There’s considerable talk about how Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton among women in New Hampshire.
According to Bloomberg:
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of likely Democratic primary voters released Thursday showed Sanders winning 50 percent of women and 61 percent of those earning $50,000 or less.
[Andrew] Smith, [director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center] said the gender gap is particularly noticeable by age, with women 35 and younger backing Sanders and women older than 65 more inclined to support Clinton. That’s attributable in part to generational differences and Sanders’s overall appeal to younger voters.
There’s a reason for that. Women who are 65 years of age or older grew up in a very different time. It was a time in which young women would go to see her guidance counselor and be flat out told, women can be elementary teachers or nurses. Forget about that doctor or lawyer thing. Back in 1970, only 11% of students enrolled at US veterinary colleges were women. (Source: American Veterinary Medical Association)
Times change. By 1987, women were the majority of students, and in 2009, 77.6% of students at US veterinary colleges were women.
The AMVA data also showed that, in 2006, graduate programs for psychology, pharmacy, biological sciences, and social scientists were also majority female. Medical school was about 50/50, or 49-51 to be exact.
I am not arguing that we have reached gender equity, or any kind of gender-based nirvana, but voters under 35 graduated from high school, attended college, and entered the job market in a vastly different world than women who are now 65 and over. The glass ceiling argument resonates with older women, with younger women, not so much.
This is even more profound in New Hampshire than anywhere else. In 2008, the New Hampshire Senate became the first US legislative body to have a female majority (13-11). In 2012, the voters of New Hampshire elected a female governor, two female members of the US House of Representatives, while the two US Senators were women.
It’s not gender that is a barrier for young women looking to go to college and have a career. The barrier is now the high cost of college. Student loan debt, often six figures, can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. Interest rates are high, can’t be consolidated more than once, and can’t be refinanced. At a time when the Federal Reserve set interest rates near zero, an 8% interest rate for federally guaranteed student loans is not uncommon. The federal government profits from student loans, while tax cuts are directed at millionaires and billionaires.
Young women can now get into college and graduate school. They just can’t pay for it.
That’s why Bernie’s message is resonating, not Hillary’s.
They equate feminism with the interests of middle aged to elderly quite women only, and ignore all other women, who are often affected by other issues, as you point out.
As a victim at one point of Clintonian tough on crime/immigration BS, I can attest that the women in my family are definitely more affected by the devastation those policies wrought than by whether we have a female President. Especially my daughter, who almost lost her father over a pretty minor misdemeanor.
“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”
Really? I had not idea that Albright supported Sarah Palin, Joni Ernst, Michele Bachmann , and is an admirer of all that Margaret Thatcher has accomplished.
Also, there is a special place in hell for women who prevented a real response to Rwandan genocide.
Just think, a person they would normally have admired greatly said they were going to hell……oh and Sec Clinton belly laughed at the whole thing.
…but I quibble with your characterization of HRC’s message. Yes, she occasionally mentions that being a woman IS a change per se, but hers is hardly a message of vote for me BECAUSE I’m a woman. Plus, she has talked quite a bit about college affordability on the campaign trail.
Bernie, however, has a message that resonates.
Hillary hasn’t said vote for me because I’m a woman.
She has said she couldn’t possibly be an insider because she’s a woman, which is risible. Two high-profile backers who I respect – Madeliene Albright and Gloria Steinem — have said vote for her because she’s a woman. Far less prominent supporters are doing the same.
I don’t remember this happening last time. I don’t see Sanders saying “vote for me because I’m Jewish.” It’s weird….and disappointing.
The most emphatic thing I’ve heard Hillary Clinton say is that she expects women to be paid the same as men for the same work. That is NOT a “gender card”, and I assume that Mr. Sanders agrees with her.
The statistics you cite are valuable and a helpful reminder. I reject the assumption in your title and implicit in your text. Hillary Clinton is NOT “playing the gender card”, and you’ve presented no evidence that connects the statistics you cite to anything she’s said.
