Why millennials love Bernie Sanders: This is what Trump, Hillary — and Chris Matthews —

[Uncle Joe]

don’t understand about how politics has changed

(snip)

While the Harvard study shows that Sanders supporters will likely support Clinton if they have no other choice against Trump, the study also indicates that the Sanders campaign has made a lasting impression on young voters that will remain whether or not he wins the nomination. Polling director John Della Volpe explained that: “He’s not moving a party to the left. He’s moving a generation to the left. Whether or not he’s winning or losing, it’s really that he’s impacting the way in which a generation — the largest generation in the history of America — thinks about politics.”

Della Volpe’s work at the John F. Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics shows that over the course of the Sanders campaign young voters increasingly favored the campaign’s core issues. Tracking data over time, Della Volpe noted that there was a demonstrable shift towards progressive politics in the last year. In fact Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post suggests that regardless of what happens in the campaign “Sanders might have already won a contest that will prove crucially important in America’s political future.”

(snip)

The Sanders campaign has resonated with millennials for the simple reason that he has been the only candidate to take the issues facing our nation’s young seriously. He was the first candidate to put the issue of student debt on the map and he was the only candidate brave enough to state outright that the greatest security threat to the planet is climate change—not ISIS.

But, perhaps most importantly, his campaign recognizes the very real economic challenges facing young voters, who not only have more debt than any other young generation in U.S. history, but also face higher unemployment and more depressed wages than their elders.

(snip)

But you’re not hearing anything like that. Or at least very little. Instead you are hearing that Sanders needs to drop out and help unify the party. You are hearing that he is a sore loser and a demagogue. You are hearing him be called whiny, delusional and unreasonable.

In fact, you are hearing him be described exactly the same way that millennials are described.

Think about it. There is an uncanny resemblance between the ways that both millennial causes and the Sanders campaign have equally been dismissed and disparaged.

(snip)

Characterizing social problems as personal problems has been one of the signal achievements of our neoliberal market-based society. If you don’t have a job, you are lazy. If you have too much student debt, you’re a loser. And if you are having a near impossible time getting a fair shake at running for president as a party outsider, you are a whiner.

In each case the status quo is defended over legitimate grievances that highlight a rigged system.

(snip)

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/03/why_millennials_love_bernie_sanders_this_is_what_trump_hillary_and_chris_matthews_dont_understand_about_how_politics_has_changed/

This is a good read.

[Gomez163]

1. He promised them free college. What's so hard to understand???

[AgingAmerican]

2. You obviously don't understand what has been happening

[Gomez163]

3. Yeah and the millennials, who don't watch or read the news and only recently

started paying attention to politics are all geniuses.

[tonyt53]

9. You left out free healthcare.

[Lokijohn]

15. Yeah they do look like geniuses

if you compare them to supporters of a candidate who violated FOIA, the Federal Records Act, national security and may be indicted on corruption charges. Oh yeah, and that candidate also lied to those supporters about that at every opportunity.

Dissing an entire generation is maybe a little extreme, don't you think?

[Fumesucker]

25. Just get them the hell off my yard, an entire generation is murder on the grass

[killbotfactory]

6. Yes. It would be a shame if money didn't prevent people from reaching their full potential.

Or accessing health care. Or being able to get other basic goods and services.

A real fucking shame.

[Gomez163]

7. They're still on daddy's plan

[tonyt53]

10. 30% still live with their parents

[Gomez163]

11. And the rest have access to Obamacare which is good enough to build on.

Unless you geniuses let Trump win.

[PowerToThePeople]

8. ..

Gomez163 (1,540 posts)

Here's what I think Bernie will do
He won't concede. He will encourage demonstrations at the convention. They will turn into riots. It will be a huge mess. Bernie will not endorse Hillary. Hillary will get no bump from the convention. As a result she will lose to Trump. Meanwhile all the Bernie people will start non-profits and make huge sums of money off their whining which will ultimately go nowhere. Trump will get to appoint several new Supreme Court justices and things will get worse for all concerned. Women will lose their right to choose. Obamacare will be repealed and millions will lose their health insurance and thousands will die from lack of medical care. Meanwhile Trump will start wars and innocent people will die from that.

HAPPY NOW BERNIE??

Live under bridge much?

[Uncle Joe]

13. It's not free college, it's tuition free and there would be a tax on the Wall Street speculation

to pay for it.

The former is an investment in our nation's most precious resource; the people, the latter is a legalized institutional casino, why shouldn't the house keep some of the profits?

[libdem4life]

18. California had essentially free 16 years of education...before Reagan.

I know, I got to take advantage of it. Totally free Jr. College and the last two through scholarships, grants and deferred student loans. After 4 years, I was debt free and had been earning a full, professional income.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. Me too. But, I had to pay $2.50 a semester for a parking sticker.

