Youth vote

BrntOrngStmpeDe

BrntOrngStmpeDe

1,000+ Posts
""As recently as 2000, the youth vote was evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans. So the phenomenon of the Democrats getting a lion's share of the youth vote is new, and it's really problematic for the Republicans because this generation will continue to vote for 50 years," Levine says."
www.npr.org/2013/03/01/173216890/why-republicans-are-out-of-step-with-young-voters

besides the social issues, Another point they made this morning on the radio is that youth feel like the GOP are good for you once you've made it to the top of the financial ladder but no so good if you are at the bottom or the middle trying to make your way up.

I tend to agree. Most of the GOP effort lately seems to be dedicated solely to preserving the economic capacity of the upper 10% or whatever. Very little of their energy seems to be directed at ensuring that the middle class remains solid.

I love the way that youth voters aren't able to connect the dots between this "Immigration is another issue where young voters are much more likely to align with Democrats." and the 25% unemployment rate they are complaining about.
 
Try to imagine yourself as a 23 year old. Then, go reread the Boy Scouts thread. That's why they won't vote republican. I agree with republicans on economic issues most of the time and often have conversations with young people about how conservative policies will help them if they work hard. It's just really hard for a lot of them to get over the social issues. Republican politicians are pretty tame in their rhetoric about gay issues and other social issues, but that's not were the identity of the party is formed.
 
what does being a 23 yr old have to do with being ok with gays in scouts? I was 23 once and I still wasn't ok with gays in scouts.

I'll answer my own question...todays 23 yrs olds have grown up on a steady diet of Ellen, Will and Grace, etc. Media has been able to saturate their childhood with 'gay is ok'... 'look at Ellen...she's funny....funny people aren't bad therefor gay can't be bad...'

We all know that celebrities make the bessssstes role models
rolleyes.gif
...or at least the most effective ones for young impressionable Gen Y's.

That's the same arguement I'm making on the BSA thread...these young boys are impressionable.

23 yr olds are generally the ones wearing Che' shirts, getting drunk 4-5 nights a week, and hopping into bed with someone new every other week.

While I'm certainly caricaturing 23 yr olds...suffice to say, 23 yr olds don't (and never have, even when I counted myself in that group) have the best track record when it comes to reasoned judgment. Todays 23yr old got their moral compass from HBO....oh and Jon Stewart. That should tell you something.
 
I was talking more about the opinions towards gays in general, not just in scouting. I agree with how you view their minds being shaped by the media. But, that is the new reality for republicans to deal with. The gay genie is out of the bottle and its not going back in for the youth. A lot of the youth of America is brown. Much more so than previous generations. Getting minorities to vote republican should help with the youth vote as well. Solving that problem should be priority number one for the party as it will not exist in its current form in another generation unless serious progress is made.

Asians largely fit the mold of republican voters outside of their race:
In reply to:
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Larry and BOSD, you guys are both correct, but it's a combination of things. Both the GOP and young voters need to use their brains a little more.

1. The GOP doesn't act like it cares about younger voters' financial situation by largely dismissing concerns about skyrocketing tuition (and therefore college debt). They can blab personal responsibility slogans on this issue all they want, but so long as banks, insurance carriers, auto manufacturers/labor unions, and homeowners are getting bailed out with trillions of dollars, those slogans are going to ring hollow. Besides, the GOP doesn't even offer conservative or market-oriented solutions to the tuition problem. Their overall message is "go **** yourself and deal with it." Democrats may not have a good plan either, but they at least give the illusion that they do and don't blatantly act like they don't give a damn.

2. While advocating a pro-business agenda is generally good for jobs, the GOP does a terrible job of making that connection for younger voters. They need to explain how money left in the hands of upper income people has a broad benefit beyond just those people. Supply-side economics is vilified or ignored in public education and college. The GOP needs to teach it to each generation.

3. Larry is right about gay issues and illegal immigration turning young voters off. "Diversity" is celebrated as perhaps the very highest virtue in school nowadays and in the popular culture, and the more "diverse" (meaning the less it has in common with Western European heritage, Christianity, or masculinity) something is, the more it's celebrated. Your average 23 year old has never seen a gay person or an illegal immigrant portrayed in anything but the most positive light. Furthermore, they're surrounded by the children of illegal immigrants, so the issue is a lot more personalized for them. So if a Republican demonizes gays or illegal aliens to a 23 year old, he's demonizing something they have no reason to believe is anything but positive. One other thing, throw the environment into this category. Environmentalism is drilled into most 23 year olds as well.