Both candidates have promised to address crushing student debt. Both candidates have promised to address equal pay for equal work.
I suggest that the better explanation for the gender disparity you cite is that Bernie Sanders has been far more vocal about addressing the issue of wealth and income disparity. I suggest that women are more acutely sensitive to the wealth and income disparity message of Mr. Sanders because women STILL face significant wage differentials for equal work. Women are more sensitive because men are paid more — women need the money more than men, because they are paid less for the same work. The system is, indeed, rigged — and that rigging hurts women (and minorities) more than men.
Here’s another graphic to put alongside your top picture. Mine is relevant to only the right-hand side of yours, the period since 2001, where women are a comfortable majority of veterinary students:
Veterinary compensation by gender since 2000
For example, consider “Associates, companion animal exclusive” — pets. The pay differential between men and women is INCREASING! Similarly, the pay differential for “equine” (horses) is INCREASING. A significant gender differential exists for “food animal exclusive”, a differential that increased between 2001 and 2007, and has returned to its 2001 level in more recent years.
I fear that your “gender card” accusation itself borders on being a gender-based attack. I offered one alternative explanation for the gender gap you observe, and I invite you to walk back your perhaps overly aggressive characterization of Ms. Clinton. The “glass ceiling” argument is yours, not hers!
It appears to me that Mr. Sanders argues “raise taxes on the wealthy”, both candidates talk of “Equal pay for equal work”, and the women polled are responding to the tax program of Mr. Sanders.
You write, and I enthusiastically agree, “Young women can now get into college and graduate school. They just can’t pay for it”, and you cite veterinary school statistics. An important part of why women veterinarians can’t afford as much student debt as their male counterparts is that they are not PAID AS MUCH. That’s not a “glass ceiling” argument nor is it a “gender card”, it’s a statement of current fact.
I’d like us — especially the men in our community — to stop throwing around terms like “gender card” regarding Ms. Clinton.
“If advocating equal pay for equal work is playing the gender card (She adds other examples at this point.) then deal me in!”
From the New York Times:
The article goes on to say:
It’s more than equal pay. There’s a whole big “elect the first woman” theme at play, which is the “gender card” I am describing.
Hillary, Tom, and I are all about the same age, within 5 years. We remember the failure of the Equal Rights amendment. We all remember the reprehensible treatment of women in the workplace in the day of Help Wanted-Male and Help Wanted-Female, capricious dismissals, etc. Arguments are made about how effective laws are, but equal pay IS the law now. These women’s issue stories have all the resonance of walking 5 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways, to younger women.
There is a corollary with choice, as well. The most ardent and unforgiving pro-life advocates I know are younger women. They have the luxury of never having known when contraception and abortion were both illegal and view the issue through an intellectual prism with no first-hand knowledge of illegal abortion death. They have no empathy as a result, and are very certain that abortion is immoral and wrong.
Interestingly, the Democrats have assumed for decades that a younger demographic would favor their progressive views on these issues. Many younger women view boomers as self absorbed narcissists who allowed their children to be neglected in the name of fulfillment and having it all. And they don’t want to be like that.
This failure for gender politics to resonate may be a canary in the coal mine for Democrats.
(Caveat – I don’t mean here in MA, but nationwide. We sometimes forget what a Blue outlier we are philosophically on the national level.)
I agree with much of this, until this sentence:
“This failure for gender politics to resonate may be a canary in the coal mine for Democrats.”
Whatever is happening with Hillary Clinton is most emphatically NOT a “failure for gender politics to resonate”. Ms. Clinton is not “playing a gender card”. She is, instead, a presidential candidate, former Senator, and former Secretary of State competing in a primary against a Senator from Vermont.
The aspect of this entire thread that I find most troubling is the collection of unsupported and, frankly, sexist assumptions and claims being made absolutely without evidence.
