To follow up on mistermix’s post about age, I know I’ve said this before, but the age split in the 2008 election is completely unprecedented in modern American political history. Obama won the 18-29 group by 34 points, the most any candidate has ever won any group by since this has been measured (note that they didn’t measure this in 1964, at least I can’t find the stats), while losing the over 65 vote by 8 points.
You might say, well McCain was old and Obama was young, and that’s the main reason. But look at 1992 — Bush I was only a little younger than McCain and Clinton was about the same age as Obama. Clinton beat Bush among every age group by between 3 and 13 points. In fact, his second largest win was among those over 65 (who voted by far the least for Perot as well, btw).
Something changed radically in American politics over the past 8 or so years when it comes to the affect effect of age/generation on voting patterns. In my view, this hasn’t received the attention it deserves.
Bnut
The old always hate/envy the young, it’s just now, thanks to modern medicine, there are more of them to yell.
Balconesfault
I think the Obama team did a great job of organizing and motivating the younger voters who usually aren’t paying attention and don’t head to the polls.
The intertubes clearly helped – a resource the Clintonistas didn’t have available back in 1992.
In essence, the College Young Republicans (and ex-CYRs), who will always vote, really make up a fraction of the youth vote base – but they vote. So it really was just about getting their peers to give a damn.
And this upcoming election should hinge on those peers getting the message that Obama has actually been accomplishing things that will make their lives better for decades to come … but if you talk to a lot of them, there’s a general malaise instead because they’ve heard too much from both the right and left about how Obama is a fail.
Linda Featheringill
I would like to persuade young people that political choices they make now can affect the quality of their lives for decades.
A number of them already know this. But it would be good to spread the word anyway.
And, yes, I would like for them to support my candidate but in the end it is their choice.
cleek
8 years of war might have something to do with it.
and Balconesfault‘s survey participants might be experiencing some of that “malaise” because those wars are still kicking.
Marc
Interesting numbers from 1992. One thing to remember about the 65-and-over voters back then is that they were the “greatest generation”–voters who came of age in the Depression and the New Deal and became one of the most liberal generations in American history. (Which today’s fawning memorialists always seem to forget.)
By 2008, most of those 65-and-over voters were from the “silent generation,” with one of the most conservative voting records. Not much of a surprise that their votes went to McCain.
The split between age groups is certainly more pronounced today, but that’s partly explained by changing generational cohorts (and the emergence of a new generation of liberal voters to replace those New Deal voters). In forty years seniors will probably be among the most liberal voting blocs again.
Jon O.
“Something changed radically in American politics over the past 8 or so years when it comes to the affect of age/generation on voting patterns.”
As a 26-year old politically activated in ’03, it was the 2nd Bush Presidency. The first political act I took part in was a march against the Iraq war on the day it started. A lot of things happened over the years that made it pretty apparent to young people that they can’t just wait for adults to fix it. I’m sure waves of people were likewise drawn into politics by Katrina, the financial crisis, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, Terri Schiavo, or any number of other things.
SATSQ, maybe, but all this stuff is why my only young Republican friends are kids raised on Rush Limbaugh.
Blue Neponset
[puts race card on table]
I don’t think it is that hard to figure out what changed. A black dude was running for President. Is this the point you are making and I am just not getting it?
Crashman
@Jon O.: This.
Most of my friends (27-28) are liberals, and became liberals because of Bush.
But man, the ones that stayed conservative have really gone off the deep end. Had to block a few on facebook over the last few months.
mistermix
@cleek:
This is part of the explanation, but I’d be more convinced if the youngsters were in danger of going to war. They aren’t, for the most part.
matoko_chan
here is a good analysis of the youth problem for “conservatives” from last year.
pretty sound stats IMHO.
the teabaggers have a ginormous youth problem.
that is how the tea party got tagged with the teabagger meme….because taxation-without-representation and funnie cocked hats are not the first thing that springs to mind when we hear the word “tea”…..that would be teabagging our fallen comrades in videogames.
an’ like i allus say….you can’t get to Cooltown on the conservative express anymore….it only goes to crazytown.
QDC
A comment on an NYTimes story pretty much summed it up: If the (now mostly gone) generation that fought WWII was the Greatest Generation, then the Boomers that followed ought to be known as the Generation that Pulled Up the Ladder.
A current college graduate will live a much less economically secure life than his parents. Those without college will be lucky to keep a roof over their heads throughout their working years. They’ll be paying to support pensions and Soc. Sec. benefits that will be far superior to what they can expect to receive.
It would have been nice if those approaching retirement would have collectively left their children something more than the spare bedroom and the ability to stay on their health insurance until they’re 26.
D. Mason
@Balconesfault:
Fixed that for ya.
acallidryas
I agree that the Obama team did an amazing job with GOTV among younger voters. And there may have been a major general shift in age-related voting patterns that carries through to lots of other things.
But, really, you had a campaign that was all about change, not just in the message, but in it’s very existence, the very fact a youngish, urban black guy with a funny name was running for President and winning. And change is something lots of the over-65 crowd fear. I’m in Virginia (and communist Northern Virginia, not even the Real part), and I had a fair amount of older, stalwart Democrats I work with tell me that there was just something about Obama that they didn’t trust, something they just couldn’t put their finger on….
Then there was the older gentleman who came up to me while I was doing visibility during the campaign to explain to me how Obama was going to let all the gays get married.
And my in-laws who are terrified of the brown menace.
I realize that the plural of anecdote isn’t data, and that there are plenty of people over 65 who voted because of disagreement on some more substantive issues. But I think there were also a fair amount who were just terrified of change.