[rock]

30. Duh!

Let's not make it harder than it is!

[Faux pas]

4. Kickin'

[SheilaT]

5. The younger voters apparently won't have any problem

voting for the lesser of two evils, if I read this correctly. As a much older person, I'm personally done with that, because I understand that the lesser is still evil. If I don't have the opportunity to vote for someone I actually support, I won't be voting in that particular race.

Oh, and stop thinking that the only reason young people are supporting him is for free college, because most of those Millennials are already through college, and their debt probably won't go away. But they are far sighted enough to understand that young people coming after them shouldn't be burdened that way.

[tonyt53]

12. When you don't vote, you are voting for the other candidate. That is a fact.

[Lokijohn]

16. So if you actually vote for the other candidate

does it count as 2 votes? I thought not voting equalled zero votes. But now it counts as one vote?

When was this changed?

[99th_Monkey]

21. Not voting for one particular candidate is called an "under-vote"

and is NOT counted as a "vote for the other candidate".

[SheilaT]

17. No. I'm simply not voting.

It is up to Hillary to convince me that she is worth voting for.

I simply don't trust her. She lies. She lies about things that are easily disproven. She's a hawk who will go to war anywhere. She set up an email system specifically to circumvent specific instructions given to her by Obama. She seems to think student debt is just fine. She does not support a single payer system. She does not have a clue as to how low income people truly struggle.

I want to vote for someone who supports the things I believe in, not choose between Pol Pot and Idi Amin. There is someone still running who actually favors many things that I likewise support.

And it is not on me to vote for someone I despise over someone I loathe. It's on the candidates who don't care at all about people like me.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. 0 +/- 0 = 0 THAT is a fact.

[SheilaT]

38. You can't divide by zero.

That's math.

If I don't vote, I don't vote. It's not a vote in some column.

[winter is coming]

24. No, it's not. It's a talking point, predicated on the assumption that all voters

must give their vote to one of two potential candidates. While many view politics through that lens, clearly not everyone does, or we'd have 100% turnout with no undervotes, write-ins, or third-party votes.

[randome]

33. Unless you think Sanders is perfect, he is also the lesser of other evils.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[SheilaT]

39. I don't think Sanders is totally perfect, but he is vastly better

than Hillary. Light years better. Orders of magnitude better.

I don't trust Hillary as far as I can spit. She will betray the working and middle classes completely. She'll agree to raising the age to take Social Security. She'll okay means testing for Medicare. She'll continue the underfunding of the VA. She'll oversee the erosion of women's control over their bodies, already severely eroded in many states.

To me, having voted in every election (and most primaries) since 1972, I am done voting for evil. Period. Hillary is evil. Donald is even more evil. Voting for Hillary does NOT mean I'd be voting for something good.

Go ahead and justify Hillary all you want. But don't be surprised when she hews to her corporate roots. Don't act shocked when she vilifies unions, cancels all support for any higher minimum wage. Don't beat your breast and ask, "How could we POSSIBLY have known?" Not when people like me are telling you what she is really like.

This is just like her Iraq War Vote. Well, hers and however many others voted for that stupid war. Years later they're saying, "How could we have known?" Well, guess what. A lot of us out there outside the Beltway understood very clearly that we were being lied to. How could you have not figured that out?

[morningglory]

14. Bernie is not promising to send a gazillion children to Harvard/MIT for free.

He is talking about public colleges, community colleges. You don't need an expensive private education to succeed, all you need is a good library. Gallileo or some seminal thinker went to school during the middle ages when there was no university education available, just the buildings and the library standing there stocked with books.

[libdem4life]

19. This ^^^^^^but it has to have a degree attached to it.

[morningglory]

20. You get degrees from Junior colleges and community colleges (AA).

Then state colleges can be reasonable if they don't have gigantic football programs.

[Live and Learn]

26. K&R nt

[KoKo]

27. It is! Thanks for posting this.

back attacha

[Uncle Joe]

29. Thank you, KoKo.

[amborin]

28. K&R

[KoKo]

31. Another Kick for a Really Good Read!

[Uncle Joe]

32. If people read it they would understand it's a whole lot more than just free tuition or lower

interest rates on college loans.

Millennials on average will have to live with this world longer than any other demographic and they don't want to live in a world devastated by anthropological climate change and perpetual war.

[Yavin4]

34. In the late 1960s, young people were Leftists. By the 1980s...

they voted for Reagan twice by a wide margin. This explains why so many African Americans, who caught hell under Reagan, don't trusts Leftists.

[Uncle Joe]

35. Leaving aside other major differences of 1980 and today, it wasn't the leftists, it was the

the moderates that propelled Reagan to victory.