It is NOT a matter of “vintage”. It is NOT somebody “playing a card” that “isn’t working” or “isn’t resonating”. There has been no evidence presented here that Ms. Clinton has played any “gender card”, and therefore no evidence to connect her behavior to the observed gender gap in NH voters.
I’d like to close this comment with a question for porcupine. Was the failure of Sarah Palin to become Vice President another example of a “failure for gender politics to resonate”? Was Ms. Palin a “canary in the coal mine for Republicans”?
She was nominated by the anti-woman party 8 years ago. And the Democrats countered by nominating….um….
Ok, so we agree that the failure of Sarah Palin to become Vice President was a “failure to win the election” — specifically, NOT a “failure for gender politics to resonate”. I see no reason, other than partisan rancor, to offer any different analysis if Ms. Clinton fails to win the NH primary.
Oh, and we also agree that the nomination of Sarah Palin demonstrated the sexism of the GOP eight years ago. Whomever it was that made that decision (John McCain? GOP leadership? Fox News? Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh? All of the above?), the premise that having Ms. Palin on the ballot would attract women voters exemplifies sexist politics.
The Democrats chose the candidate that the Democratic Party collectively concluded was most likely to win the general election, and most likely to govern in a way that represented a majority of American voters.
The Democrats won. The GOP lost.
I was a delegate at that convention, and the reaction was an enormous – Who? She truly was not a beneficiary of a vast plot.
And he chose her not for her gender but for her Outsider/Maverick style; he saw her as a younger version of himself, stating Truth to Power, etc.
And since your World View states that the GOP is intrinsically anti-woman in the first place, how do you arrive at a place that we are relying upon the whole Sisterhood Is Powerful gender politics that is failing to attract voters to the Democrats now? It isn’t our resonance in the first place.
The phrase “vast plot” is yours, not mine. I’m happy to stipulate that the choice was John McCain’s alone. Perhaps you, or somebody else, could cite some links where prominent Republicans offered criticisms along the lines of “But she’s not informed”, or “Surely so-and-so would have been a better choice as a female running mate (Condoleeza Rice, for example)”.
I have no doubt that you are correct when you state that the choice was Mr. McCain’s. Do you seriously challenge the premise that Ms. Palin’s gender was the dominant factor in her selection? Were there no male “Outsider/Maverick” Republicans to choose from?
I find your last paragraph incomprehensible, so I don’t know how to respond to it. I do assert that today’s GOP is anti-woman (I don’t know how “intrinsic” it is). I’ve made ZERO assertions about ” the whole Sisterhood Is Powerful gender politics”. I’m not alleging that GOP ever made such pitch, and I don’t agree that Hillary Clinton is making that pitch.
I think that a sexist John McCain chose a flamboyant, unprincipled, and utterly incompetent woman as his running mate because he thought she would help him address the significant gender issue he had with American voters at the time. I think her public performance since that choice has demonstrated how terrible a choice it was. I don’t think that choice had anything to do with “Sisterhood is Powerful” mantras. I think it, instead, had to do with a set of assumptions Mr. McCain made about women — a set of assumptions that led him to believe that an interesting number of women voters would cast their ballot for a McCain/Palin ticket because of the gender of his running mate.
I think the fact that you cite that gender, eight years later, reinforces that narrative.
…you are the one citing gender. Your central premise is that her nomination was a function of the “sexism of the GOP”. I am the one who thought not, that it was a ‘maverick’ choice not a gender one.
I mentioned a vast plot in response that Glenn Beck and Rush were involved in her selection – which I told you was also incorrect.
It is interesting that you accuse people of saying things that you have said.
This little diversion was provoked by your sarcastic (or ironic) use of “anti-woman party”. That phrase is what I had in mind when I wrote “you cite that gender, eight years later”. Your comment, not mine.
I am the one who argues that the choice of Ms. Palin was driven by gender. I guess we’ll agree to disagree on that one.
Truly spot-on commentary.
She’s age 35, mother of two, working towards becoming a nurse practitioner. Was talking to her today and she went off on Baby Boomers. Said she feels like it’s a fight with that generation to get anything meaningful done.
