2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What drives the extreme age division between Sanders and Clinton voters? [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)work history has been.
Younger people get their information from the internet. If they want to know something they look it up on the internet. They search around until they find the truth about something, or something that rings true.
Also, while it is true that older people have money and maybe own property, maybe own their home or something like that (are more likely to have saved assets over the length of their lives) younger people are more likely to have STUDENT DEBT.
Younger people are more likely to have the newer jobs that don't last long and don't pay much.
Older people are likely to have kept at least some job at some time longer than their equivalent in terms of social standing and education who is younger.
Young people are not being paid well. They are competing with other workers across the world who live on less income and are willing to work in what we would find unacceptable conditions.
Older people may have lost jobs but still somehow fool themselves into believing that there is some hope that they will get a real long-term job somewhere.
The big split started in the 1980s when people started losing jobs and we started international trade and taking down import barriers.
I had a babysitting job in 1985 (had just returned to the US and that was the only job I could get). I watched C-Span while the baby slept. They had a discussion in Congress about getting rid of import duties. The Republicans were all for it. I recall that one of the Democrats warned that if we agreed to free trade, we would soon be "serving each other hamburgers" instead of doing real jobs.
That Democrat was right. Somewhere in C-Span's archives, sometime between the end of August 1985 and the middle of November that same year there is a video of that I suspect. Anyway, that is what has happened.
The polite term for it is "the service economy." It's a cruel joke. We are basically serving each other hamburgers and not much more in our economy.
And now they want to push the TPP on us. It is going to mean less money in the pockets of the young (and as they grow older, the old), less independence for our democracy and country, a lower living standard and misery.
"Free" trade is not good for America. It is good for the 1% and the 1%ers are the only people it is good for in America.
It's the people who recognize just how bad free trade and all the mythology that goes with it really are for Americans as individuals and America as a country who are for Bernie. Age is significant because older people still think free trade might have its redeeming qualities and because they are not as frequently looking to start their careers. Older people are OK with the status quo. They can buy what they need with what they have because they don't need as much as the young who are starting careers and families.
This is ALL about jobs and the economy. Jobs, jobs, jobs. We lost our industrial jobs. That's what this is about.
The Clintons are responsible for the loss of a lot of American jobs. The young know that. Their elders do not.
The internet teaches the young what is going on. Their elders rely on the mainstream news which is the news of the uneducated and incurious.