Redshift
This is why I think OFA and Obama missed a good chance to turn this block into more reliable voters than younger people usually are. IMHO, right after the 2008 election, when they had people’s attention, they should have set up a system for supporters to pledge to vote in every election, and sent out localized reminders based on that.
Obviously, it would have only actually worked with a fraction of the new voters, but I’m inclined to think it would have been a significant fraction. They’ve used their email list to encourage people to vote in specific elections (standard GOTV), but to me, the habit of voting is a very different thing from being convinced to vote, especially when you’re dealing with a population that is traditionally low-turnout. Instilling that habit should be a major long-term project.
NonyNony
First of all – Clinton beat Bush in every demographic by between 3 and 13 points, but Perot had between 11 and 21 points in every single demographic. The ’96 election – where Perot’s influence on all the demographics is much, much smaller – is more telling. Look at that 50-64 demographic – Clinton beat Dole by only 2% in that demographic, and if you include the votes for Perot the “not the Democrat” coalition beat Clinton by 6 points. And even in the 65 and over demographic Clinton tied the votes for Dole and Perot combined.
And folks who were 50 in 1996 were 62 in 2008. So most of that demographic moved into the 65+ demographic. Which is a partial explanation for the shift in the numbers. (Add in a black presidential candidate and I suspect you can explain a few more shifts in the numbers as well).
What I suspect this is is nothing more than that folks who were in that 50-64 demographic in 1996 were in their mid 30s to late 40s in 1980 – and part of that “Reagan Democrat” coalition of voters who shifted from being Democrats to being Republicans as part of the ongoing realignment. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that – a generation of voters who have spent decades thinking the federal government is wasting their money and hating on Social Security now collect Social Security. And still hate the government.
Dave
There’s another development that doesn’t get much play; that Gen X voters flipped from having a net positive vote for Republicans to having a net positive vote for Democrats. That’s a huge deal. We were the generation raised on Reagan. We were the most reliable age group for Republicans next to seniors. We were the reason Republican leaders talked about a “permanent majority” And they lost us. I don’t know if that will continue this November, but the fact it happened at all is a big deal.
stuckinred
@cleek: What “war”, shit, This current cluster-fuck has few people involved and the ones that are just keep getting sent back over and over.
Zifnab
I’d say the media we are exposed to has had a big impact on our views. Folks under 30 tend to Digg and Reddit and Google far more than their parents’ or grandparents’ generation. Meanwhile, the 65+ crowd continues to dominate FOX News.
Is it really a surprise that the internet generation votes in line with internet opinion trends, while the elders vote with cable news pundits? We’re looking at a major disconnect in education and information. It’s not a shock that folks getting different news would have different voting habits.
The Bearded Blogger
@Balconesfault: Also, too, President Obama’s messaging isn’t geared towards young people. He has three months to turn that around. Maybe he can swing it…. I think wins in both houses is just about doable.
shortstop
OT, is anyone else damned sick of every variation of “Fixed,” “Fixt,” “Fixed that for ya,” etc.? Christ, that’s hoary.
bago
Can I venture a theory involving a changing shape of the media? It used to be crazy expensive to talk to millions of people. If you had a few people on the board of directors of the companies that laid down the capital to talk to millions of people at once, you had an in. These days, not so much.
Emma
I think a very large part of the split is, as people have mentioned before, the question of race. The older members of our society are, by and large, uncomfortable with the idea of a black man as the leader of the country. Also by and large the younger generations tend to pay less attention to race as an issue, and the younger the age group the less importance they attach to it.
Please note I said “by and large” in both instances. The racists and the nuts will always be with us. Remember, the 27% has existed since the beginning of American history. Blessed be, progressives of every age will be also.
Michael D.
@Blue Neponset: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pointing that out. Obvoiusly, I can’t know the minds of people, but I would guess a lot of young people voted BECAUSE there was a chance to play a role in history.
Does anyone know where we could find numbers about how many young people voted this time versus how many voted last time?
I would also guess that hundreds of thousands more young black people voted this time because, if they weren’t inclined to vote already, they would have been dragged to the polls by their moms and dads. :-)
ogliberal
Frank Turner has a song, “Thatcher Fucked the Kids”, that I think sums this up nicely, particularly the last three verses below. Yeah, he’s singing about England but I think it applies here as well…just replace Thatcher with her US counterpart:
And it seems a little bit rich to me,
The way the rich only ever talk of charity
In times like the seventies, the broken down economy
Meant even the upper tier was needing some help.
But as soon as things look brighter,
Yeah the grin gets wider and the grip gets tighter,
And for every teenage tracksuit mugger
There’s a guy in a suit who wouldn’t lift a finger for anybody else.
You’ve got a generation raised on the welfare state,
Enjoyed all its benefits and did just great,
But as soon as they were settled as the richest of the rich,
They kicked away the ladder, told the rest of us that life’s a bitch.
And it’s no surprise that all the fuck-ups
Didn’t show up until the kids had grown up.
But when no one ever smiles or ever helps a stranger,
Is it any fucking wonder our society’s in danger of collapse?
So all the kids are bastards,
But don’t blame them, yeah, they learn by example.
Blame the folks who sold the future for the highest bid:
That’s right, Thatcher fucked the kids.
cleek
@stuckinred:
no, it’s not Vietnam.
but we have managed to kill 100,000 Iraqis. and that’s plenty enough to get bummed out about, if you’re the kind of person who’s inclined to think about such things.
ed
Fox News. The Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck Network is the Smelly Old Man Network. They aggressively hate on Teh Ghey and Teh Mescans and Teh NotChristians and other Teh Others. You know, stuff that riles up Old People but turns off the youngsters. There are a lot of connected factors as to why the big age gap, but I’d guess this is the largest.
