Its repeating, almost exactly even down to percentage points, labour support by age demographic here in the UK.
US Politics
- Thread starter Nick 0208 Ldn
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I meant to post the same thing when I woke up but didn't have time.
I think it's inevitable that in 10-15 years time, there will be a definitive shift left of centre in western countries. This current alt-right stuff is just the loudest voices at the minute. The younger generations are undoubtedly more liberal.
The 60's spawned the most starkly liberal young generation ever in contrast to what came before - yet its these people now voting for trump and brexit so dont underestimate the drift to the right which seems to happen in perpetuity as generations age
It's worth remembering however that the counter culture failed, and failed hard. The wave of hope and belief that those starkly liberal youngsters carried was crushed by assassinations, war, and oppression by the machinery of state. JFK gave them hope and had his brains blown out by an assassin. MLK lifted the civil rights movement and was murdered. RFK gave a final dream of a different way, and was snuffed out like his brother. Then George McGovern gave them one last hope of something different and was humiliated in one of the most landslide defeats in US history.
It's not hard to see how that youthful hope for something different was replaced by the belief that the world doesn't work that way in reality. Yet despite it all, despite the setbacks and the swings to the right and towards oligarchy, in many important ways the world has continued to move towards liberalism. Civil rights, LGBT rights, womens rights, all of them have marched on far beyond what was once thought possible. Economic equality is the next big fight, and with the endless greed and blind stupidity of the corporations and super rich, they are ensuring their own defeat is coming.
Nah once people realize that earning $32,400 puts you in the worlds top 1% of earners I suspect true world economic equality is not something they will push for
And once it becomes about the top 1% of the top 1% then its not really about economic equality... its about the 99th percentile moaning about the 0.01% and not really giving a stuff about the other 98%...
People don't give a toss about world economic equality (although globalization will sort that out in the long term anyway), they care about national economic equality and economic equality with comparable states. 'Oh but you earn a thousand times more than a Congolese farmer' really isn't going to distract people from the fact that their own CEO is earning millions while they are struggling to pay their rent.
As for the second part, that's just weird. The top 1% of the top 1% are getting fantastically rich beyond the dreams of anyone in human history and they're doing it off the backs of normal working people. Often by refusing to pay normal working people a living wage, and bribing politicians to make up the slack for them (while simultaneously giving them increasingly nonsensical huge tax breaks). It's nothing more than exploitation and corruption and they can only get away with it for so long.
Luckily for us, instead of just enjoying their good fortune and keeping the situation stable, the stupid greedy bastards keep pushing and pushing and dropping the masses into a harder and harder situation. When that happens theres an invisible line which once crossed results in some form of revolution, be it political or otherwise. We're either at or very close to that line currently, personally I think we've already crossed it. Change is coming.
I don't see any issue with this. It is similar to people employing private security in addition to any protection they may receive from police. Any socialist scheme from Govt should not stop individuals from getting added benefits from elsewhere.
The future is blue.
Maybe I will have time later to explain why this is almost surely a wrong correlation.
Hint: the youth always leant left, almost everywhere in the west. Yet conservatives have always controlled most gouvernment but for the brief period between 1998 and 2005.
There's a difference between a rich person wanting around the clock security, or a rich person wanting a private room in a hospital, and rich people getting their houses saved while poor people's burn. You should be able to pay for luxuries or special services most people don't need, but basic necessities should be for all, not just the privileged.
Err, no they havent. Unless you're talking about one particular unspecified country.
Pretty sure during her first election win, Thatcher won the youth vote.
Basic service by fire department is same for everyone. If someone, in addition to that wants to buy a plan from private company for protection from fire, then how do you stop that? You can't ban it.
So big turnout boost compared to '13, and some massive differential turnout favouring Dems on top of that.
The tipping point is growing older and older.
They haven't at every single point in history in every country but it is a trend in general. Problem is that usually, they shift to the right later on while conservative parties tend to shift a bit to the right in that period.
Even if (and I'm unable to find a source supporting that) one election in one country is statistically irrelevant.
