1.8 million voters over the age of 55 die every year in the US. 4 million voters turn 18. We're just arguing time horizon and cohort turn out rates. Bernie was just too early after Reagan, globalization, and deregulation.
Except that people also age out of far left ideas. The 18 year old who's like "hell yeah, ownership is theft, raise the taxes" feels differently when they turn 35 and have to pay those taxes.
Yeah sorry, this is wrong, I’m 35 and would not support a reduction in taxes even if it benefitted me. I want national health insurance, I want the total demolition of Prop 13 in California, and I would pay higher Federal taxes if it meant that we had a functional European-style social safety net. I have been a high income earner and have experienced nothing but frustration with our idiotic system of private provision of what ought to be public benefits.
This is a religious belief, not an observation. Discounting all allegations of shenanigans, 45% of the Democratic Party primary voters supported him in 2016, and probably around or not much less than that in 2020. The man consistently polls as extremely popular (although that popularity took a hit after 2020), and is as old as dirt, along with a huge number of his voters.
Your views of the situation disregard your observations about the situation, if you're at any way aware of the data about Sanders' popularity over the last 10 years, the popularity of his policies, the fact that he was nearly President in 2016, and the fact that instead of him, a bunch of over-35s elected a wrestler game show host, it's nuts to still pretend that people generally mature into middle-of-the-road conservatism.
I am a very dedicated Sanders supporter, and to say he "was nearly President" in 2016 is just not true. Yes, by the end of the primary he'd gained a lot of steam, but that was the end of the primary. Sanders was in a pretty hopeless situation delegate-wise by Super Tuesday, and only briefly polled within even ten points of Clinton.
He was closer in 2020. But in 2020, Democratic primary voters got a very simple choice: double down on moderate neoliberalism, or try progressivism. Democratic primary voters made a very, very clear choice, and Biden wiped the floor with Sanders from the day it became a two-man race. Biden won nearly two-to-one in vote share and in delegates and won numerous states that were Sanders' base of support in 2016.
Is there a progressive wing in the Democratic Party? Yes. Is it a lot bigger than it was ten years ago? Yes. Is the fact that we've been right all along becoming more obvious by the day? Yes. But are progressives the majority of the party? No. Are we competitive in national primaries right now? No. We have simply not convinced half of the half of the country that votes Democratic that we are in the right.
Part of that is our serious problem with the black vote - it's very hard to win a Democratic primary without it - but it goes well beyond that. Republicans have very successfully painted us as a bunch of frothing-at-the-mouth fools who want to waste all your money sending men to leer at your daughters in locker rooms, and we need strategies to convince people otherwise. We need to play politics. What that looks like, we can debate, but we have so far failed to win the game of rhetoric even though we are, objectively, right.
Of the states that Bernie won, only seven were solidly Democratic-voting (Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Democrats Abroad). Five more are dem-leaning swing states, or were at the time (Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Hampshire). The other 11 are solidly Republican: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, and West Virginia, and Alaska. If anything, it was Bernie, not Clinton, who overperformed in Republican-leaning areas.
That's largely because both the 2016 and 2020 generals, and the 2016 and 2020 primaries, were highly split along racial and educational lines. Black voters voted overwhelmingly for moderates in primaries and Democrats in the generals in all three contests, while white voters tended towards the more radical candidates in both primaries and the general (although the Bernie -> Trump vote gets exaggerated, it certainly existed, and his massive upset in Michigan foreshadowed Clinton's weakness there).
> Also because the Democratic primaries were objectively and transparently rigged.
Well, in terms of delegates, sure. But Bernie didn't win the vote, either. Clinton beat him by 12 points, not all that much different from the margin Biden was beating him in '20 prior to him dropping out.
> IIRC wasn’t Sanders polling better against Trump than Clinton? Then again most conceivable candidates probably would have…
The polling was a wash, ish, between the two. But of course the polling was also wrong in undersampling critical demographic groups that probably preferred Sanders to Clinton (although I'll note that Clinton won the primary in Pennsylvania, which she ultimately and decisively lost).
With the benefit of hindsight, maybe Democrats would have done a lot of things differently. (I certainly would have - I was so frustrated after Bernie lost that I ultimately voted third-party, although I might not have had I lived in a competitive state.) But certainly conventional wisdom at the time for virtually anyone in the know was that Trump was very unlikely to win, even as his popularity endured through things it never should have, and I don't necessarily blame them for mis-reading an electorate whose simmering frustration was suddenly at a boil.
My point being that Bernie being right does not mean he was, even with the benefit of hindsight, the correct electoral choice, nor does it mean there's some silent majority of Democrats who want progressive action but aren't voting for it.
I’m actually not salty about the taxes I pay (Ontario, Canada) I’m salty that I seem to get sweet FA for them compared to similar rates in Western European countries.