D. Mason
@Michael D.:
Could you elaborate on that a little bit, maybe, I didn’t catch your exact meaning.
stuckinred
@cleek: Yea, I was thinking more about them being worried about getting their asses sent there.
ThatPirateGuy
Young people like their gay friends and hate people who hate them.
The reation to phelps at comic-con this year should tell you alot of the story. We think that conservatives are crazy and that democrats are so damn infuriating. Still I’ll never vote to let a republican into office as democrats don’t actively hate me.
joeyess
The only thing that changed between ’92 and ’08 is that we had the Kenyan Usurper on the ticket in ’08. In ’92 it was merely the Southern Skirt-Lifter.
Michael D.
And just because I am picky about spelling and grammar.
Thank you.
mrami
@shortstop:
Fixed it for ya.
Doctor Science
Doug:
I can’t find any age data from before ’76, which was the first presidential election with 18-y.o. voters. I won’t believe this is a radical shift until I can see data from 68 and 72, the heyday of the Generation Gap.
SpotWeld
Just spinning a random hypothesis here, but it might be the internet.
The generation that grew up with the internet is now voting age and well into the age where they become politically aware.
The internet has
1) Allowed this group to become personally aware of events, cultures, *people* instead of thinking of them as faceless headlines
2) Greatly diminished the changes of small isoalted groups to devlope. Yes there are group-think blogs and news lists, but there is no barrier to exit on those. It’s a huge difference from being born into a small town where you have to adapt your thinking to match everyone elses just to fit in.
3) Ramped up the speed and effectivity of breaking news (which is a double edged sword), but the fact-checking nature of the internet is a phenominal boon.
shortstop
I’m using that. You can almost catch a whiff of the three-day-old urine spot on Beck’s pants, can’t you?
Extra points for the funny malapropism.
FormerSwingVoter
I have to admit: politics is making me hate old people. They’re literally doing everything they can to dismantle a series of programs that they benefited from their entire lives.
Fuck. That.
The Bearded Blogger
@Zifnab: But the internet is also a huge vehicle for propaganda
@Dave: Oh yeah… for a while there, hip meant selfish libertarian and South Park…
Redshift
@ed: Ah, but how much of that is cause and how much is effect? I don’t disagree that wingnut media do a great deal to whip up fear in their demographic, but they would love to be doing it to the younger cohorts, too, and that obviously isn’t working. The fact that they haven’t been able to draw in a younger demographic suggests that they’re not the primary cause, but rather a contributing factor.
someguy
I’m happy that young people are the new swing vote. This bodes well for the country. I for one find I know less as I get older, and my judgment gets worse.
Oh wait a minute…
matoko_chan
@ThatPirateGuy: young people also like their black friends and hate racists.
Mark from NJ
@Blue Neponset: My friend, you hit the nail squarely on its head.
The Bearded Blogger
@ogliberal: Wow…. kicked away the ladder…. the spoiled brats are now firmly in control.
@FormerSwingVoter: After benefitting from keynesian economics and the welfare state, old fucks screw their children… in the name of abstract “future generations” and the deficit (also, while screwing actual future generations on the environment)
New Yorker
As someone who was 28 in 2008, I’ll just mention my thoughts as to why we’ve swung so far into the Democratic tent.
I graduated high school and entered college in 1998. The economy was humming along, the budget had a surplus, there was no war going on, and limited American military action under Clinton was mostly to stop genocide in the former Yugoslavia (and more importantly, we didn’t invade and occupy Serbia in order to install a new “democratic” government).
Flash forward 10 years to 2008, and we’ve suffered through 2 botched wars, 2 recessions (the second one the worst since the 1930s), the worst decade for job creation since the 1930s (hard to begin a career in such conditions). I think the 18-29 group was in the unique positions to be brought up believing the limitless promise of the 1990s, only to be hit in the face with the disaster of the 2000s.
And the party in charge during the 2000s was the GOP. Instead of facing these problems honestly, they just scream hysterically about any group of people they don’t like: Mexicans, Muslims, gays, blacks, college graduates, urbanites, atheists/agnostics, etc. That’s not a solution to serious problems, it’s a pathology.
The Bearded Blogger
@Redshift: On a related note: Greg Gutfeld is painfully unfunny.
ChrisS
@stuckinred:
The vast majority of the armed forces consist of 18-26 year olds. You can’t swing a dead cat at party and not find people with friend(s) that have been to the middle east (more than once). It’s not a function of self-preservation that drives anti-war sentiment among the youth. It’s the fact that they get tired of hearing about friends coming back with missing limbs or worse. Plus the whole billions and billions being spenton killing other people for not much of a benefit.
mclaren
I’d say it goes back farther than the 8 hideous years of the Drunk Driving C student’s reign of error. People in their 20s now grew up during the Reagan debacle, when the American Dream had already died. Twenty-something people today have never known an America in which there was real opportunity, a genuinely functioning economy that worked for the average person, a country that wasn’t consumed by endless war and an insane and endless war on drugs.
That’s got to radicalize you.
NonyNony
@FormerSwingVoter:
You should hear the ranting that I hear sometimes from sympathetic friends and family members around my age and younger targetted at the “greedy selfish Boomer generation who benefited from a welfare state but wants to rip it apart for everyone else now that they’re done with it.” It’s a pretty consistent theme at parties were the older folks aren’t around, and it’s been getting worse over the last decade or so.
I know a lot of progressive/liberal Boomers get angry at the fact that the younger generations blame them for a lot of what’s going on. Especially when it’s more like the “Silent Generation” that’s been systematically kicking the crap out of the welfare state for the last few decades and the Boomers only really got their hand at the tiller recently. And yeah, my generation (X) sucks too because it’s full of a bunch of greedy shitheads who have swallowed libertarian bullshit. But you gotta wonder – who raised those shitheads and why are they so damn shitty? We weren’t in the generation that elected Reagan after all, even if my generation deserves a mighty smackdown for helping to elect W into office.
shortstop
Chris speaks the truth. Don’t try this. People get weird about it.
