Biden’s numbers among young voters have slid during his presidency from the high margins that helped him beat Trump. Several former supporters explain why.
These young voters live in different cities, work different jobs and have varying political beliefs. But among the things they have in common: They voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — and now say the president can’t count on their support in 2024.
“I genuinely could not live with myself if I voted for someone who’s made the decisions that Biden has,” said McKenzie, a 23-year-old working at Starbucks and as a union organizer in Madison, Wisconsin. “I didn’t even feel great about" voting for Biden back in 2020, he said.
If they weren’t convinced by the Trump presidency, Jan 6, theft of classified materials, “grab em by the pussy”, the shady shit with Russia, Roe v Wade being torched, and the 2025 project, nothing will.
Yeah if they haven’t figured out what the consequences could be, someone telling them isn’t going to help. They’re already way too uninformed to have any real context or else their philosophy is one that is more concerned with the symbolism of an act than the real world outcome thereof.
I think it comes down to how one handles the Trolley Problem. Some folks feel that the most important thing is reducing the number killed even if it means effectively being a murderer by making the trolley kill one instead of letting it kill 10.
Others feel the act of doing nothing and permitting the death of 10 is morally superior to actively killing 1 (or, I guess that is what they believe?).
I am in the former camp and I cannot understand the latter camp at all. Maybe because I care less about whether I am a murderer (and I guess the 1 person) than I do about making sure 10 people aren’t killed.
There’s also the “perfect is the enemy of the good” problem that I’ve seen a lot of Progressives display.
They want a perfect, ideal candidate. They refuse to settle for anything less than perfection. The problem is that perfection isn’t attainable. If you name your “perfect candidate,” then someone will find a flaw with them. They then cease to be the perfect candidate anymore and must be ditched for the next “perfect one.” Meanwhile, the right just decides that their candidate is perfect regardless of any flaws (or perhaps because of what we’d call his flaws).
Progressives will often threaten to rage quit politics if they don’t get 100% of what they want right away. They don’t seem to realize that doing this gives power to the Republicans. So we take five steps forward, Progressives rage quit because we didn’t take twenty steps forward, Republicans take over, and we take ten steps backwards. Now, did rage quitting put us in a better position? Of course not. But the perfect is held up as the only allowed outcome and Good isn’t good enough.
It’s not “the perfect is the enemy of the good” for me anymore. It’s “good is no longer good enough to do anything meaningful.” It’s not anger, it’s despair.
I wonder what drives that kind of thinking? I am pretty sure I figured out at least by my second election if not first that the realistic choices are usually shitty and shittier. And I was politically a total idiot back then.
To be fair, one can argue that probably nobody really expects a “perfect” candidate. I imagine some are looking for a fairly good one, but find that the available options fall far short.
So it is probably more like “good is the enemy of the-sucky-but-not-criminal-fascist-traitor” lol.
Mind you I am a progressive but I’m also practical and see the long game, now that I’m middle-aged and finally getting a bit of a clue.
If we progressives want to pull the rank and file core DNC neoliberals left, we need a 20-50 year plan. We need to be working at the grassroots level to donate time and money to progressives at the local and state level, run for office ourselves even if it is just for a school board or city council post. We need to influence curriculums to tell more of the truth about unregulated capitalism, the benefits of socialized healthcare, organized labor, history. We need to discuss progressive ideas more in public discourse. We need to lobby for many things to get us out of the quagmire of regulatory capture, corruption, etc: oligopoly busting, campaign finance reform, etc.
And we need to focus on the elections of Senators and Representatives, because that’s where the power is at, really. The president isn’t going to get much done without Congress. And won’t get much done with them unless we have enough progressives instead of reagan-era conservatives in Democratic clothing (Manchin, Sinema, etc).
It took 50 years for the GOP to fuck everything up. It will probably take 50 to get it back in line.
That’s only as long as the GOP doesn’t get in power. If they do, they have told us they will increase the power of the executive branch which brings us closer to the autocratic model of governance that the original drafters of the Constitution were keenly interested in avoiding.
They will appoint partisan loyalists in key government positions which means brain drain and probably defacto repeal of various laws. Sort of like what happened with Ajit Pai in the FCC, the bullshit with USPS thanks to Louis DeJoy (remembering the decades of attacks on USPS by the GOP because if it ain’t privatized they cant get richer and oh it has to turn a profit despite being a fucking social service…), and the hobbling of the EPA under whoever that was.
