salty, as they realize they have living in a progressive bubble.

Middle-Aged and older white people in vital swing states. The "Not another old white man" movement is a small but very vocal wing of the party, hope they don't turn some of those voters in their fight against Biden (and Sanders to a lesser extent).

Millennials and Gen Z make up the largest portion of the voting population (roughly 35%)
They are also more diverse than any other voting block.

Not saying that middle aged and older voters are not a strong voting block but they are the minority now.
(Receipts: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/an-early-look-at-the-2020-electorate/)

The presumption that their objectives and vision for the future can be delayed or subjugated is foolish at best, self destructive at worst.
Their concerns are rejected and disregarded at Democrats peril.
We are playing to middle ground that is smaller, not larger.
We need to stop living in the past. We have to start looking for new leaders among us and draw on the wisdom of those that came before them.

Playing it safe is not what helped us win the House in 2018. Fresh faces and innovative ideas are what that possible.

Last edited Mon May 13, 2019, 07:12 AM - Edit history (1)

but probably not of voters. Younger people don't vote as much which dilutes their numbers. Also the early states (other than Nevada) all have high median ages so those electorates are even older.

In 2018, a significant portion of voters was between 18-29. In fact the largest midterm turnout in over 25 yrs for 18-29 yr olds.

It was a 79% increase from 2014.

Gen Z and Millennials are the future.

Your way of thinking appeals to old, primarily white, primarily straight, primarily Christian, primarily coal mining voters (that demo is significantly less than 1% of population)

This is math on who is the future of the Democratic Party:

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/04/behind-2018-united-states-midterm-election-turnout.html


We have to figure out how to appeal to these people because they will be running the world.

they still don't vote anywhere near as often as their older peers.

This is percent of overall for each age.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/12/18083014/2018-election-results-turnout

The median age falls between 50 and 64. Almost Two thirds of voters are over 49. I can't copy the table but for the part that matters for this discussion:

18-29 9 percent 30 - 39 13 percent, 40 - 49 15 percent that totals 37 percent

50 - 64 31 percent, 65 and above 32 percent or 63 percent total

Our primaries would be younger than that likely but not by a ton.

This Vox article is highly suspect for 'outcome bias'. The most glaring hint is here:

will determine the nominee. And all of the evidence suggests that the electorate is older than the population as a whole. In addition, Iowa has about the highest median age in the country with New Hampshire and South Carolina in the older half of the country. People who look more like me are going to determine who wins than those who look more like people who are young enough to be my children. It is simple math.

We are going to have to agree to disagree.

You can keep thinking that but there are not enough 50+ yr olds to win elections unless Biden intends to to go center-right to make up the difference he won't get in young voters with a centrist, let's court the .001 percent of population coal miner vote, approach.

I thought I was a libertarian when I was a newly minted voter. Later I thought I had more in common with the Green Party (only later I found out how a) that doesn't work in this country due to our electoral process and b) the U.S. Green Party is not who they pretend to be, not remotely).

As I got older my attitudes changed.

I suspect many of the "young people" of today will have changed attitudes by the time they are older. And they won't much like the next younger generation saying they should be ignored and put out to pasture.

I'm not young. I'm not a Bernie supporter. I'm almost 50.

This insistence on "doing things the way we always did it" is absurd.

Catering to old, narrow-minded and primarily white male voters, is not how the world that is coming will work.

It world coming is mixed race. Non-religious. Pro LGBTQ rights. Pro-environment.

Never thought I'd have to argue for policies that are more inclusive and pro-environment here. That don't cater to the small rural uneducated voters.

That is the true damage of trump: false notion that we need to appeal to small town rural voters to win.

Never forget that Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. She did that my going more left. More open.

A hard centrist to center-right agenda is not going to win us the upcoming election.
That is a complete misreading of the electorate.

We are supposed to accept the opinions of a few writers as Gospel when the facts tell us another story?

When you have young people joining with the more mature to back a man, who is full of compassion, understanding of the plight of the worker, strong backing by Union members, i think not.

A few articles mean nothing to me.

things have happened!

Ain't that the truth!

But, the party is moving left today mostly because of the decisions that Biden’s Democratic generation made in order to get along with Republicans. Whether it involved gay rights, favorable legislation for struggling families that would have also helped women and minority groups, and defining moments that would have made a difference on the Supreme Court, Biden’s generation was not on the right side of history. Do I think he can change? I presume he can. But not with people feeding him with the idea that past mistakes don’t matter.

and elsewhere are pushing the Biden inevitability narrative to make it "reality".

made it "hillarys" election from the getgo. If Joe hadn't suffered the personal loss, he may have decided to take on Hillary in the primary

Hillary won the primary because black women and men voters voted for her in droves and refused to vote for Sanders. To a lesser extent that is also true of hispanics and LGBT voters. Now you may or may not agree with the choice those voters made but they made the choice. It wasn't a DNC plot, it wasn't the democratic intelligencia casting a voodoo spell, it sure as hell wasn't a Hillary favoring press. It was voters who decided she should be the nominee and the rest of the party should accept that just like I did in 2008 when Clinton lost to Obama in part because Obama pandered to anti gay voters in South Carolina. But the fact was that the voters chose him and I got over it. She won the primary in 2016 fair and square.

if he had entered the 2016 primary and won it. There is no doubt about it that he would have beaten the one asshole in the world that anyone should have been able to beat. Biden would have whipped Trump in 2016, electoral college or not.

has a romanticized delusion of socialism.

The real world with its real people doesn't.

A case could have been made to write editorials telling BS to not run because he is not electable. However, the pundit's romanticized pink colored glasses couldn't see it at all.

BS should drop out and let life-long Democrats duke it out without Marx/Engels/Lenin visions.

This is most likely where I have traveled, not bragging. Through my grandchildren, I try to check the pulse on the views of those between 18-40 yrs. old. If there is a trend for this age group to support Mr. Biden's ground game, get out the vote, etc. it will be a very good sign that his chances of winning in 2020 will increase.

Here is a summary from Political Wire https://politicalwire.com/2019/05/12/what-biden-is-teaching-democrats-about-democrats/