The rest of his point was good, too.
Martin
@Blue Neponset: Yeah, that’s unfortunately what I see as well. I’ve run into a shocking number of people over 50 that are way too quick to tell me how much they’re uncomfortable with Obama.
Barbara
I will finish reading comments but for now, would add, as the mother of two burgeoning youth voters, you simply cannot underestimate the element of diversity as a factor in changing attitudes — both as to the actual racial make up of those under 30, but the changes in attitudes among caucasians who are under 30. They are utterly turned off by or simply immune to racial code speak, and perhaps even more so, anti-gay rhetoric — even those who should be fertile territory for Republicans (e.g., self-identify as religious). They also probably appreciate the generational aspect of a lot of the rhetoric — for instance, how easily hate for “anchor babies” translates into cuts into educational services.
Davis X. Machina
The whole point of building a tree-house is so you can pull up the ladder, and when you don’t have much, the easiest way to make it seem like more is to make sure no one else has any.
cat48
Eh, I’m old and white, and I adore Obama (most of the time.) I’ve never voted for a Republican for President in my entire life. No way!
Zifnab
@The Bearded Blogger: Yes, but it’s more of a “pick your own propaganda”. If you don’t like the political flavor of your current blog, there’s a thousand more to choose from, all a mouse click away.
Meanwhile, even the most expansive cable package still only offers up a very limited stock of opinions and opinion makers. The ideological difference between Glenn Beck and John Stewart simply isn’t as wide as that between RedState / FreeRepublic and FireDogLake / GOS. And the space in between is filled by a legion of individuals, some professional leftists/rightists and some not, rather than a handful of Third Way corporate tools on CNN or the Big Three network stations.
You might trap yourself in an ideological bubble, but it will be the bubble of your choosing.
Hal
McCain not only was old, literally, he seemed so old figuratively as well.
He was just figuring out the internet, something youth voters grew up with. He talked about his Vietnam service and being a POW ad naseum to a generation that only reads about Vietnam in their history books. Hell, even the slew of Vietnam war pics released over the past three decades aren’t exactly competing with Harry Potter and the Matrix in the minds of young viewers, so his constant remembrances probably seemed just like stories grandpa told.
His too young wife is a cliche they see their parents embodying, his reliances on town halls was boring and old fashioned (What, no rock bands?), and then he tops it off by picking a VP that many young people, especially young women, were horrified by.
I wonder if McCain isn’t the last candidate we will see of that age and lack of savy. If so, then the GOP better hope Aaron Schock starts doing more than appearing on Top Chef.
New Yorker
@mclaren:
Um, no. We were teenagers in the 1990s, when the economy was humming along and creating jobs by the ton. That’s what we expected to enter when we became adults, and instead we got a disaster.
Also, we’re not “radicalized”. We’re sane people reacting to the radical identity politics of the GOP.
mclaren
@ChrisS:
This is what I seriously really do not understand about young people.
If they’re tired of hearing about friends coming back with missing limbs or worse…why the fuck do young people keep signing up for the U.S. military?
It’s not like there’s a draft, guy. Think about it.
YOUNG PEOPLE CAN MAKE AMERICA’S ENDLESS WARS STOP TOMORROW.
All young people have to do is stop signing up to enlist in the army and the wars will stop.
I think we need to ask why so many young people think it’s cool to go get their legs blown off by an IED in some third world hellhole.
When Henry Kissinger said “Military men are dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy,” he was talking about you. And your friends.
Don’t your 20-something friends who signed up for the army understand that this is how America’s leaders think of you?
Why do you keep feeding the eternal war machine when you could shut it down tomorrow by simply not enlisting?
parksideq
This is anecdotal, but as a 25-year-old, I’ll share a little bit about why I’m a Democrat.
10 years ago, I was 15; I spent most of high school, all of college, and my first year and a half of “the real world” living under the Bush administration. During those formative years (of political awareness, anyway), my peers and I saw an unjustified war waged with Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, the Terri Schaivo fiasco, serious talks of gutting Social Security and constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.
On a more personal level, when the market crashed several friends of mine saw their job offers disappear overnight; I know others that opted to teach in Korea to avoid the hot mess that the economy became because of Republican fiscal policy. The Katrina response did nothing to reassure me that the GOP gives a shit about anyone who isn’t rich and white (as Kanye West rightly noted during a telethon).
The common thread I noticed was the GOP’s complete heartlessness in everything they touched. That, along with their infamous playing on racist sentiments for votes, has all but assured that me and a vast majority of my generation will never vote GOP. At least the Dems try to give a shit (and sometimes, they even propose/pass legislation to prove it).
Brachiator
Something changed radically in American politics over the past 8 or so years when it comes to the affect of age/generation on voting patterns. In my view, this hasn’t received the attention it deserves.
Some in the media are looking at it, and also wondering if old patterns will re-establish themselves. A recent NY Times article suggests that younger voters might sit out the mid-term elections (Obama’s Youthful Voters More Likely to Skip Midterms).
If the Democrats could rally younger voters for the mid-term it might truly represent a great demographic shift.
georgia pig
I’m a late boomer, and a lot of what I see are a lot of folks my age or older who went to college when tuition was heavily subsidized, got low interest loans that are no longer available, etc. There was also a hell of a lot less competition in college. When they graduated, there were relatively large numbers of good jobs available for college grads. Then they made out well on real estate and stocks in the 80’s, ’90s and early ’00s. The ones that haven’t been laid off — yet — often fail to recognize that the landscape for younger folks has changed considerably from when they came up. All they see is a bunch of whiners, kind of like the Yorkshiremen from Monty Python.