Her perception is the greatest divide in our country is generational, not political. Bernie, who actually counts as a Silent, is speaking to her when he campaigns to overturn an unresponsive system.
I love the purity in this post. It reflects something I don’t see often enough but it is beautiful. Too often we have ideology or attachments to the “ancien regime” (Bush/Clinton) and we miss the new reality of young educated people who are near poor.
I was fortunate to go to school when people cared about education and left me with tiny debt. We older folks screw ourselves when we let younger people live in poverty, in college debt.
Perhaps too few of our young people have knelt by the lifeless body of a friend shot dead by police — murdered by a government that to this day has acknowledged no wrongdoing in that murder.
This sad tale demonstrates, to me, how effective the mainstream right-wing media have been in dividing people who in fact embrace a common vision. To the extent that the divide you describe exists, I would prefer our candidates to bridge rather than enlarge that divide.
If there is a “reality of young educated people” that I miss, it is the reality of being bludgeoned by a cop because they dare to publicly oppose an illegal war, or shot in cold blood in a Brookline abortion clinic because they dared to provide needed health care to women, or dodging rocks thrown at them on their way into their school because they dared to be born with different colored skin than the majority of Boston residents. Somebody here at BMG said this week that such stories have the impact of “walking 5 miles to school in a blizzard when I was your age” — I fear that that assessment is likely correct.
I got the tar beat out of me by police in the late 1960s because I publicly demanded that people old enough to be drafted to fight an illegal war deserved the right to vote against that war. My generation won that fight, and I have not missed an election since. Too many young people don’t even bother to vote — in no small part because they can’t imagine being forced to fight an illegal war, they can’t imagine being unable to vote against it, and because they can’t imagine facing police nightsticks and attack dogs for daring to publicly say so. I get a little testy when I am lectured about my generational politics by a generation that can’t be bothered to even register to vote.
I think too many of we Baby Boomers were too successful at protecting our children from the many abuses of the corrupt systems we fought. We know that the polio epidemic was, in large part, a result of improved sanitation practices that had previously “protected” infants from what is, in infancy, a harmless infection. There is strong evidence that the pronounced spike in various disorders such as peanut allergies, lactose intolerance, gluten intolerance, and others is a result of a generation of parents being too successful at “protection” infants from exposures that create immunity later in life.
I think we Baby Boomers need to help our young people see that while every generation has inspirational leaders that motivate significant change, those leaders are seldom effective politicians and even less frequently presidents. Very few prophets are effective government officials, and very few effective government officials are prophets.
We desperately need BOTH.
I think we need to reach across these divides, rather than cement them in generational politics.
And for the record – I marched. I lived in a commune. I watched as classmates died because in the three-deckers, we had no academic deferrals. Etc. We all have stories we can shake our canes and tell.
The boomers have been referred to as a pig swallwed by a python. Our numbers compared to those before and after us have affected public policy for decades, with our issues and convenience at the forefront. Grammar schools were built to accommodate us, as were jails later on due to our demographic size. Now, we are impacting the health care and nursing home system, ensuring our comfort with artificial impoverishment using the 5 year look-back to protect our ‘sacred savings’. While our kids and grandkids foot the bill with increased taxes and neglect of thier priorities and the knowledge that the system won’t be there for them. Each child is born with a share of the national debt incurred to prop up our concerns and priorities.
But boy, we were Da Bomb, with our First World Suffering and marching. Besides, it’s their fault anyway because we protected them too much.
I’m just trying to remember now …
1. From what party did the push to incarcerate nearly an entire generation of minority males originate? I suggest that the expansion of our jails had much more to do with several decades of failed right-wing “tough love” nonsense.
2. From what party does the push to dismantle social security come from? What party brought us medicare, and what party works tirelessly to dismantle it?
3. Had the many GOP officials who fervently advocated for “privatizing” social security, for example during the George W. Bush administration, been successful, what would have happened to America during the crash of 2008?
