knowing why that alone wasn't a motivating factor (unless this is all people who want to vote AGAINST Harris (which I highly doubt)) is definitely worth exploring.
That's true, but it doesn't stop this from being good news
In the two-party first-past-the-post system, they were still not convinced they should vote which could actively make their futures worse.
Who knew that regarding them with undisguised contempt wasn't convincing?
If they want to have a future, a lot more of them should get to feeling zero "meh" about voting for not donnie.
They just showed the party what to do in order to get them excited to vote.
The party listened to their concerns, and they fell in line instantly. All the party has to do to get voter enthusiasm is to listen to the voters.
You don't get enthusiasm by ignoring people's concerns. That's how you get apathy and resentment.
I'm sure it has a bit to do with voters being especially loud about this issue.
I know I wrote both my dem senators (Warren and Market), my dem rep, and my dem governor (Healey), asking them to support Biden resigning a couple days after the debate. And I'm probably not alone on that.
I mean, political donors pulling support of Biden after the debate did grease the wheels for that transition.
Yes, I get why the party did what it did. Still - voting for someone based solely on something like age and color, when the alternative is donnie, is exceedingly reckless.
Young people don't understand voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression, erosion of constitutional rights etc.
They just understand
Yeah I'm sure the party that brought them in the situation they are in to begin with is their only hope for a future. It definitely represents them and their interests and not the billionaires, hence not addressing any of the real pressing issues in the world that the new generation cares about.
She should just pick Clooney as VP so we can be done with it already.
Keanu Reeves
ACT 1, The GOP kills his puppy...
That would just be unfair to the Republicans, so definitely the best choice
It would be hard to attack Keanu without looking like a douche
Amal Clooney, preferably. That lady is a major badass.
Though I think putting two women on the ticket would be a death knell unfortunately.
Mostly joking, I don't think she's an American citizen.
Kind of bothers me that her age and gender are such deciding factors for some. I think some of these people would have voted mtg if she ran.
The party demonstrated responsiveness to voters' concerns for the first time in decades.
I've been thinking about this story for almost a decade.
Right after the 2016 election, there was a panel with the creative teams behind US TV's biggest political dramas. Veep, Scandal, West Wing, House of Cards, and other shows. All the panelists agreed on one point; if they'd presented a fictional character who said they 'liked soldiers who didn't get captured' the networks and advertisers would have demanded that the character be shown to lose the election and be hated by all sides.
We can't pretend that voters will do the right thing
this is a more surface level take than actually saying "i will vote because she's a woman"
How so? I am glad she is running she has shifted things back in favor of democrats. I just think if someone would have really cared about what would happen under another four years under trump they would have voted biden anyway.
I wonder if I can find the same kind of article about younger voters and conservative politicians on Twitter or Facebook
Probably, but it's going to be based on anecdotes. This one actually has polling.
Yes you can
This is why .ml had to ban its politics community
Absolutely doing my part, id love to see him fail again & the Republican party get cold feet supporting him next time around as a two time failure
They can “meh” all they want, no vote—no voice.
It's that smug attitude that got us Biden. Democrats win or lose by convincing the meh people that it's worth their time to go vote. If they don't go vote trump wins so they literally can't go meh all they want if Democrats wants to win.
Pretty sure I just said they need to vote.
They need to be more invested in their primary, mid-term, and local elections. That is the time for people to decide for better than "meh" choices. Too many people sit out of such a large part of the process. That said, I am also for throwing out first past the post too.
The meh people are the ones doing this.
In other news: 1 + 1 still equals 2.
Who could've told
Does a word that is recognized in the dictionary need quotes?
Maybe it indicates that that is what those people would have said about voting previously
Does a question about whether or not a word recognized by the dictionary needs quotes need to be asked?
... and the following 4 years the young voters will learn that votes would be forbidden, if they changed anything. :-P
Harris would not be where she is w/o support from the elite, even if she wanted, she cannot change the system.
Anyway, hope she gets elected, so I don't have to suffer Trump news every single day (like now). It's worth it for that alone, so go and vote, citizens!
(Edited for clarity)
Fundamentally I agree that only we can change the system.
But she doesn't seem nearly as pro Israel as Biden and Trump. That makes a huge difference. I can hold my nose to vote for a corporate servant, but I won't compromise on genocide. There will eventually be no one left to speak out for us.
I remember when I was young and dumb.
Right, now you are just dumb. Go ahead and vote for a convicted rapist who was best friends with a child sex trafficker.
We are not going to forget this time period. You guys are digging your heels in the sand after finding out what he is. You guys will literally support a felon before you wake up from the cult's haze. We will remember this. You will not get to simply forget that this ever happened like all the people who said we should be going to Iraq. You will be ridiculed, rightfully
You will be on a list as a supporter of fascism so employers can weed you guys out. You will be second class citizens for your attempt at installing a dictatorship in the United States of Americ
Consider that getting off easy
Former President Donald TRUMP:
“And again, Christians, get out and vote!” he said to a cheering audience. “Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine! You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians! I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out. You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again.”
I am willing to die to prevent fascism from taking hold in this nation.
That’s because people are fickle and easily fooled.
Idk. Maybe. I think Biden has done a great job if you look at his policies, and I would have hoped people were excited about them. I take your comment to say that people are fooled into having more enthusiasm for a candidate with the same policies just becase a different face has been put on them. But there can be other reasons for the enthusiasm. For example, maybe people believe she will do a better job since she is younger and more energetic. And those people think a younger, more energetic candidate makes for a better President even while holding the same political views. If that gets people excited, fine. It may be from being fickle and fooled or may be from a realistic view of how leaders impact the group and how a younger leader could be better.
For the dems it does seem to be a buff. The media is certainly telling us it’s a huge buff : half of the posts here today are about that.
This unfortunately shows us that some people viewed voting for a convicted felon, fraudster and rapist and condemning America to being dismantled and sold for parts vs voting for the status quo, lead by a deteriorating man, as some kind of dilemma .
My own politics are way left of either, but I don’t think is controversial to shine a light on the superficial nature of the electorate.
Bear in mind, a lot of these people screech about fascism etc etc, but somehow saw it as a difficult choice. At least, that’s what the polls, via the media, are telling us.