Young people will stand in line for Obama and Steve Jobs

[cprise]

As I stood in line today in a relatively young district, I saw ONLY OLD PEOPLE.

The kids were home smoking pot, playing bloodbath FPS games, watching movies, preening on social media, etc. They demand stimulation, and only personality cults will make the grade with them.

This election was otherwise set to become a battle against voter supression. Low turnout has instead created a farce.

[Scootaloo]

1. Listening to our rock and roll, playing with our skateboards and making out, too

Here's a consideration.

I know a family my age. Two kids, mother, father. Mother works at the factory with me. She also works at the grocery store. and then she works a bar. She comes home, gets six hour's sleep, and is out the door again. Her husband works two jobs, doing i don't know what, and has classes to boot. Mom brings the kids to work, because there's no one to watch them at home and dad's boss won't let him.

They're just barely getting by.

Another family i know, online, they're in Texas. Mother is constantly sick, they don;t know with what. The twins are toddlers. Dad's working two jobs plus whatever odd work he can get at the time. They're out in the middle of nowhere, no one to watch for their girls.

How long did you stand in line at the polling place, cprise? How long did it take you to get there? How much money did that time cost you from your job? Are you working, or retired?

[cprise]

2. OK stay in the trap, then.

And I'll thank your friends for allowing me to be dragged down with them.

I stood in line less than 15 min. People can opt for early voting or absentee ballots.

And why is Congress less important than the Presidency??? What we have here is a case of mass stupidity and your willingness to swallow their lame excuses is just a confirmation of that. Their kids may even be dragged into a civil war because of their electoral neglect.

People expect a celebrity (just one, please... lets not crowd out the Kardashians and their ilk) brilliantly marketed to them, and won't budge otherwise.

[Scootaloo]

7. I voted. Hard not to, being a political junkie. I have no idea if either of those families did

It's not something I grill people about.

My point is that these are the sort of conditions a lot of us "irresponsible, lazy youth" are dealing with. And you, obviously, have no clue what that means. These conditions put the brain into immediate crisis mode. Poverty and stress short-circuit long-term thinking, and you get stuck hopping from one now problem to the next now problem. Voting is not, and never was nor will be, a "now" problem. It's always a long-term thing. Worse, it's also a thing that can be put off until the last moment... only to find at that last moment that there's a more important now problem that has arisen and needs to be handled instead.

Do you think shitting all over people who are desperately trying to keep their situation livable is a great way to get them to the polls?

And given that the thirty years of Republican dominance, forty years of union destruction, twenty years of eradication of the social safety nets... was all at the hands of Boomers like yourself? The same crowd that overwhelmingly turned out to go for Republicans? The same people who keep trying to change the rules so we CAN'T vote even when we make the effort? You really want to try this tactic out?

[cprise]

9. I experienced similar conditions myself

I'm not a boomer and know all about the constant crisis mode. I've worked like a dog and seen benefits vanish and had to train my overseas replacements. I've seen higher education turn into a debt scam and how it affected my friends and colleagues.

As much as I (as a GenX-er) hate the direction the boomers took us in, Millennials are even larger. And fighting the effects of old age while having to put off retirement is a nightmare I'm sure YOU know nothing about.

Voting every 2 years is not too much to ask of anyone. If they can't fit that in their heads then politics will continue to make their (our) lives even worse.

Seriously, we are way past any point where hard work on the job will make the average American's prospects any better; the market will cheat instead of provide because its major players have no accountability. The ONLY way to improve our situation now, without resorting to violence, is by voting.

And if it happens TPTB try to lock us out of the voting process, THEN WE SHOW UP ANYWAY and force them to force us out, so no part of the disenfranchisement becomes conveniently invisible.

Ask your friends if they voted, goddamnit. That you're trying to make excuses for them without even knowing if they vote tells me there is some huge hole in your political life.

[Scootaloo]

10. So you and I actually aren't too far apart, age-wise.

Your complaint just went from goofy to fucking ludicrous with that realization, by the way. You realize that our pressing political question was what kind of underwear Bill Clinton wore, right?

What I'm telling you is that voting does not actually create a sense of making a difference. Tell me. Imagine a reality where, last night, all the young peopel went out and voted. What happens?

The democrats, who are running a center-right, anti-progressive, distance-ourselves-from-Obama ticket wit ha core of neoliberalism... take our votes as a mandate to impliment that bullshit.

We don't vote... and the Republicans win and we get the same neoliberal, anti-progressive, anti-obama stuff.

