{"id":353,"date":"2023-12-03T18:47:05","date_gmt":"2023-12-03T23:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/?p=353"},"modified":"2023-12-03T18:47:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-03T23:47:05","slug":"disillusioned-young-voters-a-major-problem-for-democratic-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/2023\/12\/03\/disillusioned-young-voters-a-major-problem-for-democratic-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Disillusioned Young Voters a Major Problem for Democratic Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Young people have long been reliable Democratic voters, but today they do not like the way the party is headed and they\u2019re walking away in droves.<\/p>\n

The same thing is happening in the Republican Party but the Republicans\u2019 problem is far less severe than the Democrats\u2019 and so I\u2019ll stick with Democrats for now.<\/p>\n

All the polls agree on that the trend is real, and the evidence is clear.\u00a0 Exact numbers are elusive, but the AP Votecast\u2019s measure is typical.\u00a0 It shows that voters under 30 years old preferred Democrats by 30 points in the 2018 election, 25 points in 2020, and 12 points last year.<\/p>\n

Why is this happening?\u00a0 For starters, today\u2019s young Democrats plainly do not like Joe Biden.\u00a0\u00a0 They feel he\u2019s too old to stay sharp enough to lead the nation for four more years.\u00a0 After all, he would be 86 years old at the end of his term.\u00a0 (Donald Trump would be 83 at the end of his but for some reason age hasn\u2019t become an issue for him.)<\/p>\n

But even if young Democrats were confident Biden could do the job, they still would not want him.\u00a0 They feel he does not and cannot speak for them, not for today\u2019s youth.\u00a0 How could he?\u00a0 His generation is yesterday.\u00a0 Plus, for the last 30 years he\u2019s cloistered himself so deeply inside that super-exclusive club called the U.S. Senate, and now the presidency, that he could not\u00a0 possibly empathize with them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that they prefer Donald Trump to Biden.\u00a0 They don\u2019t necessarily like Trump either.\u00a0\u00a0 At this point, it\u2019s just that they are not motivated to support either one.<\/p>\n

They would like both men to understand that it is today\u2019s youth who will cope with decisions that are made today, not Biden and Trump and people their age.\u00a0 Today\u2019s older folks won\u2019t be around to deal with the long-term results of their actions today, so the young voters are shouting at them: Please do your duty and retire now. Get out of the way and let those of us who will live in tomorrow\u2019s world\u00a0 take charge.<\/p>\n

The candidates\u2019 refusals to resign leave the young voters feeling powerless to control their own lives in a world that broadcasts a steady drumbeat of always-getting-worse bad news.\u00a0 It can lead to hopelessness.<\/p>\n

But it goes beyond just who will be president.\u00a0 Recent surveys also suggest that young Democrats are also growing disillusioned with the party itself.\u00a0 They feel the party has failed to deliver major legislation on civil rights, income inequality or abortion. They feel the party is disorganized, internally ideologically conflicted, and full of varied ideas about change, but showing little action.<\/p>\n

It even goes beyond that.\u00a0 A Pew survey last summer showed that many young people are so disillusioned with the political system that they\u2019re ready to chuck the whole thing and start over.\u00a0 Nearly 40 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew said they \u201cwish there were more political parties to choose from in this country,\u201d\u00a0 and young people were especially in agreement.<\/p>\n

Forty-seven percent of the young (30 and under) voters said they wished there were more political parties with viable candidates for elected office in the United States, compared with 23 percent of those 65 and older who said the same.\u00a0 Young Democratic voters were almost twice as likely to wish for more political parties as were their Republican counterparts.<\/p>\n

A major danger is that young people of whatever party will become so disillusioned with the political process that they will quit caring, quit paying attention, and not vote.\u00a0 Only 27 percent of 30-and-unders voted in the 2020 presidential election, so that says something.\u00a0 True, young people have never voted in large numbers, but the 2020 presidential election was the most important election in decades.\u00a0 And only\u00a0 27 percent voted?\u00a0 Not good.<\/p>\n

Next year\u2019s election will arguably be the most important election in American history because we will be choosing between continuing with a democratic republic or handing it over to a neo-Nazi dictator. If young people give up now, and quit learning and quit voting now, our democracy crumbles.<\/p>\n

There is evidence that is happening.\u00a0 The Way to Win organization\u2019s research in 2022 included a series of focus groups whose leaders reported that not one person could name a signature Democratic accomplishment from the first half of Biden\u2019s presidency beyond his promise to cancel up to $20,000 in student loans.<\/p>\n

That is scary.\u00a0 Biden has accomplished a lot in the last three years, and the young people in those focus groups \u2013 and by inference, a lot more — were not aware enough to see any of it.<\/p>\n