Depends on the country. It is certainly true in the US, but this can be traced back to the growing numbers im minorities, not necessarily their age per se.
i think we are nowhere even close to approaching some invisible line and very little will change over the next generation... Im sure in 20 years time another generation will come along and have the same discussion
Democratic loyalists are hammering Greenwald for going on Fox News. In reality they just don't like his message which other news networks will not give him a platform to say.
Well obviously America is conservative in general anyway by European standards, but the Democrats held control of the house there solidly from the mid 50's to the mid 90's. Britain was heavily socialist straight after WW2 and during the 60's and 70's.
Not really sure where you're seeing that trend.
I'm not surprised to see a self-aggrandiuzing contrarian like Greenwald show up on a propaganda outlet like Fox, where Carlson was obviously quite happy to wind up up and let him do his work for him.
The reality about the Brazile book is that nobody cares. Most people knew the superdelegate system was rigged, we discussed it at length here last year. I doubt common voters care about any of this in contrast to getting rid of Trump and moving on to electing more Dems in 18 and 20.
Look across the UK and America in particular and we've just seen two massive political events aimed squarely at the perceived status quo. Those kind of events don't happen unless there's a huge undercurrent of political dissatisfaction, and that kind of instability only really occurs if there are huge econonic issues or some big exterior threat.
Isn‘t it quite plausible that this is a piece of the anti-establishment theme that can also be found on the left? Maybe they don‘t care specifically about the superdelegates but it‘s adding to the feeling.
I don't see the anti-establishment sentiment at all. Last night's results showed that Dems just want to get rid of Trumpism and get their people into office.
You know, inhistorical analysis rather than the random comparisons of only two countries within a limited timeframe. There's papers bout stuff like that, unfortunately nothing you can link here. If you want to get an idea, look at Wikipedia and how many years Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France and the UK had a left leaning gouvernment since WW2. Even the, in your mind, "socialist" UK had overwhelmingly conservative gouvernments even in the decades following WW2. The only one with a "majority" of left leaning gouvernments is Spain yet in all those countries, the youth has been left leaning bar a few selected elections. Looking at youth election results is thus not meant to make you hope for a more progressive future per se.
And has either resulted in a change to the election system - or the dominance of party politics - or any other kind of revolution?
Nope - the GOP is in charge in the USA and Brexit is being carried out by the same party who was in power before the referendum
Your initial statement was that 'conservatives have always controlled most gouvernment but for the brief period between 1998 and 2005'. This is provably untrue, and any historical analysis of the political systems in the western democracies over the last half a century show a constant struggle between socialism and conservatism, with socialism rising in reaction to inequalities fueled by conservative capitalism, and usually falling away again as econonic inequality falls and people crave more economic growth. That period between 1998 and 2005 (which in truth should be more like 2008) actually represents one of the more stable periods when conservative capitalism was embraced by the centre-left in the guise of neo-liberalism and socialism fell behind drastically. As a result however the tilt towards economic inequality is larger now than its basically ever been in modern times, and the inevitable necessary re-correction will be considerably more dramatic as a result.
Yes very much they have. In the UK pre-Brexit the Labour party was practically dead electorally, although carefully building a groundswell of grassroots support. Post-Brexit Labour are on the verge of electability having already humiliated May and the conservatives. Bear in mind that Labours position on Brexit is largely irrelevant here, its not about the issue its about the anti-establishment event itself.
Same in the US, over the last year we've seen the Bernie Sanders wing of the party building on his unexpected rise to national prominance and establishing networks of activists across the US. We've just yesterday seen the Democrats reaping the first fruits of those efforts, and although the centrist Dems will insist its not as a result of the left, in reality the grassroots activists who have been setting up offices, running low level candidates and encouraging the GOTV efforts are very much responsible for the recovery of a party that took such a terrible beating only 12 months ago.
Uhm...no it isn't. It's just a simple fact. Almost all western European countries except Sweden have been predominantly ruled by conservatives over the past 70 years. That's ....provably true my friend. Yes, there always was a struggle. But it was a struggle conservatives won most of the times.
This could just be a language misundertanding rather than a disagreement as such. If you're trying to say that western governments have been predominantly conservative then you're on much more stable ground, although you're still incorrect when it comes to the US as this graph will show.