So it's a perfectly sensible question for people to ask, why bother? Will those votes improve work conditions? nope, because democrats have abandoned labor and embraced free trade. Will the votes improve education? Nope, because the democrats hate teacher unions too and have signed onto school privatization. Will our votes help the environment? Nope, Democrats favor a "nuanced" version of the same pro-petroleum policies the republicans give us.

The youth wants progressivism. and they are not easily fooled into accepting hte idea that simply not being a member of hte republican party makes someoen a progressive.

Want young people to vote? Give them something they want to vote for.

Instead the democrats take us for granted. it demands money and votes and shuts us out of everything else. it wants us to devote our time and labor to volunteer for candidates who are openly courting right-wingers, and expects us to sit down and shut the fuck up.

[cprise]

12. No, no.. I am not the DU loyalist brigade

I'm not even telling people to vote Democratic.

It actually isn't sensible for people to ask "why bother", because their hopelessness about politics is a *product* of low voter turnout that is endemic in the United States for far long than either of us have even been alive.

Whatever lies and crooks the corporate establishment is trying to feed us, we can still vote for *someone* even if its a write-in. But election after election, people stay home and legitimize defacto corporate rule.

Of course Democrats here on DU and elsewhere would go batsh!t if a bunch of new people showed up and voted 3rd party or write-in protest votes.

But a BIG, BIG reason why TPTB get to run circles around us and run our government from the boardrooms is that we don't give them strong democratic signals... ones that could delegitimize them. The legitimacy aspect is absolutely crucial. Even our foreign policy would be up-ended (and quickly) if all those people protested with a "None Of The Above" vote. The pretense of democratic approval within the US is at the root of the system's evils -- Its the ultimate enabler.

The oligarchic system is on autopilot now. We *won't* get any good candidates handed to us!!! We have to obstruct, fight, sue, to get back to party politics that represent people. But at least (for now) we still have the option of landing that first blow by showing up to vote.

Yesterday, all we did was de-legitimize the protesters!

[onehandle]

3. There was absolutely no line at our polling place. And nobody under 45.

The demographic of people in our area skews young and childless.

And none of them were at the polling place, that I could see.

A two minute walk from our apartment.

The slight spike in the youth vote in 2008 and 2012 was an aberration at best.

[Arthur_Frain]

4. I'm calling bullshit

Blame, blame, blame eh? No time, too hard to get there.

Ever hear of absentee balloting? Early voting?

I voted in every election. Every. Single. One.

Didn't matter if I was sick, working, working plus school, out of state/nation.

[ellie]

5. I was discussing this with my husband last night

We are well off, have health insurance, good jobs, etc., etc. We vote for Democrats every election. Every election. We have mail-in ballots now, but in the past I have stood in the line in the rain to vote.

These people who would most benefit from electing Democrats refuse to vote. Why? Because they have to stand in line? Please tell me why I should care about them anymore?

As for Texas, for years the poor could not be bothered to vote. Well, the Texas legislature has taken care of that problem for them with a strict Voter ID law so they don't have to worry about voting anymore! Win-win for them!

So, I am not going to care about the mom who works three jobs, who is always sick, who has children she can't care for. Living in a democracy is a responsibility that she is all to willing to cede to others.

[LP2K12]

6. There's no excuse...

There's no excuse for someone not to vote.

I'm 28 and my wife is 26. We have three children. I commute about forty miles to work and then forty miles home. When I attempted to early vote, I discovered that my change in address/county wasn't processed when we bought our new home and I submitted it with the change for my DL.

I got the change processed online. Left work at 4:30 PM and high-tailed it back to my county. Pulled in at 5:20 and was out by 5:30. I made it home in time to pick up our kids and take them to their 6 PM baseball games at the local field.

As I stated in another thread, when I handed one of the poll workers my ID to swipe into the computer and she told me that I "was the youngest person she'd seen all day." I had a feeling the turnout was bad for younger voters.

Please don't lump us all in though. I own two iPhones, three iPads, and two MacBooks. I play FPS on my PlayStation 4, but I took the time to put all of those down and vote. Now if my peers would join me in doing the same. All elections are important and there are far too many options to cast your ballot to make excuses not to do so.

Why did I purchase a home in Florida?

[DEMTough]

8. 20 Years here, voted

Gee, thanks.

[MillennialDem]

11. 34 here. Dragged my 31 year old wife (partner) to vote and it took effort

I'm not sure the solution to getting the young - and not just the young, but all liberal leaning people to the polls (older people who are more liberal are also less likely to vote in midterms).

Because if I had that solution I'd share it.

And the republican party would cease to exist immediately in its current form.