So the big change is that the economy has changed a lot in the last 10-15 years, and that affects the young more than older folks that are shielded by accumulated wealth. Plus, I think the way that generations tend to be segregated in modern society tends to exaggerate the divide. A lot older folks I know are pretty fearful and resentful, especially the ones that don’t have much contact with other generations.
Cain
@SpotWeld:
I’m a Gen-Xer but I gotta tell you that the internet has changed for instance how I look at movies. I now watch korean movies, hong kong movies, indian, whatever without blinking an eye. Only the story really mattered to me. Interestingly enough, Netflix doesn’t really distinguish English from other movies in their genre sections.
So culturally, I’m a lot more exposed to other places rather than just american and that’s being done unconsciously. I think that helps.
cain
joe from Lowell
Let’s get a little deeper into those numbers.
In 2008, Obama won by 3 points. That means he outperformed among 18-29s by +31 points, and underperformed among 65+ by minus 11.
In 2006, Democrats won by 8 points. That means that they overperformed among 18-29s by 14 points, and underperformed among 65+ by minus 6.
In 2004, Kerry lost by 3 points. He overperformed among 18-29s by +16 points, and underperformed among old people by minus 2.
In 2000, Gore and Bush tied. They tied among 18-29s, while Gore won 65+ by 4 points.
So, among young people, the trend is 0, +16, +14, +31: a 31 point swing to the Democrats in 8 years.
Among old people, the trend is +4, minus 2, minus 6, minus 11: a 15 point swing to the Republicans in 8 years.
ChrisS
All young people have to do is stop signing up to enlist in the army and the wars will stop.
It’s not easy to do that if there’s no alternative.
I was in the USAF from 1996 to 2000. I grew up the son of a former lower middle-class family that had jobs shipped out of the country and were suddenly working poor. College wasn’t an option at that point and my parents (neither college graduates) didn’t encourage me to go or apply. No money for $50 application fees, test prep courses, tuition deposits, etc. and no understanding of the system. I joined the air force because of a lack of any other path besides being trapped in a low-level service position or other shitty job with no hope for an actual career.
However, as soon as my four years were up, I used the GI bill to complete BS and now I’m comfortably ensconced in a growing career field with options.
The 1980s and 1990s weren’t a fabulous time for a lot of rural poor kids to grow up. Most of their parents lost jobs as manufacturing was shipped overseas. Farms were lost, prices crashed, and many people struggled. Kids growing up in that time saw a real disconnect between what they were being told about the economy and what was actually happening to them.
ogliberal
@mclaren: Because when it comes to the enlisted ranks the military is often the best job option available after getting out of high school…if you’ve even graduated from high school. There are the elite officer corps who go to the service academies or do ROTC at a non-military school. There are the legacy folks who go in because their dad served. (lots of crossover with the service academy/ROTC crowd) And there are the folks who join out of truly patriotic committment – think Pat Tillman here. But the majority of the grunts are there because it’s the best paying job option out there and/or could help them pay for college. The military could always count on this population but often needed a draft during wartime. That’s because, say, during a time like the Vietnam era, young people could go to college or get a job at the auto plant or steel mill with their dads…they didn’t need the military. These days, college costs too much and those manufacturing jobs are gone and not coming back. So it’s military or unemployment. And that’s why we can fight two wars with an all volunteer army and no draft.
The Bearded Blogger
@Zifnab: Yeah, I think in the average the Internet is a positive force, but I don’t see the crazy ass rumors that now have some credibility happening without the aid of the tubes. Or maybe I was too young to notice pre-Interent crazyness?
jrg
Get off of my lawn. Oh, and give me 6% of your paycheck, you communist. No, you can’t get it back later.
By the way, I need to borrow your credit card. While you’re at it, print out these emails so I can read them.
No, you can’t get funding for schools. When I was a kid, we learned by counting small rocks and scribbling in the dirt with a twig.
Barbara
georgia pig, and others who have made comments on pulling up the ladder into the tree house: I am also a late boomer and I feel like I was seeing this as I was marching through the system — that when I started college, it was incredibly cheap and by the time I ended, it was much higher, and double ditto for graduate school. So when I first went to college as an out of state student at a state school, my tuition was $1600 per year — an amount that I and my middle class parents could afford with some scrimping and saving and not a lot of debt. That college, for students like me, now charges close to $30,000 just for tuition. There’s no way to pay that by working in the summers.
So the point is, I feel that the generations before me — my parents and grandparents — willingly shared what they had with my generation, and that my generation, of which I am at the tail end, conventionally, seems to have seen that generosity as something personal to us — as in, we are extra special deserving, and now that we aren’t in high school or college, well, we don’t need to fund education at the same level for our children, and for God’s sake, not OTHER PEOPLE’s children. You can look at nearly every social program in the same light — which, by the way, is why it’s so hard to cut Medicare and Social Security because the boomers haven’t had their turn yet.
Sorry for the rant. At this point in my life, I identify far more with my children than I do with my peers.
DougJ
@Hal:
Yeah, but he was also on the Daily Show all the time and so on. I’m not convinced he was particularly unappealing to the young, as Republicans go.
I tend to think of three big possible causes here: (1) Bush sucked and he was prominent in young people’s minds as the only prez they’d seen, making them hate Republicans, (2) hating teh gays, teh blacks, etc. turns the under 30 generation off, and (3) the under 30 generation gets their news from sources that have been less corrupted by Republican fuckery.
Crashman
@ogliberal: You are absolutely right. The military is the best, most stable paycheck that some people can get.
Molly
@mclaren:
Um…economics? The ability to afford college? A path for the future that many enlistees did not have until they joined up? A desire to serve their country?