Except that logic is old. Nowadays the 35 year old still doesn't have a home, can't afford kids and forget about retirement because of usurious student loans and sky-high real-estate.
My specific objection to raised taxes is the relatively low assurance that that will go to worthwhile causes.
Fix roads, improve access to mental health, etc., etc.? Sure. Raise my taxes (I moved to the US from a country where I was taxed at a higher rate than now.
Make empty promises, divert to pork, enrich the 0.1%, increase military spending? No, don't raise my taxes.
I'm well off and I work considerably less hard than many people making close to minimum wage. I'm treated better, trusted more, respected more, and have much more flexibility in my work.
Will and work ethic are weakly necessary for success, but they are not at all sufficient for it. (not successful) -> (not work ethic) is denying the antecedent: (successful) -> (work ethic) is, if not always true, at least often true, but that doesn't imply its converse.
I'm well into my 30s, in the top few percent for income in the US, and live in California (one of the highest tax states), and I happily pay them. I'm alive today because of their benefits, and I'd be the worst kind of hypocrite to pull the ladder up after me.
People's objection to social safety nets mostly isn't their desire to keep their money. It's a perception that the people who need those safety nets are lazy bums who don't deserve help. That's a particularly common perception among hard-working professionals, whose logic is "I worked hard to get where I am, so if others worked hard, they wouldn't need help". What they miss in that analysis, of course, is that their hard work combines with talent, luck, privilege, and health, things that many people who suffer lack. As a relative newcomer to the economic elite, I find it pretty distressing to hear how wealthy people talk about the poor when I myself was homeless less than five years ago.
You're an exception. Plenty of people are just fine with pulling up the ladder after them. Second generation immigrants don't like immigration, people that benefited from free tuition want to make schools paid and so on. It's really insane if you stop to think about it long enough: our whole society is based on the fact that we have each other, and yet, we can't spare a dime for our fellows because we're on a short leash ourselves and 'keeping up' is a big part of our satisfaction. All of this is programmed against you and anybody that wants to change the system is ostracized. And that's all before you get into the really big problems, this is just personal stuff.
I am an exception, yes. But I think the reason I'm an exception - the fact that I've experienced, very directly, very personally, and very nearly fatally - the insane hell that is American poverty - is important.
People aren't opposed to helping people who need it. They just don't understand that people need it.
Yeah, the sad fact is that people who received the fewest benefits and outside help are people more likely to reject a social safety network. What's sad is that these are the people who are most likely to benefit from this progressive change.
It's suggested that they fear that a (small) fraction of people are lazy and parasitical and will manipulate and abuse these systems. In some ways, I'm more cynical, and believe the cause is more deeply rooted: Since these people were hazed at some point in their lives (even if they're middle class, e.g. they took a job they hated beacuse gave them decent health insurance), they believe everyone should be hazed.
It's the old chestnut: "Do this shitty pointless thing, it builds character. (subtext: I was forced to do this shitty pointless thing, so why shouldn't you younger folks be too)."
This sort of "suffering is a virtue" thinking is, unfortunately, VERY deeply rooted in American (and more broadly, Anglo-Protestant) culture. It's good old fashioned Calvinism wrapped in capitalism.
> in the top few percent for income in the US, and live in California (one of the highest tax states), and I happily pay them.
Well, thats not surprising but at same time not default for most people. Universities have been leaning left since at least 60's and 70's . If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positions in society would be overwhelmingly left but that has not happened. It just shows a lot of people become conservative after leaving colleges.
In 2016 the split between college educated voters was 49-45 and the majority of white college graduates voted for Trump.
Some college educated white voters shifted to the Democrats in 2020 so the gap was a bit wider so I wouldn’t say “incredibly” unless you think 3% is incredible..
It’s a different matter for postgraduates though (62-37% in 2020)
Although at this point that might be more class/intelligence signalling than any principled belief in social welfare. You don't have to support the poor to realize that it's a bad idea to support a mad death cult full of people who are toxic to your career.
> Obama lost the white non-college educated vote by 26 points to Romney, by the way.
I’m sorry what??
It was the complete opposite. Obama won the “high-school dropout” vote overwhelmingly. Had narrow majority amongst those who graduated and actually lost college graduate vote to Romney by 4%…
Romney also won every income bracket above 50k
Less educated people started voting for the Republicans in 2016 but not quite to the extent they voted for Obama.
> If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positions in society would be overwhelmingly left but that has not happened
Universities are also not the leftist indoctrination camps that right-wingers have deluded themselves into believing they are. There are lots of conservatives on campus, especially the faculty.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/1-generation...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/01/17/generat...
https://archive.is/iRyQE
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-polit...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/29/gen-z-mil...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/28/millennia...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/04/03/millennia...