Maybe after living through three recessions, millennials aren't, to use a South Park-ism, super stoked on defaulting on the national debt.
Maybe, having lived through the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, a resurgence of Russian imperialism and a land war in Europe, and seeing murdered Ukrainian kids in our Twitter and Reddit feeds, we don't want to elect someone who tells our democratic allies to pound sand.
Maybe, after losing two years of of social lives and our families' lives (missing travel, weddings, funerals, baptisms, graduations, having babies in lockdown and cancelling children's birthday parties), we don't want to vote for an anti-science party that dragged the pandemic out for an extra year.
Maybe, we want to raise families in towns with safe roads, decent schools, and clean air and water, and we are tired of our statehouses prioritizing heartbeat bills, anti-CRT bills, and a smorgasbord of performative jackassery over our most basic needs.
I don't need to hear some Republican spout platitudes about diversity to win my vote. Diversity is a fact for my generation. You might as well say "golly, isn't great that the sky is blue and the grass is green". I want them to govern! And I don't see that happening. That's why Millennials aren't going to vote Republican. Because they don't trust the Republican party to address any of the things that actually matter to them (spoiler alert...they aren't going to). Also, the Republican party has no chance of becoming competent at governing, because young people who WANT to get stuff done run as Dems. That's why Democrats have an up and coming generation of millennial leadership, and the Republicans have George(?) Santos(?).
You missed guns. These kids have watched their schools turn into shooting ranges like never before. They've lived through active shooter drills. They've seen over and over republicans make it easier for the shooters and harder for the targets.
I am somewhat qualified to speak on this. I have a gay 27 year old son who was completely apolitical - absolutely completely 100% apolitical, to the point of actively not caring - who was radicalized when a friend of his was beaten up by MAGA nutjobs for being gay (I'm sure there were some other reasons, but that was the fundamental point). I have a 22 year old daughter who lives in Pennsyvlania who was always pretty "liberal" but is now essentially Che Guevara because of many things, most notably Dobbs. They both were appalled by Trump and voted for Biden because he was a better alternative - and Biden reminded him of their Grandpa, which shouldn't be discounted.
These children will NEVER vote Republican. Ever. They're part of a huge wave of "kids" who are repelled by the Republican Paty and pretty much everything it stands for. There's nothing the GOP can do at this point outside of a full burn it down, and even that is suspect. I'm not sure the GOP understands the levels of hate and toxicity that exists towards that party among people under 30. Clearly Sullivan doesn't.
As someone who deals with young people frequently, I've long wondered how the GOP could be so tone deaf on what their priorities are and how they are different from what the Establishment expects them to be. This generation, burdened by student loan debt, rising costs with little to no savings to offset them, shrinking workplaces and career job opportunities with good benefits as well as adequate pay, and often a sense of not fitting in, does not see the world the same way, nor should it. They are not about getting and keeping a big stash of cash, having a big, modern house in Suburbia, and accumulating so many possessions that their garage becomes a storage unit. They seek quality of life, be it equality of status and opportunity, a clean environment, and a sense of belonging. All that has to do with society, something that the GOP long has paid lip service to but consistently shunts aside in favor of maximizing the gains of the individual. The GOP will always be on the outside looking in with them as long as it deems our shared infrastructure to be a liability instead of an asset, too often reducing it to derogatory soundbites such as "socialism" instead of asking, and responding, as to what is desirable in those things and why.
In life we must change and evolve. The longer the GOP does not get that, the more they are doomed to extinction.
'Sullivan’s suggestions include things like encouraging “much more house-building with YIMBY-style deregulation; expand access to childcare for young, struggling families; tout entrepreneurial and scientific innovation to tackle climate change; expand maternity and paternity leave; redistribute wealth from the super-rich to working Americans to stabilize society and prevent capitalism from undoing itself; and…..”'
I see this a lot, and it's why the Forward Party nonsense rubs me so wrong. It's people disaffected with the right saying that we need to trash the two-party system because both parties are bad, and their solution is creating a third way, and that third way always seems to align with what Democrats are already doing and campaigning on anyway. How do you fix the Republicans' problems with younger voters? Become more like Democrats! Oh, but, there's already a political party that caters to that constituency. It's called the Democratic Party. Republicans need to be more like Democrats to have majoritarian appeal, but Democrats bad, so instead of just voting for Democrats, let's reform the Republican Party or start a third party. This is ridiculous.
