2020 Democratic presidential primary thread, pt 3: life is very long

I am probably in the 99th percentile of interest in and attention to politics, and I have been my whole life, and I didn't vote in non-presidential elections when I was in college either. I can't explain it. It just ... was a thing the people around me rarely did or talked about doing. I'm honestly not sure what could change it.

(citation needed)

every US presidential election ever

I super excited about voting as soon as I turned 18 because of rock the vote and rem.

I was excited because of how annoying it was to follow elections in high school and not be allowed to vote in them

my oldest daughter just voted for the first time (she's 19); she was excited to vote for the queer former sex worker for the house against the more established dem who lost to the rethug last time by 2000 votes.

I was excited to vote because I wanted to write-in my dad for President, which I did in 1992 because I wan't into either Bush or Clinton.

didn't know Perot was your dad

92 was my first too; I volunteered for the Clinton admin in south Texas and got assigned to dress up in masks and dark clothes to tear down GOP signs on street corners the night before the election. then free Taco Cabana at the big party downtown that night thrown by the local dems. then we went to a gas station and bought the Penthouse with Gennifer Flowers.

#livingthedream

I guess I should have specified "Bernie's coalition" rather than "the youths." I've definitely seen states where Sanders has outperformed Biden not just in the 18-29 bracket but all the way up to 45 year-olds. obviously Biden isn't winning an election if he only gets boomers to turn out.

Bernie Sanders wins the expat primary by large margins mostly down to public health care - we know it’s good.

huge push in mtl for bernie abroad spearheaded by some of my friends, i think they managed to turn some pretty impressive numbers

didn't know Perot was your dad

I'm not saying DJP is Lyndon LaRouche's kid but I definitely feel Lyndon LaRouche's kid would be on ILX

I super excited about voting as soon as I turned 18 because of rock the vote and rem.

I saw U2 at Veterans Stadium in September 92 and they had a hype man on their payroll who came out before the opening bands. He threw out red, white, and blue “Vote Baby!” pins and I got one, but lost it somewhere down the years.

I was super excited about voting as soon as (there was a election after) I turned 18 because I got to vote

I went to the polling place with my dad and he got mad at me for numbering every hundred or w/e boxes below the line instead of just letting a party choose what to do with my votes and going home again

aw, I just got my absentee ballot in my email. So sad.

The young probably don't have a lot of faith in the system in its ability to change. As opposed to older people who have paid into the system, have a much larger stake too.

Having said that I think participation among the young -- in terms of enthusiasm, activism, and so on -- is quite high. This generation is highly politicised and whether that goes into electoralism or elsewhere the energy is there. It's certainly not going into the system, as it's clearly not working.

You were all spared so many bad posts by my tempban

But the good news for me if Biden is the nominee is I don’t have to pay attention to the rest of the campaign because all of it will be stupid and the possible outcomes will be “quite bad” and “very very bad”. Let the boomers who like Biden get out the vote.

we've moved on from all that stuff since your ban, we're all gonna die

Actual voting can, and should, proceed with heavy emphasis on mailed ballots. To the extent that in-person polling is unavoidable, great attention should be paid to social distancing—keeping all citizens three feet apart from each other in line and inside the voting area. Get-out-the-vote campaigns—whether through door-knocking or canvassing shopping malls—should also entail proper social distancing. (The same is true of the U.S. Census, which is a vital component of future congressional mapping, and is set to commence on April 1.)

We are “in uncharted territory,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on March 2nd. He’s right—but not only as concerns COVID-19, but also our entire political process. The United States has already struggled with cyberdisruption of its elections, trolls posting phony campaign material, and violent threats against journalists at political rallies. Now Americans face a virus that threatens to undermine their most sacred constitutional process. And the virus won’t wait for primary elections to proceed, conventions to gather, or November ballots to be cast, and it could well exploit those events, spreading as wildly in the United States as it did after Iran’s elections.

The United States can’t afford to follow the ayatollah’s example, holding national elections as its epidemic soars. The government can’t tell the people to avoid public gatherings, work from home, stay away from school, all the while holding gigantic political rallies and conventions. We must swiftly abandon the old way of garnering voters, and invent a new, less contagious one. Time is not on our side.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/11/cancel-us-president-primary-campaign-democrat-coronavirus/

xp: We were gonna die anyway, it's just gonna be a lot more phlegmy than we originally thought.

We must swiftly abandon the old way of garnering voters, and invent a new, less contagious one.

May I suggest...

...

....

Viral marketing?

Youth turnout was up in Texas and Virginia.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/913e616f617ba5f6443013d2ee0f7859/be51063bb58070cd-cb/s1280x1920/adb66d326f78d39dd41574917baad3bcb7ba7987.png

Does that show youth up? Looks like 65+ up in TX and 45-64 up in VA.

Youth turnout is higher in 2020 but was swamped by the increase in older voter turnout

xp
Or, every category up, with youth the least up.

Old people turning out doesn't mean young people didn't turn out.

The raw numbers show a smaller increase.

Even more old people turning out doesn't mean that more young people didn't turn out.

this'll be fun

don't count on them, they will break your heart every time. if biden is most popular among the olds then he should be the nominee because the olds vote. it's that simple imo.

Last comment: Yes, more young people turned out. But no reason to crow, as they under-performed everyone else in the turnout contest.

I don't think whoever made the chart was crowing.

just would like to point out that young people are not necessarily less politically engaged or enthusiastic (probably the opposite), but they are on average poorer, less stably housed, have less flexibility in their work schedules, are more likely to have young kids in the house... election day should be a national holiday. at the very least access to early voting, voting by mail, other remote voting options should be robustly expanded

absolutely.

Young ppl are more likely to have young kids in the house? What age are we considering as “young” here?

average age of first baby in usa is 27, for working class mothers it’s 23

ppl/stats keep leaning on 18-29 as a group so, check

I'm suddenly quite a bit more interested in this weekend's debate

$100 says it’s called off

naw it won't be

Any move that even vaguely looks like canceling elections is going to be avoided at all costs.

I'm interested because it's actually moderator-less, right? is it just going to be the two of them slugging it out in an empty room? that will be insane

I had a proud moment earlier today when my wife watched Bernie give his statement on the virus and she (no Bernie fan) exclaimed "I miss people in charge who talk like this!" It may well have been the first time she listened to him for any length of time and realized he speaks like a measured, intelligent adult.

idk about moderator-less but certainly live audience-less

I'm suddenly quite a bit more interested in this weekend's debate

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Thursday, March 12, 2020 8:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yup. when I think of the 2.5 million homeless children in this country, or the 87 million people who are underinsured or uninsured, and then think about the people I see every day at work, or who live in my neighborhood — and I consider the extreme but necessary steps we will need to take, like closing schools and essentially allowing commerce to grind to a halt — I think I am a single-issue voter whose issue is basically “what would you be doing right now?”

^^^^^^^

Right now in Michigan, Bernie organizers are getting 100s of people signed up to provide housing, transport, food, etc to any student in need following #Covid_19 school closings. Hours after a disappointing MI election, we’re doing mutual aid work. #NotMeUs is more than a slogan.

— Jeff Sorensen (@jeffreysorensen) March 12, 2020

That is great