4. Under what party has the federal deficit skyrocketed, and under what party has it been reduced? What happened to the federal deficit during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush, and under George W. Bush, in comparison to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or (for that matter) Barack Obama?
5. What is the generational aspect of the factual observations of what has happened when nations who face economic crises attempt to reduce the resulting national debt by slashing government assistance precisely when it is most needed?
6. Which party held the Oval Office when we launched the first unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation in our history, based on lies, and attempted to keep its astronomical expenses OFF the federal budget? How much of the current miasma of the Middle East and ISIS is the DIRECT consequence of that unprosecuted crime?
What I see in this comment is an attempt to blame — and smear — a generation rather than face the reality of what the consequences have been as we’ve tried the several GOP bromides for what ails us.
Since 1980, we have seen the right-wing GOP dogma that you summarize so succinctly here move our nation and culture towards the right. We have simultaneously seen the consequences of that move, as our middle class has been destroyed, our wealthiest 1% have stolen our children’s birthright, our health care system has gone from one of the best of the civilized world to arguably the worst, as the public infrastructure we inherited has crumbled because the GOP refuses fund its maintenance, and we have become an international pariah because our GOP refuses to admit that climate change even exists.
All of these things have happened. Yes, we Baby Boomers have lived through all those. I suggest that these terrible decisions and devastating consequences have FAR MORE to do with failed GOP dogma and ideology than with the age of anyone participating in the failures.
Your refutation provides another fine example.
I fully understood the intent of your comment.
Yet the perspective of many is that represents an inside-the-Boom fight that’s been raging since the ’60s. I mean, the Boomers rose up and voted for Nixon too. They got in line behind Reagan’s cockamamie vision of how America will be dandy if you talk about how great it is all the time. The politics you’re condemning (and I share your view), many see as part of dialectic that’s emerged inside a generation that’s got to have things its way even though it’s always been split as to what its way is.
Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 and 1972. The voting age was 21 in the first, and 18 in the second.
Only a small sliver of Baby Boomers (those born before 1947, just one year into the generation by common definitions of the Baby Boom years as 1946-1964) were even eligible to vote for Richard Nixon the first time around.
In the 1972 election, when 18 year olds were first able to vote only those Baby Boomers born before 1954 were eligible. That means that the oldest Baby Boomer in 1972 was 26, and the youngest was 18.
I assert that Baby Boomers (18-26 year olds) did NOT vote for Richard Nixon. I’m receptive to demographic evidence to the contrary, though.
I’d like to see more demographics for who voted for Ronald Reagan, and more demographics for the elections since then.
It sounds as though you are arguing that because Baby Boomers are a huge part of the electorate, and have been since coming of age, that we should therefore be ignored.
Is that what you mean?
The perception is your generation has shaped the game and we need to stop playing it. It’s not that you should be ignored, it’s more that you (plural) don’t listen. Mind you, that’s painting in broad strokes, but I think the nightmare scenario for a lot of younger voters is Clinton vs. Bush in a fight to adjudicate the past 50 years.
Jeb Bush is struggling to even stay in the game.
The current fight is between the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio.
Perhaps if folks of all ages paid rather more attention to reality and rather less to nightmares, we might find more to agree on.
The point is a lot of Xers and Millennials have taken the position things are the way they are because Boomers make it that way, and they’re rejecting the conventional premises of how to fix our nation’s ills.
I get that that is your point.
My point is that “Boomers” didn’t make it that way — it is conservative Republicans, some of whom are Baby Boomers, that we have to thank.
It was voters who have been seduced by the mythology of conservative Republicans who have “made it that way”. Xers and Millennials could have and can do more to change that, starting by registering and then voting.
Your argument sounds, frankly, more like ageism than anything else. You are saying, literally, “People who are 52 to 70 years old caused this”.
I get that some feel that way. It seems to me that it makes more sense to help those who do see more deeply, rather than reinforce their ageist stereotypes.