In the last three years, Biden\u00a0 has led the federal government into investing in its people more completely than in any era since the 1960s.\u00a0 He led the way to The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.\u00a0 Those initiatives jump-started the U.S. economy after the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic; are rebuilding our roads, bridges, harbors and internet infrastructure; have attracted $200 billion in private investment for chip manufacturing; and have invested billions in addressing the effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

Biden led the way to the first meaningful gun violence reduction legislation in 30 years.\u00a0 He rallied the world to support Ukraine in response to Putin\u2019s aggression.\u00a0 He issued executive orders protecting women\u2019s reproductive rights and the rights of LGBTQ+ and interracial couples. And so much more.<\/p>\n

And those young folks\u00a0 couldn\u2019t name one of them.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s scary and it\u2019s dangerous, because democracy can only work when its citizens pay attention to the world around them \u2013 local as well as national and international \u2013 and vote<\/em>.\u00a0 If\u00a0 they do not do this \u2013 if we<\/em> do not do this — democracy does not work.\u00a0 Democracy doesn\u2019t fail us, we fail democracy.<\/p>\n

And when we do that we play into the hands of those far-right people who believe that most people don\u2019t know what\u2019s good for them and that makes democracy dangerous. They seem to think that an autocracy is best because it would free us from having to make our own choices,\u00a0 a \u201cfreedom\u201d I would hope no American would want.<\/p>\n

But the good news is that crisis creates opportunity.\u00a0 Remember that Gallup poll recently that said only 32 percent of Americans are paying close attention to what is going on in the world right now?\u00a0 That means that nearly 7 of every 10 Americans are asleep now, and that plainly includes an outsized number of young people.\u00a0 It\u2019s up\u00a0 to those who are aware to awaken those sleeping folks to the reality that the upcoming General Election will decide whether we want to continue our democracy or turn our government over to a fascist dictator.<\/p>\n

Fascist!\u00a0 Nazi!\u00a0 The words don\u2019t seem to make young peoples\u2019 skin crawl as it does us older people (I\u2019m 84).\u00a0 We grew up with World War II in our immediate rear-view mirrors, and we lived among those who served in the war.\u00a0 We reflectively feel those fascist horrors, and today\u2019s young people must feel them too because fascism is on our doorstep.<\/p>\n

That is not an exaggeration.\u00a0 Donald Trump, the person Republicans appear to want for our next president, is openly and accurately walking in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler, the German Nazi Fuhrer who ordered the \u201cextermination\u201d of 6 million Jews and 500,000 gypsies.<\/p>\n

Hitler set off the deadliest and most destructive war in human history, a war that claimed somewhere\u00a0 between 50 million and 85 million lives, or at least 3 percent of the world population, and it displaced tens of million people from their homes.\u00a0 Nearly 407,300 uniformed Americans gave their lives to keep fascism at bay, and 72,823 more are still missing in action. The war cost America about $5.8 trillion in 2023 dollars, but the human cost is incalculable.<\/p>\n

It amazes me that any American would even consider someone who apes that man to be our president.\u00a0 But even when you add the rest — his multiple felonies, his attempt to deny many Americans their basic right to have their vote counted, the continuing Big Lie, and all the rest \u2013 Republicans still<\/em> want him to be to become our president.\u00a0 Unthinkable.<\/p>\n

Young people may not like either presidential candidate, but the choice is all there is for now.\u00a0 Prayerfully, they will hold their noses if need be, cast a vote for keeping democracy alive in the United States, and then get to work\u00a0 grooming someone their own age to become president in 2028.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s to their advantage.\u00a0 It\u2019s their future.\u00a0 But they\u2019ve got to break out of this apathetic mood they\u2019re in because, as you might recall from The Story of Nations<\/em>, apathy is the penultimate step in a nation\u2019s spiral into bondage:<\/p>\n

From bondage to spiritual faith,<\/em>
\nfrom spiritual faith to great courage,<\/em>
\nfrom great\u00a0 courage to liberty,<\/em>
\nfrom liberty to abundance,<\/em>
\nfrom abundance to selfishness,<\/em>
\nfrom selfishness to complacency,<\/em>
\nfrom complacency to apathy,<\/em>
\nfrom apathy to dependence,<\/em>
\nfrom dependence to bondage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Elect Donald Trump and, as America\u2019s Fuhrer, he\u2019ll make us dependent on him, and then suffer bondage under him.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be.\u00a0 Let\u2019s sound the alarms.\u00a0 Let\u2019s wake up that 70 percent and get them to the polls.<\/p>\n

We can win.\u00a0 We must win.\u00a0 We will<\/em> win.<\/p>\n

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