I definitely agree about the long term plan. The Republicans excelled at this. I hate the goal, but can admire how much effort they put into things like overturning Roe vs Wade. During the 50 year span, they had many, many setbacks. They didn’t just throw in the towel, though. They changed their goals, being temporarily satisfied with small steps backward instead of running an entire backwards marathon. And as they did this, they got closer and closer to their goal until they hit it. (Of course, their goal has now shifted to include much worse things.)
Imagine if Progressives could harness this kind of planning for positive changes. As satisfying as it would be to elect a Progressive President with a Progressive Congress that would work together to make the courts Progressive as well, that’s not going to happen in 2024. Heck, it’s not likely to all happen in 2028 either.
We need to step back, assess where we are, where we want to be, and make a plan for how we get there. “Just only vote for Progressives” sounds good on paper until you realize that, in many areas, Progressives would be unelectable. What happens if the Progressive can’t be elected and the Progressive Congress doesn’t come to be? If the entire plan is “just only vote for Progressives,” then it will fall apart quickly.
If instead, the plan is “move the county one step to the left. And then another step. And then another step,” then we can make some real changes. Sure, they won’t come for years and it can be frustrating to wait, but this also means that change will come, it will be easier to recover from a misstep, and there won’t be as large of a backlash.
(On this last point, one of the things I’ve noticed is that society tends to have a momentum to it that’s hard to change. If you try to change society too quickly, a backlash can result that can roll back many of the changes. Slow steady changes can wind up taking root a lot more than quick sudden changes.)
And since 03 or earlier, conservatives in America have been consolidating their power to achieve what they have now. Supreme Court dominance enough to undue decades and decades of progress. But yes, pretend these people weren’t right all along. This time, you can safely vote third party , or stay home, probably nothing bad will happen.
But yes, pretend these people weren’t right all along. This time, you can safely vote third party , or stay home, probably nothing bad will happen.
Excuse me? Why don’t you say that again in a way that’s not, you know, doing EXACTLY what I just accused you of?
You do realize, of course that “These people who were right all along” are either people like me pointing out that Biden fucking sucks… or the ones that ALLOWED all that to happen- namely the milquetoast “moderates” that have allowed the overton window to consistently shift right while fearmongering that a progressive candidate is actually impossible. (because, you know, it’d really suck for their corpo masters if progressive gained any sort of headwind.)
Who on the progressive side of the left wing is embracing these things? The republicans are not part of the DNC base, by definition, and bringing them into the mix is… a distraction meant to keep you from realizing that Biden is closer to fascist than I am. but do, go on hurling shit-takes.
Call me when you actually have something other than fucking fearmongering to say.
Saying that living under fascism is objectively worse than a moderate Democrat who’s almost a Republican is not “blaming you for everything”. My God, has our educational system really gone that far downhill so fast??
has our educational system really gone that far downhill so fast??
Cool it with the insults. You’re revealing your ignorance and lack of actual, persuasive arguments. you can stop repeating the “OR ELSE” mantra. had it from boomers and gen xer’s all my life. I tune it out.
I’m not trying to persuade you man. I’m telling you to put on your big boy pants and stop acting like a god damned baby. Your comments clearly show how you’re using your feelings instead of your brain. Grow up and help the rest of us prevent a disaster.
I’m not trying to persuade you man. I’m telling you to put on your big boy pants and stop acting like a god damned baby. Your comments clearly show how you’re using your feelings instead of your brain. Grow up and help the rest of us prevent a disaster.
You’re clearly trying to intimidate me with insults and fear. “OMG GOD ITS BIDEN OR TRUMP” is a false dichotomy. but go ahead keep ignoring the warnings. keep putting bad candidates on the balllot. keep doing the same goddamn thing that got Trump elected the first time around. it’s okay because… you can happily blame other people who are trying to do something about it.
you do realize that Biden is actively working to provide military support to a genocidial country? you do realize he’s loosing votes with every bullet he sends? but yet, I’m the one whose acting on emotion? fucking hell man, stop it with the “SHUT UP AND DO WHAT WE TELL YOU” already. It’s actually kinda fascist of you. (oops, I’m diluting that term, aren’t I?)