And what will you replace the military with that is PRACTICAL for those people? A real-world solution, please, that doesn’t tell my generation and those younger than me to just “find another way!”
What a stupid post.
D. Mason
@Barbara:
Maybe boomer’s kids should move into their parents spare rooms (like they already have to do) and instead of spending their meager incomes on trying to take some classes or whatever just invest heavily into whole life policies on their parents. Sure if it all goes well it would only destroy the economy of the 2020’s but sharing some of those uneasy feelings with the generation that caused this mess might be fun and most of us weren’t going to make it to the 30’s anyway.
mclaren
@New Yorker:
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-kay…
A bunch of smoke-and-mirrors bogus jobs created by the dot-bomb bubble of the 90s, and this is what you call an America where there was a real functioning economy for the average person…?
You actually expected to work for WebVan when you grew up?
Please tell me you’re not that gullible. Puh-lease. Tell me.
ChrisS
All young people have to do is stop signing up to enlist in the army and the wars will stop.
It’s easy to not do that if there’s no alternative.
I was in the USAF from 1996 to 2000. I grew up the son of a former lower middle-class family that had jobs shipped out of the country and were suddenly working poor. College wasn’t an option at that point and my parents (neither college graduates) didn’t encourage me to go or apply. No money for $50 application fees, test prep courses, tuition deposits, etc. and no understanding of the system. I joined the air force because of a lack of any other path besides being trapped in a low-level service position or other shitty job with no hope for an actual career.
However, as soon as my four years were up, I used the GI bill to complete BS and now I’m comfortably ensconced in a growing career field with options.
The 1980s and 1990s weren’t a fabulous time for a lot of rural poor kids to grow up. Most of their parents lost jobs as manufacturing was shipped overseas. Farms were lost, prices crashed, and many people struggled. Kids growing up in that time saw a real disconnect between what they were being told about the economy and what was actually happening to them.
New Yorker
@mclaren:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/01/01/GR2010010101478.html
Yes, because that 20% increase in job growth in the 1990s, combined with the 58% increase in household wealth was all due to people speculating on Pets.com stock, right?
For the non-mclarens of you there, just look at the difference between the 1990s and the 2000s in terms of job creation and household wealth, and that tells you all you need to know about what makes the 18-29 group such a strong Democratic constituency.
ChrisS
The 1990s booming economy was a hiccup, much-like the real estate bubble. A shitload of money was accumulating in the investor class that they were dying for a place to put that cash that generated income.
parksideq
@New Yorker: Wow, my comment was just a more wordy version of yours. But I’m not surprised that we had a fairly similar experience (hell, if I remember correctly you went to the same college I did).
Zifnab
@The Bearded Blogger: “The Moon Landing was a Hoax!”, “The Guberment is hiding Aliens at Area 51!”, “There was a second gunman on the grassy knoll!” – and those are the old ones. Don’t forget “John McCain fathered a black baby out of wedlock” and “Al Gore invented the internet”. Those were old fashioned grocery store tabloid rumors and Sunday Morning Gossip Fest jokes.
If anything, sites like Snopes and FactCheck have done a great deal to debunk and root out the origins of that particular breed of sliming. They get far more hits than your typical Dan Reihl or Ann Alterhouse “Obama is the love child of Malcolm X” posts.
joe from Lowell
@ChrisS:
This isn’t actually true. Something like 16 million Americans moved up out of poverty during the Clinton administration, compared to 500,000 during the Reagan administration (the previous high-growth period).
To single out the 90s as a period when growth was illusory or unusually concentrated at the top is flat out wrong. In fact, the boom of the 1990s was the only period in the past 40 years when there was any real increase in wages for the bottom 3/4 of Americans. (They reason they’re said to be flat overall for that 40-year period is because those people gave those gains back during the Bush administration).
Singling that particular period out like this is wrong.
mclaren
@Molly:
Only 23% of military enlistees ever take advantage of those college tuition payments the military dangles so dishonestly before them. Modern 4gw warfare damages young people so badly psychologically that they can’t even hold down a minimum-wage job after living through a nightmare like Iraq or Afghanistan…much less slog through four years of college. Young people come back from Iraq or Afghanistan with constant blinding headaches, PTSD, screaming nightmares, inability to concentrate, shaking hands, uncontrollable tremors, night sweats, constant panic attacks. You can’t get a four year college degree when you can’t sleep more than 2 hours a night and constant blinding migraines force you to take massive doses of percocet and valium every two hours.
What path to the future would that be? Watching your fiancee vomit uncontrollably when she comes to the hospital and sees that your face has been blown off and you now look something out of a horror movie?
Which country would that be…the country of cynical draft-dodging rich frat boys who start illegal wars, then sneer “I had other priorities” when asked why they didn’t serve in the armed forces (a direct Dick Cheney quote) and refuse to even allow the coffins to be photographed when the dead kids start coming back to the states?
Well, I could suggest a German-style apprenticeship program where young people get an opportunity to learn skilled high-paying professions alongside master artisans — a program partly paid for by the German government. Or I could suggest a system like the one in Singapore where young people sign an agreement to learn a skilled profession and then work for a certain number of years at a predetermined wage once they’ve mastered the craft, and after that period become free agent able to charge whatever the market will bear. Or I could suggest a system like the one in France, where the government automatically deducts a tax for training new young workers from every businesses’ profits, and if the business doesn’t train new workers that money goes into the general tax revenus, but if the money does get used for training, it partially offsets the business’ taxes.
I could suggest all those options instead of a futile pointless mindlessly counterproductive military-industrial-complex as a failed jobs program because economic data prove incontrovertibly that military spending produces far fewer jobs per dollar than peacetime spending for non-military programs…but you’re too ignorant and too foolish to grasp that it’s the young people in America who have the real power to shut down the endless wars in their tracks.