I guess I could play Millennial whisperer in the comments thread today if you guys want. Despite what some people say there are *certain* generational experiences and traits. The GI Generation went through the Depression and WW2. They were responsible for FDR's insane margins but then shifted Republican after civil rights - not a generation that widely approved of civil rights.
Baby Boomers seem to have started out pretty competitive. In the 70's and 80's, they were pretty 50/50 split between Democrats and Republicans. Probably lots of divided opinions there over counter-culture, unions, civil rights, Vietnam, etc. But once Reagan became popular Boomers have been largely conservative, pausing only for Clinton. I think it's safe to say Reagan's brand of hyper-individualism, lower taxes, not talking about race, etc., really resonated them. When you hear popular media say "voters want lower taxes," etc., you're probably really hearing about Boomers.
Millennials, on the other hand, have completely different generational experiences. Most of us were born in late or after the Cold War, and don't really remember it. Our childhoods were mostly the 90's or early 2000's. Obama was an aspirational figure for most of us. We were the generation that actually fought in Afghanistan and Iran. Our women are probably the best-educated and most economically successful. However, a lot of us entered the workforce in the middle of the 2008 bust. In most of the places we live housing in unaffordable for the average person.
Republicans have largely fallen flat with Millennials because we've either been a scapegoat for their social problems (the Millennials are killing [thing viewer likes]), or because Millennials are the least white generation in America, and non-white voters just aren't likely to vote for Republicans anyway.
I was an original Dish subscriber back in the late 1990's.
I truly admired Sulivan's gay marriage arguments (I am gay) and I liked his nuanced takes on other things. I admired his ability to admit he was wrong about Iraq, I admired a series he did about women that had late term abortions. A lot of what he wrote was very good. I am stressing "was".
Sully has taken up residence in a land where far too many in his line of work eventually lay down roots. He is unable (or unwilling) to look criticaly, really critically, at his own long held beliefs, and wonder if maybe they don't hold up against further scrutiny. The fact that he ignores the reality of what the Republican Party has become is proof of his blinders.
Tangential observation about him......he has that anti woman vibe that many gay men have.
I literally lol'd at this headline. Better to ask why isn't the right losing the young?! Anti-women's rights, anti-LGBT rights, decades of climate change denialism, white, Christian nationalist rhetoric in an increasingly racially diverse and secular society, and that's just off the top of my head. I particularly love that 18-29 female statistic; you want the state to force these young women to bear children and you think they're gonna vote for you?! Hah!
Andrew Sullivan's take on why republicans don't appeal to younger voters misses a few salient facts:
1) This generation grew up with active shooter drills in school as a fact of life. They've often lived through the impact of the republicans' Second Amendment absolutism and gun worship.
2) They didn't have to be 'indoctrinated' into queer and gender theory'. They LIVE it. Their parents or their friends and relatives are out and proud gay people; they grew up with an attitude of equality and acceptance that also extends to gender.
3) This one is almost always overlooked: People 35 and younger are increasingly secular. They especially reject the use of government to impose religion, especially religious bigotry, on them and everyone else.
What do the republicans offer this generation? Empty 'thoughts and prayers' after every mass shooting - which as of yesterday numbered more instances than we've had days in this new year. Absolute refusal to discuss even the most sensible gun regulations.
Republicans promote the vile notion that gay, and especially trans, people are 'groomers' and 'pedophiles' and so are the people who love and support them. Simultaneously, they also promote misogny and disrespect for women, especially when it comes to women's privacy rights.
While a fast-growing number of Americans are moving away from religion and particularly use of government to impose religious beliefs, the republicans have lashed themselves to the far-right of christian evangelicals and nationalists.
The thing Sullivan doesn't see or want to accept is that younger people are simply not who and what republicans are. There's almost nothing about the modern GOP that appeals to younger Americans on substance. And the modern GOP shows no signs of becoming the unicorns of Sully's dreams.