No, this is actually a dichotomy. First Past the Post mathematically trends towards a two candidate system as its stable state. This isn’t some psychological bullshit, it’s math. The way our system works you never vote for the thing you like; you vote against the thing you don’t. Doing anything else is literally handing the election to the side you don’t like. It’s called the Spoiler Effect and it happens basically everywhere in the US where FPtP is used.
The place you vote for who you want is in the primaries (or their equivalent in your state), not elections. If you’re not participating in those, you get no say in who gets run and bitching about it does nothing. Hell, even then you barely get any say since, as far as I’m aware, both the DNC and RNC actually select their candidate based on a vote of some inner circle bigwigs, not the actual results of any of the state-by-state pageant shows.
No, this is actually a dichotomy. …[snip]… The place you vote for who you want is in the primaries (or their equivalent in your state), not elections.
We’re not in the main election. Right now is the Primary Season. Thanks for the super patronizing lesson in civics, though. super Tuesday isn’t until February at the earliest.
with that out of the way … I can’t help but notice you aren’t actually defending Biden as the best possible candidate to defeat trump.
edit: the DNC rules and bylaws. while you’re partially right, you are voting for delegates, who are nominally bound to vote for the candidate who they said they’d vote for. It’s the electoral college but in mini-form. not that the DNC actually follows them (remember what happened to Bernie?)
You guys are refusing to hold a primary! You kick us in the face, lie about caring what we say, and then telling us to fall in line.
I have seen this episode before, blah blah blah trump,
Trump never would have fucking won if y’all hadn’t conspired to only run Clinton, but it is all everyone else’s fault.
I’m sick of being fed the same lies over and over.
Right now? AOC, Bernie and Whitmer have my attention. I’ll settle as we get closer to Super Tuesday, but even Newsom (whose very much right: offense>defense) or Phillips (whose basically a younger version of Biden) would be better candidates than Biden. Fetterman was on the list, too, but he’s too… gung ho for Israel now.
Voting isn’t supposed to make you feel good. You’re not supposed to be satisfied with your decision. It’s going to suck and continue to suck until you die.
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Ah, yes. That’ll surely get them out to vote. /s
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If they weren’t convinced by the Trump presidency, Jan 6, theft of classified materials, “grab em by the pussy”, the shady shit with Russia, Roe v Wade being torched, and the 2025 project, nothing will.
Yeah if they haven’t figured out what the consequences could be, someone telling them isn’t going to help. They’re already way too uninformed to have any real context or else their philosophy is one that is more concerned with the symbolism of an act than the real world outcome thereof.
I think it comes down to how one handles the Trolley Problem. Some folks feel that the most important thing is reducing the number killed even if it means effectively being a murderer by making the trolley kill one instead of letting it kill 10.
Others feel the act of doing nothing and permitting the death of 10 is morally superior to actively killing 1 (or, I guess that is what they believe?).
I am in the former camp and I cannot understand the latter camp at all. Maybe because I care less about whether I am a murderer (and I guess the 1 person) than I do about making sure 10 people aren’t killed.
There’s also the “perfect is the enemy of the good” problem that I’ve seen a lot of Progressives display.
They want a perfect, ideal candidate. They refuse to settle for anything less than perfection. The problem is that perfection isn’t attainable. If you name your “perfect candidate,” then someone will find a flaw with them. They then cease to be the perfect candidate anymore and must be ditched for the next “perfect one.” Meanwhile, the right just decides that their candidate is perfect regardless of any flaws (or perhaps because of what we’d call his flaws).
Progressives will often threaten to rage quit politics if they don’t get 100% of what they want right away. They don’t seem to realize that doing this gives power to the Republicans. So we take five steps forward, Progressives rage quit because we didn’t take twenty steps forward, Republicans take over, and we take ten steps backwards. Now, did rage quitting put us in a better position? Of course not. But the perfect is held up as the only allowed outcome and Good isn’t good enough.
It’s not “the perfect is the enemy of the good” for me anymore. It’s “good is no longer good enough to do anything meaningful.” It’s not anger, it’s despair.
I wonder what drives that kind of thinking? I am pretty sure I figured out at least by my second election if not first that the realistic choices are usually shitty and shittier. And I was politically a total idiot back then.
To be fair, one can argue that probably nobody really expects a “perfect” candidate. I imagine some are looking for a fairly good one, but find that the available options fall far short.
So it is probably more like “good is the enemy of the-sucky-but-not-criminal-fascist-traitor” lol.
Mind you I am a progressive but I’m also practical and see the long game, now that I’m middle-aged and finally getting a bit of a clue.
If we progressives want to pull the rank and file core DNC neoliberals left, we need a 20-50 year plan. We need to be working at the grassroots level to donate time and money to progressives at the local and state level, run for office ourselves even if it is just for a school board or city council post. We need to influence curriculums to tell more of the truth about unregulated capitalism, the benefits of socialized healthcare, organized labor, history. We need to discuss progressive ideas more in public discourse. We need to lobby for many things to get us out of the quagmire of regulatory capture, corruption, etc: oligopoly busting, campaign finance reform, etc.
And we need to focus on the elections of Senators and Representatives, because that’s where the power is at, really. The president isn’t going to get much done without Congress. And won’t get much done with them unless we have enough progressives instead of reagan-era conservatives in Democratic clothing (Manchin, Sinema, etc).
It took 50 years for the GOP to fuck everything up. It will probably take 50 to get it back in line.
That’s only as long as the GOP doesn’t get in power. If they do, they have told us they will increase the power of the executive branch which brings us closer to the autocratic model of governance that the original drafters of the Constitution were keenly interested in avoiding.
They will appoint partisan loyalists in key government positions which means brain drain and probably defacto repeal of various laws. Sort of like what happened with Ajit Pai in the FCC, the bullshit with USPS thanks to Louis DeJoy (remembering the decades of attacks on USPS by the GOP because if it ain’t privatized they cant get richer and oh it has to turn a profit despite being a fucking social service…), and the hobbling of the EPA under whoever that was.
I could go on but I’ve rambled enough.
I definitely agree about the long term plan. The Republicans excelled at this. I hate the goal, but can admire how much effort they put into things like overturning Roe vs Wade. During the 50 year span, they had many, many setbacks. They didn’t just throw in the towel, though. They changed their goals, being temporarily satisfied with small steps backward instead of running an entire backwards marathon. And as they did this, they got closer and closer to their goal until they hit it. (Of course, their goal has now shifted to include much worse things.)
Imagine if Progressives could harness this kind of planning for positive changes. As satisfying as it would be to elect a Progressive President with a Progressive Congress that would work together to make the courts Progressive as well, that’s not going to happen in 2024. Heck, it’s not likely to all happen in 2028 either.
We need to step back, assess where we are, where we want to be, and make a plan for how we get there. “Just only vote for Progressives” sounds good on paper until you realize that, in many areas, Progressives would be unelectable. What happens if the Progressive can’t be elected and the Progressive Congress doesn’t come to be? If the entire plan is “just only vote for Progressives,” then it will fall apart quickly.
If instead, the plan is “move the county one step to the left. And then another step. And then another step,” then we can make some real changes. Sure, they won’t come for years and it can be frustrating to wait, but this also means that change will come, it will be easier to recover from a misstep, and there won’t be as large of a backlash.
(On this last point, one of the things I’ve noticed is that society tends to have a momentum to it that’s hard to change. If you try to change society too quickly, a backlash can result that can roll back many of the changes. Slow steady changes can wind up taking root a lot more than quick sudden changes.)
Y’all’be been saying that or similar since at least ‘03.
You need new scare tactics. Or, maybe, stop ignoring over half the base. But details. Yes. Keep blaming us for everything…
And since 03 or earlier, conservatives in America have been consolidating their power to achieve what they have now. Supreme Court dominance enough to undue decades and decades of progress. But yes, pretend these people weren’t right all along. This time, you can safely vote third party , or stay home, probably nothing bad will happen.
Excuse me? Why don’t you say that again in a way that’s not, you know, doing EXACTLY what I just accused you of?
You do realize, of course that “These people who were right all along” are either people like me pointing out that Biden fucking sucks… or the ones that ALLOWED all that to happen- namely the milquetoast “moderates” that have allowed the overton window to consistently shift right while fearmongering that a progressive candidate is actually impossible. (because, you know, it’d really suck for their corpo masters if progressive gained any sort of headwind.)