Thank you for your sociopathic display of ignorance and folly. With your help, the American military-industrial will continue to destroy the country and turn America into Chile under Pinochet.
I do my part to stop the insanity. I vote against this evil shite. But you, Molly…you and your generation could stop it in a heartbeat. And instead you sneer and whine and keep enabling the warmongers. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
shortstop
@jrg: Funniest thing I’ve read all week.
TTT
I first became politically aware when I was in high school. The ’94 elections had just happened and suddenly TV was full of all these scowling mean old men who were saying horrible things about President Clinton, public schools, and gay people, and saying America had to be a Christian country again, and that global warming and evolution were lies. And that they hated me and everybody liked me because I lived in New York. And that apparently I had been oppressing and attacking them my whole life without knowing it, because I was a non-Christian from New York.
I graduated college just in time to have some spoiled brat slacker steal an election, destroy the economy, go on vacation for all of August ’01, invade the wrong country, then destroy the economy some more–all while I was trying to get on my feet and get my career established. That slacker and his sick sclerotic nonculture has cost me three jobs: one right after 9/11, two more since the ’08 crash. Wherever Republican leadership goes, anyone who isn’t already independently wealthy gets smothered.
I never forgave them for their bigotry and ignorance and ruinous failures, and I never will. For America to live, conservatism must die.
Jon O.
@mclaren:
We could stop it in a heartbeat? Surely you, the wizened elder who sees the path to fixing everything, sees the naivete in making claims that society is so close! to the solution, if only every individual would make the right choice.
War is hell, but that doesn’t mean people will stop volunteering for our volunteer armed forces at the same rate that Americans have always, always volunteered for the volunteer armed forces.
Why would you make a pronouncement toward the millions of military-eligible youth out there, and not consider it any less insane than saying “well, why doesn’t Congress just vote to defund the war?” At least you could just be disregarding and dismissing the motivations of 535 prima donnas instead of an entire generation.
Jon O.
@Jon O.:
WordPress doesn’t care about the youth of America. (No edits?)
Wanted to clarify that I definitely don’t think defunding the war would be insane. Functionally impossible given our political structure, possibly. But generally it seems like one of the saner alternatives.
TheF79
1. Claiming that the economic growth of the 90’s was solely the “dot-com bubble” is asinine. For one thing, the dot-com bubble didn’t really begin in earnest till 1998, after several years of solid, across the board growth in jobs and wages.
2. Not understanding the reasons why young people join the military is also asinine. Whether or not they are “good” reasons is another matter entirely. For many of my high school friends, it was a choice of working in a snowmobile repair shop or factory in our hometown, or join the military. For them, joining the military meant a steady income, a pathway to college or technical training, and a chance to get out of the smothering bubble of rural midwestern life. Striking a blow against the evil warmongering military-industrial complex was pretty far down on the list of the concerns of the average rural, lower-middle class 18 year-old wondering how they’re going to get by. I’m an ivory tower elitist academic and I at least fucking understand the reasons why many young people view the military as the best of their options. There are plenty of villians in the political-military-industrial complex to cast blame upon – 18 year olds ain’t one of them.
Drive By Wisdom
You people think kids are ignorant enough to keep voting for liberals when the Obama economy is shedding jobs at rates faster than ever before? None of them are going to have jobs by November at this rate.
There are more people working for government now than manufacturing and construction. Of course, liberals see this as a feature.
joe from Lowell
@Drive By Wisdom:
“the Obama economy is shedding jobs at rates faster than ever before”
Dumbass, there were 700,000 job lost in the month – one month! – before Obama took office.
You don’t even have the slightest factual knowledge of what you’re talking about, and you’re calling other people ignorant?
Take a hike, loser. Before you do, why don’t you get a clue?
joe from Lowell
In the eight years George Bush was in office, a net total of 1 million jobs were created.
Every single one of them was in government. Private-sector job creation was completely absent.
Ignoramus.
mnpundit
Buddy, this is awful.
People voting in 1992 were born between ~1963-1974 to fit with the same age bracket of the millennials. How in all hells can you even compare the upbringing and thought process of people who were born and grew up in those times people who were born 1980-1992? The first group went their entire lives as k-12 without the internet for example.
So anyhow this is a hideously poor comparison. And maybe it won’t matter much anyway. Obama has essentially governed as a terrified senior citizen would.
Tax Analyst
@georgia pig:
Bingo! And I think that today there is more of a tendency to partition ourselves off from people that seem different from ourselves (hmmm…I guess that’s not really a new thing or some sort of startling “News Flash”, is it?).
Catsy
@mclaren:
If you think the roaring economy of the 90’s was solely generated by the likes of Outpost.com, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. A considerable portion of the economy was, indeed, driven by the novelty of the internet to investors who didn’t really understand it yet and the hollow startups who took advantage of that. But the solid economic growth of the 90’s didn’t begin with the dot-com bubble–it wasn’t until the mid-90’s that most people had even heard of the internet, and it wasn’t until the late 90’s that the combination of the internet’s growing ubiquity and low interest rates from the Fed allowed things to get out of control.
There were plenty of other factors in the collapse of the economy in the early aughts, most of which occurred over a relatively short period of time: the monopoly ruling against Microsoft, the failure of the AOL Time Warner merger, a number of other high-profile failures and frauds, and rapidly rising interest rates, to name a few. The effects of the 9/11 attacks should not be underestimated in accelerating the downturn, nor should the effects of the early Bush presidency and policies and his relentless talking-down of the economy from ’99 onward.
