Democratic Primaries
Related: About this forumMorbid Primary thought of the Week
Let me start out by saying I am an older person and that I don't intend this to sound ageist.
There have been a lot of posts lately about how progressive or moderate the Democratic Party is and how fast it is changing.
When looking into this, I found that 538 states that the party is growing more liberal by 2% every year. They published this chart to show the trend:
So, yeah, wow, since 2008 the party has gotten 12% more liberal.
Ok. Nice.
Then I started to think WHY that happened and it hit me...
Since 2008, 11 years worth of older and probably on average more conservative voters have passed away. They have been replaced by 11 years worth of younger, probably more liberal, voters.
That really had me thrown when that hit home.
Once you pass age 65, let alone 75, you don't have that many decades left to play with.
This is why I feel we should embrace a younger generation of leadership going forward to 2020,
Time is relentlessly moving on and our party needs to change with it.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,297 posts)Your post is a clear-eyed look at our mortality.
And it's worth looking at.
This is at least one reason why I like Buttigieg. He's young and has an intelligent vision of where this country needs to go. And there are other young candidates as well.
K&R
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
Celerity
(42,647 posts)districts that were probably centre left are now much more red and slanted to the centre right or far right. To have a decent chance of winning those districts, we have to run far more moderate candidates than the overall demographics of our Party appear to be shifting to. 2018 showed this to be the case. So much of the centre-right/far right voting population (especially outside of the solid blue states, but sometimes even inside them as well, and also at state assembly levels across the nation) is vastly over-represented now in the House.
The Senate is also polarised, and the RW is becoming more and more over-represented there as well. BY the mid-2030's or so, 70% of the Senate seats will be controlled by only 30% of the US population, and that 30% is far older, whiter, less-educated, more rural, more reactionary RW, and more fundie than than the other 70%. The only way to sort that is to add PR and DC as states and possibly split my state (California) into North and South California (or pick new names if you do not like those). That would add six new Democratic seats and help balance the long-wave constitutional demographic time-bomb baked into those projections of the Senate.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
Otto Lidenbrock
(581 posts)Obama is liberal, Hillary is liberal, but progressives dislike both.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
uawchild
(2,208 posts)There's no liberal-progressive divide, there are just people being more liberal.
We change the labels after the fact and they are not permanent.
Today's "moderate" democrats were the liberals of Biden's youth.
My point here was to just point out how much change is occurring as time passes and generations change.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
htuttle
(23,738 posts)Probably because they're going to experience MUCH worse things than we'll be around to deal with.
Sometimes, we need to get out of their way. Other times, we need to grab them by the collars before they run out into traffic.
I'm not 100% sure which kind of time this is right now.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
delisen
(6,039 posts)persons in society and gay marriage is across the boards and that everyone has become more liberal on this important issue-and that it is not the result of older persons dying and a younger more liberal generation coming of age.
It was just the opposite of what they expected and they were surprised to find that people of all ages have actually been changing their opinions and becoming less prejudiced ever since Stonewall and definitely since 1988. The success of gay people in actually changing the minds of Americans of all ages was recently explored on NPR's The Hidden Brain.
The current scientific thinking is that gay Americans willreach full acceptance in 9 more years ( they posit that there will always be 10 percent of people who remain prejudiced against any particular group).
Contrast that with what they are projecting as a timeline of older Americans -they are projecting over 120 years for older Americans to overcome prejudice against them.
This means that a child born today who lives to be 65 or 70 will be facing prejudice age-based prejudice 65 years from now in 2073. This is totally unacceptable and we can begin to change it today by just being open to facts and checking our personal prejudice.
The following link can possibly help you find the show NPR did. I urge you to find and listen to it.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/709567750/radically-normal-how-gay-rights-activists-changed-the-minds-of-their-opponents
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)A person over 75 with a sharp mind can do plenty in 8/10 of a decade.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden