this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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I consistently vote in my caucus. It disgusts me because I’ve seen some REALLY wrong political plays happen there, but I still go and vote.
But seriously, there’s a large chunk of democrats who do not give two shits about people, they care about power and manipulating it to put themselves in that place of power. And they see the party system as a way to do it (sadly, they’re right).
That being said, I continue to hold my nose and vote for Dems because at least they’re not fascist. But anybody that says “if only progressives did…” has not dealt with the Democratic Party in any serious level.
At the end of the day, every progressive candidate who banks on progressive/younger voters turning out in the primaries has crashed and burned. Hell, if younger voters voted at rates comparable to the 65+ crowd, Sanders would've cruised to a victory.
Yes, every political group will have people who are there for their own power and benefit. But at the end of the day, we basically get the candidate we vote for. And the older, more conservative Democrats vote in the primaries unlike the younger progressives. It's a simple and tragic equation.
It’s because it’s really easy to take an evening off to caucus or vote if you’re retired. I have friends who are progressive who have claimed that their neoliberal boss intentionally scheduled them for caucus nights to prevent them from participating.
I caucused for Bernie in both 2016 and 2020. The Hillary supporters were gross and constantly were talking about how they could rig things so that Hillary could win even though there were CLEARLY more Sanders supporters in our precinct. When I would point out that some of what they were saying was really morally disgusting, their response was “well that’s just how the game is played, if you don’t like it then leave”. Hillary even sent out a “how to run a caucus precinct” guide that was full of misinformation. We were lucky that our precinct had 2 chairs, one a Bernie supporter that had the official guide. We ended up calling the State level officials for clarification on a bunch of stuff and they were pissed at Hillary for pulling what she did.
So what stopped the 18-29 crowd from voting for Bernie on Super Tuesday? When it was during Covid and virtual every state allowed early voting and mail in voting.
Even Texas, who allowed early voting at ANY polling station in your county including grocery stores, only saw a single digit turnout for the 18-29 group. >90% of them stayed home.
That was the care for pretty much every state on Super Tuesday. No state saw even as high as 20% turnout for the 18-29 demo. 19% was the highest. A lot of the southern states that would have really boosted Bernie only saw mid single digits.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/super-tuesday-2020
Yes, it's easier to vote in person when you are retired and that's frustrating. But as an explanation for why we're outvoted by the elderly, it just doesn't hold up when we look at the evidence.
Multiple states allow mail in voting for primaries. In some, this is actually more common than in person voting for example, Arizona, Colorado and Washington. For these 3, in 2020 the percentages of young (18-29) v elderly (65+) were: 17-35, 10-37, 11-35 respectively
(This gets worse when you consider that while the two populations are similar sized, the elderly are much less likely to vote Democratic in the first place so as a share of Democrat elderly vs Democrat youth, the numbers would be even worse.)
Oh, I’m not saying that young people need to vote more often. They definitely do, and that’s part of the problem. What I’m saying is that it’s not all of the problem.
That being said, in my state (Iowa) the state seems to do everything they can to get young people to not vote. And if I’m honest, that’s not just the Republicans trying to push that.
Sure but when we're being outvoted by a 2:1, sometimes 3:1 margin, that's on us.
It's sort of like voter ID laws, they matter but really, mostly on the margins.
At the end of the day, it's our future, our mess and our fault if we don't vote. Yes, it's harder but goddamn, the world burns and people die because we don't go and vote.