Any chance on a cite for your claim about me, adaher?
I’m not going to re-read tons of old threads. It’s good enough for me that you acknowledge that young voters are losing faith in government.
Have you learned any lessons about asserting things about posters without backing it up?
That may be the case, but why would a distrust of government necessarily entail embracing conservatism? Distrust of government appears to be a constant in American political history. The “leftist” permutation usually manifests itself as opposition to large military expenditures and military adventurism, subsidies to and bailouts of large corporations, the militarization of the police, the War on Drugs, the prison-industrial complex, weakening of civil liberties, and “moral” legislation informed by Christian fundamentalism. “Losing faith in government” is such a nebulous concept.
Mistrust of government is more associated with the mainstream right than the mainstream left. Where it exists on the left, it is far from the mainstream. Every Democratic President save for Jimmy Carter in the post-war era has attempted to restore Americans’ faith in government, not use government as a whipping boy the way Republicans have since the Reagan era. There’s just nowhere for the anti-government lefty to go. Which still means a lost vote for Democrats, since Democrats relied heavily on the youth vote in 2008. And the young aren’t ideological in most cases. So if their primary motivation is that they don’t trust the government, the GOP message actually can resonate. And we’ve made progress since 2008:
18-29 voters:
2008: 66-32
2010: 58-42
2012: 60-37
2014: 54-43
Unless, of course, the main reason they don’t trust government is that there are so many Republicans in it.
True. Unlikely to be the case, however, given that young people aren’t exactly rushing to the polls to vote Republicans out. If young people were primarily disillusioned with Republicans, it wouldn’t show up as declining Democratic support in actual elections.
I have, as long as I can remember, despised anise seed flavored anything, ever since I was offered a piece of licorice under the pretense that it was candy. Much later in life, I found that I also don’t much care for eggplant. Do you think, then, that my discovery about eggplant made it more likely I would buy some licorice?
Because, oddly enough, I have avoided them both, even to this day.
Which still leaves Democrats in the lurch. Can’t have a majority made up of demographics that don’t vote. Of course, Democrats could have given young people a reason to support them, rather than doing the “You idiots, you trusted us to be different” routine.
That isn’t an accurate description.
If you have a different theory about why the Democrats have suffered such a large dropoff among that demographic…
Mostly about turnout, and about 2008 being a particularly exciting election. 2012 was much more like the ‘new normal’, in terms of demographic support of the two parties. Though I have high hopes that the Republican primary will mandate extreme anti-immigrant sentiment, which will boost hispanic support for the Democrat.
2012 the “new normal”? well, since it is the last Presidential election there’s no way to prove you wrong. Last data point we have after all. But I think that Democrats are going to suffer from two factors which will cost them a couple million more votes in 2016:
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Lower turnout. Obama drove turnout. Can the next Democrat? Democrats keep on saying it’s the difference between general elections and midterms, but what if it’s the difference between Obama and boring old white Democrat?
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The trendlines on the youth vote are pretty clear and don’t seem likely to reverse by 2016. If we extrapolate, 18-29 voters will vote Democrat by a 55-42 margin in 2016, which will start Democrats off a few hundred thousand votes behind their 2012 pace. The much bigger problem though is the continued loss of the white vote. If the Democrats lose the white vote by 32 percentage points again they won’t win an election no matter how many minorities they turn out. In 2012, they lost the white vote by 20. At MOST, they can lose the white vote by 25 points and have a chance. Otherwise, toast. Then there’s the black and Latino vote: African-Americans aren’t going 93-6 for Clinton. 90-10 is more likely and in line with normal African-American voting patterns. And Latinos, who knows, but for Obama they went 70-30 or so, whereas in midterms and prior to that they tended to be more 60-40. Bush, if he’s the nominee, will probably do at least that well among Latino voters, especially if he wins the nomination without caving on his principles on immigration.
The point is, the Democrats won a close election with unusually high margins+ high turnout among minorities in 2012. It seems unlikely that this will occur again in 2016 unless the Democrats pull Cory Booker out of their hat early.
You mean Hillary Clinton, the first woman president?
The trendline is not at all clear for the youth vote, nor for the white vote. It’s far too early to be making any sorts of assumptions about 2016.
I see no reason this is true. This will be the first ‘post-Obama’ election, and we’ll see if black voters who voted the last two elections will decide to stay home. I doubt they will – once people vote, they’re a lot more likely to keep voting than stop. Obama will be campaigning heavily for the Democratic nominee, and I think this will be enough to keep black turnout, at least, sky-high.
Of course it’s too early to tell about 2016, much less 2020 or 2024. The assumptions used to determine that we were heading for a period of Democratic dominance turned out to be mistaken. So at least now we’re on the same page, that anything can happen in 2016.
I’ve always been on this page. I’m optimistic but far from certain. And you have not established that we’re not heading for a period of Democratic dominance – it’s too soon to know, and 2016 will tell us a lot on that question.
I wouldn’t dream of trying to prove we’re not, only that the evidence that we are is based on assumptions that are either faulty or may still not yet come to pass.
I think we’d all agree that the GOP faces demographic challenges, but how much adjustment will be required to stay competitive is up for debate. As the article in my OP points out, a growing group that has historically been important to Democrats, the white professional class, has moved more towards Republicans in the Obama era. But like everything else we’ve talked about, it could also be because of Obama. It’s entirely possible that Clinton will do just as well as Obama, but with more white voters and fewer minority voters. More older voters and fewer younger voters.
Adaher, only a few days ago I tossed out a note to you not to attribute motivations and beliefs about other posters without providing a cite. Yet here we are again.
Warning issued.
adaher, you’ve done this before. It’s becoming your thing – do you really want “makes unsupported and incorrect assertions about other posters” to be your thing?