You simply can’t reduce the economy of the entire 90’s to “the dot-com bubble”. And even if you could, it doesn’t have one whit to do with how a generation of voters coming of age in the 90’s perceived the economy.
Gaardian
Wow this isn’t really hard to figure out. What happens when your’re in your Late teens and early twenties. You finish your education and maybe go to college, you get your first job if you’re lucky you start figuring out things like health care and investing and then maybe you meet the person of your dreams and get married and maybe buy your first house.
Republican proposals over the last decade to reform Student lending or lower the cost of college-Zero,
Republican job creation during George W. Bush- Zero,
Serious republican proposals on Health Care- Zero,
Republicans proposals on marriage-end “marriage penalty” and stop all gay people at whatever cost from getting married.
Republican proposals on home ownership- give tax credits for lending, but mismanage lenders so poorly that when the inevitable bubble bursts many twenty-somethings are disproportianately left underwater on their mortgages becaue they have the least equity.
Throw in two mismanaged wars where twenty somethings get shot at for WMDs that aren’t there. Awesome.
Obama came to office promising to end one war to manage the second one that he didn’t start better, delivered on health care reform, student loan reform, and then passed a stimulus meant to save jobs in one of the worst recssions in this country’s history. Gee golly, I can’t imagine why younger people went so overwhelmingly for Obama.
Molly
@mclaren: Concern Troll is Concerned.
Meanwhile, you seem to think that somehow, turning this country into Germany or Singapore is feasible. This is why people like me get so damned frustrated with this shit coming from people like you. It’s not reality. It’s your heart overriding your common sense. Your idealism is to be commended, your sense of feasibility is not.
As Joe O. said
As a representative of my generation, and the younger generation my husband teaches, get a grip and focus your energy in a constructive way.
Munira
@cat48: Me, too, and I also happen to like my black, muslim and gay friends just as much as my kids like theirs so don’t hate on all us older people. That’s just another form of bigotry.
timb
@QDC: THIS
Bommers, in large part, are the worst generation of Americans, since the generation which produced secessionists. Greedy, selfish, short-sighted….those are the Boomers good points
TR
Personally, as a 27 year old, I can remember quite clearly my ambivalence towards the election that I only just missed (by 6 months) back in 2000. Given what transpired during the next 8 years while I went through college, looked for a job, went back to college, got a job, lost a job, worked as a baker, and got a job and then lost it too in time to vote in 2008, well, they Republicans hadn’t exactly inspired confidence in their leadership. At least this member of the 18-29 cohort is peeved at the messy nest we were left.
Bill Murray
the 90s were not all that great of a boom. Sure very good for a supply side era, but nothing special in the long term analysis.
Doug Henwood discusses this in his book After the New Economy, some of which is in a shortened form at the link below
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/NewEcon.html
flavortext
George W. Bush.
d.s.
@Bill Murray: The 90s was the only time during the last 40 years that wages increased for the bottom 90%. It was the only time in the last 40 years that there was a substantial reduction in poverty. Most Americans alive today have never experienced an economy better than the 90s.
The last decade is the only decade where household incomes actually shrunk.
d.s.
@flavortext: George Bush is Jimmy Carter squared.
In the 60s and early 70s the youth vote was seen as Democratic-leaning. But in the 1980 and 1984 elections, young voters were actually Reagan’s strongest demographic group. Old people, who were the FDR generation, were the most Democratic group.
chaseyourtail
It’s no coincidence that many of Obama’s most ardent critics on the left are Baby Boomers. They seem to have a mental block when it comes to this President…they just don’t get him at all. It’s like the young and the old speak two different languages when it comes to Barack Obama. I’m a Post-Boomer/Gen-xer and I see things very differently than the Boomers. Boomers are into extremes, employ a sense of entitlement like no generation before or since and they don’t do delayed gratification. This explains to me why many of the “Obama hasn’t done enough” crowd are older liberals. Boomers are rarely satisfied with anything. My generation and younger ones look at things more pragmatically and less ideologically than do older liberals. That’s why I get very frustrated with some of the criticism aim at Obama – it’s not because I’m a loyal O-bot (which I am), it’s because it appears that many Boomers (not all of course) can’t comprehend the basic realities of how progress it actually achieved. I struggle to understand why this older segment of the population, who were around during the civil rights era, can’t seem to grasp the concept of incremental change. But then again, they’re Boomers….and that kind of explains everything.
chaseyourtail
@mnpundit: “a terrified senior citizen”
Are we sure we’re not projecting just a tad?
WaterGirl
@chaseyourtail: Would you define the current age range for what you consider baby boomers? Because unless we are each thinking of a different age range for baby boomers, I would have to seriously disagree with what you wrote.
chaseyourtail
@WaterGirl: Oh, let’s say 1945 to 1958 are the Baby Boomers as we know them. Some generationalists (I made up that word for lack of a better term) like to refer to said baby boom as coming to it’s decline in 1964. But I think this span is too great. The group born between 1958 and 1964 are now considered by many (including myself) to be Post-Boomers. Obama is a Post-Boomer using this metric. I know, it’s not an exact science by any stretch, but I think the idea that collective perspective can change between close generations holds a good deal of weight.
chaseyourtail
@WaterGirl: I meant to say: collective perspective can change a lot within a few years of a generational shift…I hope this makes a little more sense. Sorry, my word usage sucks tonight.
WaterGirl
@chaseyourtail: Thanks for your reply. I was born in 1954 – I worked like crazy to get Barack Obama elected, and I saw a ton of other people my age doing the same thing. And the Obama blogs were filled with people my age who were doing the same thing. So… if many of Obama’s most ardent critics on the left are Baby Boomers, it’s also fair to say that many of his strongest supporters are also Baby Boomers. I don’t know what results from exit polls would say, but my experience says you’re wrong.