You ever consider that perhaps people are and have been paying attention, which is why they won’t vote Left this time? ¬¬
Preach!
When half the base embrace incompetence, obstruction, and fascism, it’s time to ignore them.
Who on the progressive side of the left wing is embracing these things? The republicans are not part of the DNC base, by definition, and bringing them into the mix is… a distraction meant to keep you from realizing that Biden is closer to fascist than I am. but do, go on hurling shit-takes.
Call me when you actually have something other than fucking fearmongering to say.
Saying that living under fascism is objectively worse than a moderate Democrat who’s almost a Republican is not “blaming you for everything”. My God, has our educational system really gone that far downhill so fast??
Cool it with the insults. You’re revealing your ignorance and lack of actual, persuasive arguments. you can stop repeating the “OR ELSE” mantra. had it from boomers and gen xer’s all my life. I tune it out.
I’m not trying to persuade you man. I’m telling you to put on your big boy pants and stop acting like a god damned baby. Your comments clearly show how you’re using your feelings instead of your brain. Grow up and help the rest of us prevent a disaster.
You’re ignoring everything we are telling you, while doing the same thing over and over, and then telling us to fall in line to help you.
How about you help us?
You’re clearly trying to intimidate me with insults and fear. “OMG GOD ITS BIDEN OR TRUMP” is a false dichotomy. but go ahead keep ignoring the warnings. keep putting bad candidates on the balllot. keep doing the same goddamn thing that got Trump elected the first time around. it’s okay because… you can happily blame other people who are trying to do something about it.
you do realize that Biden is actively working to provide military support to a genocidial country? you do realize he’s loosing votes with every bullet he sends? but yet, I’m the one whose acting on emotion? fucking hell man, stop it with the “SHUT UP AND DO WHAT WE TELL YOU” already. It’s actually kinda fascist of you. (oops, I’m diluting that term, aren’t I?)
No, this is actually a dichotomy. First Past the Post mathematically trends towards a two candidate system as its stable state. This isn’t some psychological bullshit, it’s math. The way our system works you never vote for the thing you like; you vote against the thing you don’t. Doing anything else is literally handing the election to the side you don’t like. It’s called the Spoiler Effect and it happens basically everywhere in the US where FPtP is used.
The place you vote for who you want is in the primaries (or their equivalent in your state), not elections. If you’re not participating in those, you get no say in who gets run and bitching about it does nothing. Hell, even then you barely get any say since, as far as I’m aware, both the DNC and RNC actually select their candidate based on a vote of some inner circle bigwigs, not the actual results of any of the state-by-state pageant shows.
We’re not in the main election. Right now is the Primary Season. Thanks for the super patronizing lesson in civics, though. super Tuesday isn’t until February at the earliest.
with that out of the way … I can’t help but notice you aren’t actually defending Biden as the best possible candidate to defeat trump.
edit: the DNC rules and bylaws. while you’re partially right, you are voting for delegates, who are nominally bound to vote for the candidate who they said they’d vote for. It’s the electoral college but in mini-form. not that the DNC actually follows them (remember what happened to Bernie?)
You guys are refusing to hold a primary! You kick us in the face, lie about caring what we say, and then telling us to fall in line.
I have seen this episode before, blah blah blah trump,
Trump never would have fucking won if y’all hadn’t conspired to only run Clinton, but it is all everyone else’s fault.
I’m sick of being fed the same lies over and over.
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Do whatever the fuck you want.
So what candidate has your favor at the moment?
Or are you just not going to vote?
Right now? AOC, Bernie and Whitmer have my attention. I’ll settle as we get closer to Super Tuesday, but even Newsom (whose very much right: offense>defense) or Phillips (whose basically a younger version of Biden) would be better candidates than Biden. Fetterman was on the list, too, but he’s too… gung ho for Israel now.
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Ah, a terrorist.
Ok keyboard warrior.
Smash that enter key extra hard in frustration!
You are correct, which is why your left wing peers will never do either, haha.
Voting isn’t supposed to make you feel good. You’re not supposed to be satisfied with your decision. It’s going to suck and continue to suck until you die.
Kids these days…