Even the presidency has only been Republican for 36 of the last 70 years to the Democrats 34. None of this supports an argument of the US being 'predominantly ruled by conservatives' unless you consider both parties to be conservative.
The reason youth has tended to sway right after starting on the left in the past was down to their own life progress, as they got jobs, bought homes, had kids and just about managed to make ends meet you can see why their views would tilt from the idealism of youth to a more self centred attitude that protected their way of life and ensured their tax bill was lower and was not being frittered away on others who they might perceive to be not trying as hard.
What has changed now in most countries is that the first rung of the ladder in terms of housing and that little bit of job security has gone for almost all school leavers and graduates and they instead find themselves paying through the noses for poor rented accommodation whilst struggling to pay off the debts their education has burdened them with. I just don't see the swing to the right for this generation as being likely at all meanwhile their parents' generation are seeing their wages stagnate and struggling to support the young adult who is unable to leave home as easily as they did whilst watching the government's mishandling of the economy trash any pension savings they may have had and watching their own aging but well off parents struggling with ill health and facing the threat of having to hand over all their savings and property to pay for their end of life care.
I've never made the step to the right and have long been accused of being a champagne socialist when I'm really just a bitter commie but my daughter who is struggling to keep herself above water despite having a good graduate job is too proud to move home and extremely unlikely to ever move right of centre politically. Even my old man who has always been Tory has switched to labour and says he will never go back after seeing how badly the state are treating both him and especially my Mum who is struggling with end stage alzheimers.
May's car crash of a government should spell the end of the road for right wing politics in the UK for a few generations at least and the same is likely to happen in other western democracies as the reality of a system that rewards large corporations and high earners that avoid tax at the expense of the middle classes who bear the burden of funding the rest of the country.
There has been a major shift in the policies of each country's left and right since the 80s/90s.
A few leftists in Europe did make it through entrenched incumbency and when needed through Operation Gladio. Pre-90s, from my memory, this includes Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Mitterand, Brandt, multiple times from Norway's Labour party, multiple times from Denmark's Social Democrats, multiples times for Olof Palme, and probably some more I cannot remember.
But with the Marshall Plan and other factors (strong unions, I'd guess) social-democrat policies were somewhat unchallenged for a decent amount of time even while left and right parties were roughly equal.
I think you forgot to say that Greenwald is paid by the Kremlin. Almost ticked all the boxes.
There are actually a lot of people who care what they are voting for, not just what they are not voting for. That is probably why ratings for the Democratic party are plummeting despite the opposition to Trump. Politics don't begin and end with Trump.
Its funny reading reaction from some of the Trump supporters who are saying that the reason Gillespie lost so badly was that he wasn't passionate about the "MAGA project".
Yeah I think the age thing is more about becoming risk averse due to having more to lose. I think the reason people aren't swinging right now (and like you say are actually swinging left) is simply because for 35 years now the needle has basically only moved right, and now we (and the Americans) are living in countries pushed so far right that the basic needs of normal people simply arent being met. You might not be happy taking a risk for your kids if things feel ok and your long experience shows you that things can always be worse, but if your kids are already suffering and you see no likelihood of improvement then you're much more likely to look for change.
This is way too confidently ("simple fact", "provably true") put for something that doesn't seem self-evident at all. It would be one thing if you said many, but almost all? Finding examples of this not being true is quite simple.
Great post.
Greenwald is a complete Charlatan.
As for Dems - they certainly weren’t plummeting last night. This could be the beginning of one of the big mid term wave elections just like 94, 06, and 10. This will be fueled by wanting to get rid of Trump at all costs and restoring a sense of normality to Politics, in addition to the usual issues like jobs, economics, healthcare etc
The headline swing last night was from +5.3 to +8.9 (VA was a Clinton state after all), Terry McAullife was a popular incumbent, Gillespee won among independents, a plurality (40%) said healthcare was their important issue and 80% of them went for Dems, 50% said Trump wasn't a factor in their vote. I'd be a little wary of generalizing from this.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/2017-elections-exit-polls/index.html
Edit: also - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/14/guardian-washington-post-pulitzer-nsa-revelations
If Kissinger can get a Nobel, the left can start here