Why Democrats Are Losing my Generation (Link)
A link to a my piece in The Nation about Democrats and Gen Z.
Hi all! Earlier today, The Nation published another guest article from me, this time about the history of the youth vote and why Democrats lost so much ground with people my age. It touches on a lot of things I’ve written about for this newsletter since the election, but also some new research that other writers haven’t brought up before. Here’s a link to the piece, and stay on the lookout for the start of a big, long-anticipated project on this newsletter later this week.
Always thankful,
Ettingermentum
I was knocked for six by the revelation that you're younger than 9/11. Who knew our boy was so *smol* lmao. I feel ancient being born in the previous century now 🤣
More substantively, the truth is setting us free once again. I was swept up in the anxiety that our generation had swung permanently to the right, so this story of what's actually up with us and how it's all fixable was tremendously encouraging.
EDIT: It appears I have been owned by facts and logic and should have kept reading before posting this
>While Trump’s strength among the shrinking pool of old and white voters might have been enough for him to narrowly win in 2016, it was said, his inability to win the voters of the future meant that he and his movement were living on borrowed time.
How do people still believe this? Young voters have been voting more heavily Democratic for *decades*, and yet somehow Democrats never inherit the Earth. You could probably chart a pretty direct relationship between the rise of young voters voting heavily Democratic and the Democratic Party's fall from being the only viable national political party in the country to a party barely able to win power for a couple years every once in awhile. Not that there's a causal link, but it could not be more obvious that this has always been a fantasy!
And it's not even that people get more conservative as they age, conventional canards be damned. It's that *more people vote* when they're older. The youth vote skews liberal because young liberals are more educated and engaged in politics, or because politics has a direct impact on them. This does not mean, and has never meant, that their *generation* was more liberal. It just means the future Republicans are playing beer pong and not thinking about politics.
And you'll hear Democratic operatives complain about how they can't drive up youth turnout, and you'll hear them talk about that as a literal reason to ignore young voters, because there's no value in it. I heard these things all the time when I was still in that life. But of course you can't juice turnout when you're only ever talking to the people who already turn out! The Democrats don't know how to talk to the beer pong morons, which is why they were all such easy pickings for Joe Rogan.