Speaking of “a fight to adjudicate the past 50 years”, each of the three GOP leaders (who collectively have something around 68.3% of the GOP primary vote) will do all in their power to reverse the gains made by Democrats in the past 50 years.
Each of three leading GOP candidates will do all in their power to reverse Rowe v. Wade — Hillary Clinton wants no such thing. Each of the three leading GOP candidates will do all in their power to repeal the ACA — not so Hillary Clinton. Each of the three leading GOP candidates will do all in their power to continue to REDUCE taxes on the wealthy — not so Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton does not want to turn back the clock 50 years. The Baby Boom generation does not want to turn back the clock 50 years.
The GOP, in fact, DOES want to do just that.
I don’t have a glaring problem with Hillary. I don’t have the warm fuzzies for her, but I’ve been impressed by her campaign.
Yet your generation has been in the middle of a turn-back-the-clock-to-the-1950s fight since before I reached adulthood (and I’m not young). Again, dialectic.
I still don’t get how “my generation” has been “in the middle of a turn-back-the-clock-to-the-1950s fight”. You’ve repeated assertions, but offered no evidence to connect those assertion to age rather than political affiliation.
These are the durable political arguments that have emerged as the Boomers have dominated our society. Read your own posts. This is the war as your generation has defined it. What younger Sanders voters are saying is they think there might be a better way.
I’m stuck in the middle of this. I appreciate that battle lines that have been drawn over decades don’t get erased over night, but I also appreciate that we need to find another way to move forward.
He is the one most emphasizing that he is of a new generation with new ideas and that Clinton is a candidate of “yesterday”. However, many of his actual views fit more comfortably in the 20th century.
He’s channeling H.W. Bush circa 1992. He’s constitutionally incapable of mobilizing younger voters.
A majority of white baby boomers supported Nixon in 1972, as did those boomers twenty-one and older in 1968. To quote pollster John Zogby:
And their younger brothers and sisters were even more conservative. Per Pew:
And, to put this in perspective, it should be remembered that a majority of white millennials voted for Romney in 2012. Again, per Pew:
I see no data to support the claim that Boomers voted for Nixon.
I’d like to see contemporary polling that supports your contention about boomers in 1968 and 1972. And — by the way — I’d like to understand where the “white” slipped in. I haven’t mentioned race.
… between conservatives and liberals. While the dominant popular culture image was of a generation of hippies, this ignored the fact that (especially in the more conservative parts of the country) there were a large number of quite conservative boomers. Perhaps this was easier to see in my original home state (Oklahoma) than in New England.
Within given age demographics there are racial distinctions in voting patterns.
For example, there has been a seismic shift in the political allegiances of Asian voters, from largely voting Republican to voting as solid Democrats. In a similar case Pew estimates George Bush received roughly 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. For a number of reasons, this dynamic has partially reversed.
This demonstrates the fallacy of demographic wishful thinking.
Back to baby boomers; As to support, Nixon received 51% of the Boomer vote in 1968 and 53% IN 1972, per the American National Election Studies tables.
This is no small part why younger generations find Boomers intolerable. What my sister sees is issues that have gone largely unaddressed her whole life because the largest generational voting bloc in the electorate refuses to consider anything than its most immediate wants and needs. The endless DC food fight, the reduction of our political discourse to shallow talking points, the refusal at all levels of government to properly invest in the education and infrastructure needed for the future of our nation – that’s also part of the Boomer generational legacy.
And a lot of younger voters see the Boomers as unwilling to acknowledge it and incapable of fixing it. Hillary is a sterling representative of her generation. She is bright and capable and she knows how to play the game, but it’s become a game where most everyone loses. The Hillary backlash from younger voters has everything to do with practicality and the definition of madness (doing the same thing and expecting different results). They’ve given up Boomers reconsidering their world, but they’re becoming more insistent that Millennials have to do that.
That’s the dividing line at play here. Generation > gender. Hectoring people about how they don’t appreciate the collective splendor of the Baby Boom only reinforces the notion that you (plural) don’t listen.