(snip)

During the 1980 election a dramatic number of voters in the U.S., disillusioned with the economic 'malaise' of the 1970s and the presidency of Jimmy Carter (even more than, four years earlier, moderate Republican Gerald Ford), supported former California governor (and former Democrat) Ronald Reagan. Reagan's optimistic tone managed to win over a broad set of voters to an almost unprecedented degree (for a Republican since moderate war hero Eisenhower's victories in 1952 and 1956) across the board, but did not make particular demographic inroads with Democratic voters,[1] with the possible exception of national security voters (a focused but relatively small group, difficult to find decisive empirical support for and identified in 1980 with Democrat Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, a Reagan ally for a brief period after 1980—until his death).

The term Reagan Democrat is sometimes used to describe moderate Democrats who are more conservative than liberal on certain issues like national security and immigration. The term Reagan Democrat also refers to the vast sway that Reagan held over the House of Representatives during his presidency, even though the house had a Democratic majority during both of his terms.[2] The term also hearkens back to Richard Nixon's Silent Majority; a concept that Ronald Reagan himself used during his political campaigns in the 1970s.

The work of Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg is a classic study of Reagan Democrats. Greenberg analyzed white ethnic voters (largely unionized auto workers) in Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63 percent for John F. Kennedy in 1960, but 66 percent for Reagan in 1980. He concluded that "Reagan Democrats" no longer saw the Democratic party as champions of their working class aspirations, but instead saw them as working primarily for the benefit of others: the very poor, feminists, the unemployed, African Americans, Latinos, and other groups. In addition, Reagan Democrats enjoyed gains during the period of economic prosperity that coincided with the Reagan administration following the "malaise" of the Carter administration. They also supported Reagan's strong stance on national security and opposed the 1980s Democratic Party on such issues as pornography, crime, and high taxes.[2]

Greenberg periodically revisited the voters of Macomb County as a barometer of public opinion until he conducted a 2008 exit poll that found "nearly 60 percent" of Macomb County voters were "'comfortable' with Mr. Obama," drawing the conclusion that Macomb County had "become normal and uninteresting" and "illustrates America's evolving relationship with race." As such, Greenberg stated in an op-ed for the New York Times that, "I’m finished with the Reagan Democrats of Macomb County in suburban Detroit after making a career of spotlighting their middle-class anger and frustrations about race and Democratic politicians."[3] Obama ultimately won Macomb County by a comfortable 53-45% margin that year, the same margin he won nationally.[4]

Reagan biographer Craig Shirley also wrote extensively about Reagan Democrats. His 1980 election account "Rendezvous with Destiny" clearly distinguishes the appearance of blue-collar crossovers for Reagan during the 1980 Wisconsin primaries at a Reagan event in Milwaukee's "ethnic Mecca" Serb Hall: "A young Democrat, Robert Ponasik, stood on a chair furiously waving a handmade sign that proclaimed, 'Cross Over for Reagan.' Of the reaction to Reagan in Serb Hall, Lynn Sherr of ABC reported, 'In judging from the way they showed up at a long-time Democratic meeting hall . . . a large number of blue-collar voters could go for Reagan.'"[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Democrat

[Uncle Joe]

36. The Reagan Coalition

The Reagan coalition was the combination of voters that Republican Ronald Reagan assembled to produce a major political realignment with his landslide in the 1980 United States Presidential Election. In 1980 the Reagan coalition was possible because of Democrat Jimmy Carter's losses in most social-economic groups. In 1984 Reagan confirmed his support by winning nearly 60% of the popular vote and carried 49 of the 50 states. The Reagan Democrats were Democrats before the Reagan years, and afterwards, but who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (and for George H. W. Bush in 1988), producing their landslide victories. They were mostly white, socially conservative blue-collar workers, who lived in the Northeast, and were attracted to Reagan's social conservatism on issues such as abortion, and to his hawkish foreign policy. They did not continue to vote Republican in 1992 or 1996, so the term fell into disuse except as a reference to the 1980s. The term is not generally used to describe the southern whites who permanently changed party affiliation from Democrat to Republican during the Reagan administration, and they have largely remained Republican to this day.

Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, analyzed white, largely unionized auto workers in suburban Macomb County, Michigan, just north of Detroit. The county voted 63% for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and 66% for Reagan in 1984. He concluded that Reagan Democrats no longer saw Democrats as champions of their middle class aspirations, but instead saw it as being a party working primarily for the benefit of others, especially African Americans and the very poor. Democrat Bill Clinton targeted the Reagan Democrats with considerable success in 1992 and 1996.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_coalition

[JEB]

37. Still Left after all these years. nt

I was most pleased with Carter as POTUS, but Raygun fucking lied and cheated and, well you know the rest.