This is just the latest Sully dance with the devil. He has a long track record of ignoring facts and wishful, magical thinking when it comes to the culture wars, especially abortion. My friends and I call him the homo Ross Douthat.
I get it, he's Catholic. But his willingness to parse out things he thinks are important to him as a middle aged gay man in a big city, and ignore and belittle other's concerns became too much for me.
I used to subscribe to his newsletter and web page, but just couldn't stomach it anymore.
The Right can't walk the walk with younger voters and Abortion is going to be the tell tale issue for the foreseeable future and Sullivan fails to see it. When you take away an individual's presumed freedoms, You are really fucking around where you ought not to be. The right is not a big tent, it's no longer even a tent. The right as is organized now is actually seditious and judgmental of most everyone.
Abortion was once just a reliable fund raiser for the right and then through Alito, the dog caught the car. Now the right not only can't raise money from the issue, but they have also alienated a massive group of voters. Eight of the last nine national presidential elections have failed to give the GOP a majority of the vote. While Trump may be great entertainment as a carnival barker, he had no interest in governing. He's the seditious lout that has really pissed in the soup pot and continues to do so.
Between trying to keep people from voting and abortion, this will become a major car wreck. To date, not a single policy proposal but lots of revenge. Dumb as rocks really.
“I have been proud to put an end to the radical, taxpayer funded, abortion-on-demand until the moment of birth Far Left Democrat agenda and send the resounding message that this new majority defends life.”
That’s Elise Stefanik in her Weekly Update. Seems designed to win back the youngs. She’s not one to let facts or civility stand in the way of message.
At this point, I suspect that every living president and VP has classified documents in their possession, and they just don't know it. What it says more than anything is that control over the whereabouts of the material is really handled poorly, or simply not at all. Trump is notable in that he refused to give them up when asked. Biden has been quite cooperative.
There’s a naïveté to both Sullivan’s maundering and the analysis because we already know what conclusion the right will draw: If young people aren’t voting for us, we’ll make it harder for them to vote.
Why is the Right Losing the Young?
Millennial spitballing here.
Maybe after living through three recessions, millennials aren't, to use a South Park-ism, super stoked on defaulting on the national debt.
Maybe, having lived through the first attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, a resurgence of Russian imperialism and a land war in Europe, and seeing murdered Ukrainian kids in our Twitter and Reddit feeds, we don't want to elect someone who tells our democratic allies to pound sand.
Maybe, after losing two years of of social lives and our families' lives (missing travel, weddings, funerals, baptisms, graduations, having babies in lockdown and cancelling children's birthday parties), we don't want to vote for an anti-science party that dragged the pandemic out for an extra year.
Maybe, we want to raise families in towns with safe roads, decent schools, and clean air and water, and we are tired of our statehouses prioritizing heartbeat bills, anti-CRT bills, and a smorgasbord of performative jackassery over our most basic needs.
I don't need to hear some Republican spout platitudes about diversity to win my vote. Diversity is a fact for my generation. You might as well say "golly, isn't great that the sky is blue and the grass is green". I want them to govern! And I don't see that happening. That's why Millennials aren't going to vote Republican. Because they don't trust the Republican party to address any of the things that actually matter to them (spoiler alert...they aren't going to). Also, the Republican party has no chance of becoming competent at governing, because young people who WANT to get stuff done run as Dems. That's why Democrats have an up and coming generation of millennial leadership, and the Republicans have George(?) Santos(?).
You missed guns. These kids have watched their schools turn into shooting ranges like never before. They've lived through active shooter drills. They've seen over and over republicans make it easier for the shooters and harder for the targets.
I am somewhat qualified to speak on this. I have a gay 27 year old son who was completely apolitical - absolutely completely 100% apolitical, to the point of actively not caring - who was radicalized when a friend of his was beaten up by MAGA nutjobs for being gay (I'm sure there were some other reasons, but that was the fundamental point). I have a 22 year old daughter who lives in Pennsyvlania who was always pretty "liberal" but is now essentially Che Guevara because of many things, most notably Dobbs. They both were appalled by Trump and voted for Biden because he was a better alternative - and Biden reminded him of their Grandpa, which shouldn't be discounted.
These children will NEVER vote Republican. Ever. They're part of a huge wave of "kids" who are repelled by the Republican Paty and pretty much everything it stands for. There's nothing the GOP can do at this point outside of a full burn it down, and even that is suspect. I'm not sure the GOP understands the levels of hate and toxicity that exists towards that party among people under 30. Clearly Sullivan doesn't.
You can't "leave aside" the impact of Dobbs. It's the whole enchilada.
Roe v. Wade is overturned and 77% of young women vote Democratic. Is there any possibility of a connection?
As someone who deals with young people frequently, I've long wondered how the GOP could be so tone deaf on what their priorities are and how they are different from what the Establishment expects them to be. This generation, burdened by student loan debt, rising costs with little to no savings to offset them, shrinking workplaces and career job opportunities with good benefits as well as adequate pay, and often a sense of not fitting in, does not see the world the same way, nor should it. They are not about getting and keeping a big stash of cash, having a big, modern house in Suburbia, and accumulating so many possessions that their garage becomes a storage unit. They seek quality of life, be it equality of status and opportunity, a clean environment, and a sense of belonging. All that has to do with society, something that the GOP long has paid lip service to but consistently shunts aside in favor of maximizing the gains of the individual. The GOP will always be on the outside looking in with them as long as it deems our shared infrastructure to be a liability instead of an asset, too often reducing it to derogatory soundbites such as "socialism" instead of asking, and responding, as to what is desirable in those things and why.
In life we must change and evolve. The longer the GOP does not get that, the more they are doomed to extinction.
'Sullivan’s suggestions include things like encouraging “much more house-building with YIMBY-style deregulation; expand access to childcare for young, struggling families; tout entrepreneurial and scientific innovation to tackle climate change; expand maternity and paternity leave; redistribute wealth from the super-rich to working Americans to stabilize society and prevent capitalism from undoing itself; and…..”'
I see this a lot, and it's why the Forward Party nonsense rubs me so wrong. It's people disaffected with the right saying that we need to trash the two-party system because both parties are bad, and their solution is creating a third way, and that third way always seems to align with what Democrats are already doing and campaigning on anyway. How do you fix the Republicans' problems with younger voters? Become more like Democrats! Oh, but, there's already a political party that caters to that constituency. It's called the Democratic Party. Republicans need to be more like Democrats to have majoritarian appeal, but Democrats bad, so instead of just voting for Democrats, let's reform the Republican Party or start a third party. This is ridiculous.
I guess I could play Millennial whisperer in the comments thread today if you guys want. Despite what some people say there are *certain* generational experiences and traits. The GI Generation went through the Depression and WW2. They were responsible for FDR's insane margins but then shifted Republican after civil rights - not a generation that widely approved of civil rights.
Baby Boomers seem to have started out pretty competitive. In the 70's and 80's, they were pretty 50/50 split between Democrats and Republicans. Probably lots of divided opinions there over counter-culture, unions, civil rights, Vietnam, etc. But once Reagan became popular Boomers have been largely conservative, pausing only for Clinton. I think it's safe to say Reagan's brand of hyper-individualism, lower taxes, not talking about race, etc., really resonated them. When you hear popular media say "voters want lower taxes," etc., you're probably really hearing about Boomers.
Millennials, on the other hand, have completely different generational experiences. Most of us were born in late or after the Cold War, and don't really remember it. Our childhoods were mostly the 90's or early 2000's. Obama was an aspirational figure for most of us. We were the generation that actually fought in Afghanistan and Iran. Our women are probably the best-educated and most economically successful. However, a lot of us entered the workforce in the middle of the 2008 bust. In most of the places we live housing in unaffordable for the average person.
Republicans have largely fallen flat with Millennials because we've either been a scapegoat for their social problems (the Millennials are killing [thing viewer likes]), or because Millennials are the least white generation in America, and non-white voters just aren't likely to vote for Republicans anyway.
I was an original Dish subscriber back in the late 1990's.
I truly admired Sulivan's gay marriage arguments (I am gay) and I liked his nuanced takes on other things. I admired his ability to admit he was wrong about Iraq, I admired a series he did about women that had late term abortions. A lot of what he wrote was very good. I am stressing "was".
Sully has taken up residence in a land where far too many in his line of work eventually lay down roots. He is unable (or unwilling) to look criticaly, really critically, at his own long held beliefs, and wonder if maybe they don't hold up against further scrutiny. The fact that he ignores the reality of what the Republican Party has become is proof of his blinders.
Tangential observation about him......he has that anti woman vibe that many gay men have.
I literally lol'd at this headline. Better to ask why isn't the right losing the young?! Anti-women's rights, anti-LGBT rights, decades of climate change denialism, white, Christian nationalist rhetoric in an increasingly racially diverse and secular society, and that's just off the top of my head. I particularly love that 18-29 female statistic; you want the state to force these young women to bear children and you think they're gonna vote for you?! Hah!
Andrew Sullivan's take on why republicans don't appeal to younger voters misses a few salient facts:
1) This generation grew up with active shooter drills in school as a fact of life. They've often lived through the impact of the republicans' Second Amendment absolutism and gun worship.
2) They didn't have to be 'indoctrinated' into queer and gender theory'. They LIVE it. Their parents or their friends and relatives are out and proud gay people; they grew up with an attitude of equality and acceptance that also extends to gender.
3) This one is almost always overlooked: People 35 and younger are increasingly secular. They especially reject the use of government to impose religion, especially religious bigotry, on them and everyone else.
What do the republicans offer this generation? Empty 'thoughts and prayers' after every mass shooting - which as of yesterday numbered more instances than we've had days in this new year. Absolute refusal to discuss even the most sensible gun regulations.
Republicans promote the vile notion that gay, and especially trans, people are 'groomers' and 'pedophiles' and so are the people who love and support them. Simultaneously, they also promote misogny and disrespect for women, especially when it comes to women's privacy rights.
While a fast-growing number of Americans are moving away from religion and particularly use of government to impose religious beliefs, the republicans have lashed themselves to the far-right of christian evangelicals and nationalists.
The thing Sullivan doesn't see or want to accept is that younger people are simply not who and what republicans are. There's almost nothing about the modern GOP that appeals to younger Americans on substance. And the modern GOP shows no signs of becoming the unicorns of Sully's dreams.
This is just the latest Sully dance with the devil. He has a long track record of ignoring facts and wishful, magical thinking when it comes to the culture wars, especially abortion. My friends and I call him the homo Ross Douthat.
I get it, he's Catholic. But his willingness to parse out things he thinks are important to him as a middle aged gay man in a big city, and ignore and belittle other's concerns became too much for me.
I used to subscribe to his newsletter and web page, but just couldn't stomach it anymore.
The Right can't walk the walk with younger voters and Abortion is going to be the tell tale issue for the foreseeable future and Sullivan fails to see it. When you take away an individual's presumed freedoms, You are really fucking around where you ought not to be. The right is not a big tent, it's no longer even a tent. The right as is organized now is actually seditious and judgmental of most everyone.
Abortion was once just a reliable fund raiser for the right and then through Alito, the dog caught the car. Now the right not only can't raise money from the issue, but they have also alienated a massive group of voters. Eight of the last nine national presidential elections have failed to give the GOP a majority of the vote. While Trump may be great entertainment as a carnival barker, he had no interest in governing. He's the seditious lout that has really pissed in the soup pot and continues to do so.
Between trying to keep people from voting and abortion, this will become a major car wreck. To date, not a single policy proposal but lots of revenge. Dumb as rocks really.
“I have been proud to put an end to the radical, taxpayer funded, abortion-on-demand until the moment of birth Far Left Democrat agenda and send the resounding message that this new majority defends life.”
That’s Elise Stefanik in her Weekly Update. Seems designed to win back the youngs. She’s not one to let facts or civility stand in the way of message.
At this point, I suspect that every living president and VP has classified documents in their possession, and they just don't know it. What it says more than anything is that control over the whereabouts of the material is really handled poorly, or simply not at all. Trump is notable in that he refused to give them up when asked. Biden has been quite cooperative.
There’s a naïveté to both Sullivan’s maundering and the analysis because we already know what conclusion the right will draw: If young people aren’t voting for us, we’ll make it harder for them to vote.