I’m stuck in the middle (front end of Gen X). I escorted women into those Brookline clinics (past some of the most vile people on earth) and watched Vietnam on TV in my youth. I’m leaning Bernie, but fine with Hillary. My sister also will vote for Hillary when push comes to shove, but sees her as someone to manage our current mess rather than a fix to the entrenched problems of our nation.
.
You downgrade me for paying somebody a compliment?
If you aren’t careful, people might think you were just downrating me automatically
When I see younger voters paying enough attention to politics to even register, never mind vote, then I’ll pay more attention to their complaints.
Insisting that “Generation > gender”, and refusing to look beyond that ageist distinction, doesn’t strike me as a viable way to improve our political climate.
In my view, these arbitrary and hurtful divides are exactly how the 1% keeps all of us in our respective places. Bill Clinton was 46 years old when he began his first successful presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton is ten months younger. Bill Clinton, at the age of 32, won his first campaign for governor. Where are the counterparts of Bill and Hillary Clinton from those born after the Baby Boomers?
I invite you to peruse the current list of US governors by age. Where are the thirty-somethings? Did they run and lose? Not to my knowledge.
I’d like to see more people of ALL ages participating in the political process, and I’d like to see less ageist attacks on those who do participate.
When incumbents suck up all the money and you have to wait your turn to move up. I am actively working to recruit younger candidates who are interesting, interested, and capable of winning competitive elections at the state legislative level. In my anecdotal experience, this is the level my cohort has the least knowledge or interest in. Which is a shame-the legislature is so powerful and capable of doing so much better. A lot more under 30s came out in Cambridge since people their age were on the ballot, it’d be great if we could attract similar folks for the legislature.
You also received a civics education which even my advanced ranked high school didn’t bother with at all. We know about the presidential level, but no one was taught how to vote in a Cambridge PR election (which requires high degrees of voter education to understand), who our local reps were, or how to interact with them.
It also helps when people are dumb. My friends in Michigan are now radicalized and willing to recall Snyder over Flint. My sister in law is radicalized by Rauner, who’s election she was eligible for but skipped, cutting the budget to her school. I helped her register and she is going to vote against her reps who supported the cuts and vote for Bernie in her first primary. Now that she knows gay rights and planned parenthood are on the ballot next fall, I doubt she will skip the general if Bernie loses.
So reach out to the younger generation and inspire them. It’s never too late to get baptized as it were, and us evangelists for participation can easily say its never too late to vote. Looking forward to speaking at my nieces college in a few weeks and hoping to register her and her friendsm UIP or not, to vote and participate.
With many answers.
But here’s one important thing to remember: Baby Boomers control the media. So Hillary Clinton, 68, is not old, but Bernie Sanders, 74, is. Marco Rubio, 44, is “too young.”
“Social Security must be protected” but the decline of private sector pensions (the decline to zero) is fine. The national deficit is not a problem, it’s just a number. Yes if you’re a Democrat you might concede that we spend too much on defense, but American interests abroad (like oil wells) must be protected.
Housing prices are not an issue worth talking about. Housing prices are just fine (because the Boomers are all set).
Most importantly for this discussion, Generation X is lazy and whiny and listens to terrible music. Millennials — for the most part, the children of Boomers — are wonderful and brilliant and will save us all.
..at a Rock the Vote event that until they registered and voted and attended town meeting, we would continue to have no youth centers or services – but we would have taxpayer subsidized golf courses.
And totally agree about civics.
Yes this is all a little bit of Neil Howe and William Strauss oversimplification, but there is a grain of truth there. I would add a big Medicare expansion paired with a tax cut to your list.
Some Xers have baby boom parents. You could tell whose parents were boomers, because they were the ones who had the comically horrifyingly acrimonious and bitter Kramer v. Kramer divorces in the 80s.
They were also the kids who changed their name from something like “Sunshine” to something like “Elizabeth” somewhere around 1990.
I suppose that I am just looking forward to “what were you doing from 1967-69” no longer being a campaign issue.
It’s not even vaguely ageist when they’re voting for the oldest candidate in the field. They’ve reached past the Boomers for someone who’s actually older. It’s not about age. It’s about your g-g-g-generation. And generation > gender is exactly what’s happening to Hillary Clinton on the ground right now. The kids don’t buy that anyone can win the fight she wants to have. Bernie represents the potential of doing it another way.
If only there were some reason to figure out why they don’t do that. To listen when they say why they don’t vote. Maybe improve things.
Nah.
…that your views are still colored by these experiences of half a century ago. I for one am quite glad I haven’t experienced a beatdown by cops thank you very much!
To the extent that the anti-war movement was a generational mass movement, it was an entirely selfish one. They weren’t opposed to war, they were opposed to being shot at. Once they got rid of the draft, and other people were in the armed forces, the baby boom, writ large, didn’t give a flying fuck about war.
To me this is of a piece with the 80s yuppies who kept social security taxes low because there were a ton of them to support the then-retirees. Now that the pyramid is going upside down, the tune has changed to making benefits are untouchable. Thus, the “Hands off my Medicare” asshats.
I would also add the love of purely private pensions and housing prices, which, when you are part of a generational cohort, the collective demand of which drives asset prices up until your retirement, and down afterward, leaves the baby boom comfy and everyone after in some trouble.clean up the mess.
Yeah, I get that these are “Problems Wrought By the Right Wing Reagan Revolution” and that you, brooklinetom, and yours have steaddfastly opposed same over decades. But the argument is about the generation, writ large, and the cultural “generation gaps” that have ALWAYS been a problem for its members, of whatever political stripe.
I don’t get your reference when you write ” Bernie, who actually counts as a Silent, is speaking to her when he campaigns to overturn an unresponsive system”.
Do you intend a reference to Spiro Agnew’s “Silent Majority”? If so, I suggest that you couldn’t be more mistaken. I hope you mean something different.
The parents of the Baby Boomers (and a few of us older Gen Xers, sometimes both). At 74 Bernie just misses the boom.
Bernie officially counts as a member of the Silent Generation: too young to fight in WWII, but born before the Baby Boom started in 1946.
We’ve had zero Presidents from that generation and it’s mildly fascinating that it’s a Silent connecting with younger voters, particularly given that Boomers always fancied themselves as the permanently hip generation.
I appreciate the clarification.
But one of his better lines was commenting on the 1980 election, that Barry Goldwater won in 1964 but it took 16 years to count the votes. Perhaps McGovern won in 1972, but it took 34 years to count the votes?
Alternatively, ours is the first generation since the greatest generation to endure an attack on American soil, a decade and a half of war, and a near depression when we entered the job market with few prospects shackled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt we can’t conceive of repaying. We also were all born after the wall fell. So socialism to us is a vision for the future, not a failed experiment in the past. The end of history was our failed experiment, not the fall of the wall.
I over generalize, but this is the sentiment I get.
But you get the picture…
… with their grandparents than with their parents. 😉
…I think of the Silent Generation as those of the appropriate age to serve in Korea rather than either WWII or Vietnam.
The Silent Generation, according to most definitions, includes people born between roughly 1925 and 1945. They were too young for WWII, and some did go to Korea, but many people born toward the end of that period were exactly the right age for Vietnam, as were roughly half of the Boomers. We forget that the Vietnam war lasted a while.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#Cultural_generation
Soeey, my earlier attempt was a fail, as my kids say.
So, Neil Howe and William Strauss have a series of books analyzing history through the lens of generational epochs, of which the Baby Boom is but one. Their books are interesting, if their conclusions might be a bit too pat.
I recommend this one:
It more-or-less likens the passing of the baby boom through our political economy to the passing of a swarm of locusts through the crops in the field. It absolutely rips the Boomers; tom you will love it.