4. Young voters have been sitting through a 17-year Obama commercial known as public education and college. How the hell should we expect them to vote? If the GOP doesn't like this, it needs to encourage conservatives to enter the education field. Stop leaving the public education realm to the Left. Of course, that phenomenon has been taking place since the '60s. It's not new at all.

What is new is parents being checked out and not giving their kids any moral, intellectual, or ethical background to counter it. I sat through the commercial too, but I had a mom and dad who prepared me intellectually for what was going on. Obviously, I wasn't allowed to be rude to teachers and was required to submit to school authority and discipline, but I listened to them fully aware that a hardcore left-wing political agenda stood behind almost everything they did (whether the teachers themselves knew it or not) and knew to approach what was taught about history, politics, and economics with a high degree of scrutiny and suspicion. I don't think many kids nowadays have that perspective.

4. Kids nowadays have screwed up priorities and have no understanding of money, so the GOP's arguments on money are going to go over their heads. Let's just be honest. A 23 year old who thinks gay marriage is important but moving Social Security toward a private system isn't important is a complete ******* idiot. Something is very wrong.

But who teaches them the importance of money management? Parents don't. Schools, if anything, downplay it. When I hear about a kid borrowing $100K to get a degree in political science (or as my Constitutional Law professor called it the "arts & crafts majors") I can't help but wonder who let this kid do this. Where the hell were his parents? Where were his counselors?

So basically, kids are voting Democratic because the GOP is dumb and because the kids are ignorant. I mostly blame the GOP, because they should know better. The kids have never been taught anything but liberalism. Whose fault is that?
 
Deez -- alas a message to GOP message-carriers to stop behaving like a$$holes falls on deaf ears. One of the gifts of being a true a$$hole is that you think you are just a nice as everyone else, just a lot smarter.
 
Crock,
The ******* factor hurts the Party, but even if they stopped acting like ********, it wouldn't do much by itself to attract young voters.
 
I went to puclic schools k-12 in Austin and cannot remember a single incident of indoctrination on anything political other than the environment. I my public school teaching career in areas that are largely liberal, I have never seen indoctrination other than some of the environmental stuff and diverstiy. To a certain extent, I give the diverstiy stuff a pass because we have to teach 700 kids from very different backgrounds how to get through the day together. I asked my mom who is a conservative teacher that just finished her last year if she ever saw anything blatant in 30+ years. She said no. The teachers in my area are much more conservative than the parents that send their kids to us. The first song they learn in music is God Bless America. I think the problem is a legit concern in some parts of the country but I never see much of it in Texas

I had some pretty damn nutty leftist college professors though. While males are clearly the devil and I should hate myself more because of my privilege. My response is the same every time. Who has a harder job in August when meeting a new group of parents of prek students in a hispanic area, a white male or a hispanic female? Trust me, being a white male hasn't made my life any easier.
 
Larry,

Before commenting, I need to make sure you're clear that if I rip the system, I'm not ripping you. Many teachers I talk to (even those who don't disagree with me) get defensive. I'm fully aware that my criticisms don't exist because of you in particular or even teachers in general. They are systemic issues that are bigger than the individual teachers involved. You're just a guy doing his job the best way he can. In the words of Billy Joel, you "didn't start the fire."

In reply to:
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I'm sure the "youth" voter gain has nothing to do with our society's shift to a more self centered worldview and one party's promising of new and expanded entitlements.

Any young person looking for a job should be against immigration reform. Watch young unemployment skyrocket once inexperienced workers have 13 million more people competing for the same jobs.
 
In my industry I want people that can stand on their own or have been leaders in the group or team setting. People work excellent on a team but may not contribute crap. I don't want worker bee's I want people that will take initiative and lead the horse to water if necessary.
 
Thanks for teaching Larry. I am not sure why anyone chooses the profession any more.

At our public school, the gifted talented classes are good. However, walk into the halls and it is a literal war zone. The teachers are limited in power and the kids know it. The result is chaos.

We are moving our kid into a gifted talented magnet school for high school. It is not the teachers fault, it is a parenting problem in my eyes. Public schools have no future at this point.
 
Larry,

This is an excellent post, and you're right. Teachers often get blamed for the state of our schools, and 90 percent of the time, they are not to blame.

With respect to the behavior, it sounds like a teacher today essentially cannot impose order the classroom. Essentially, if a kid wants to disrupt your class, he can unless you can convince him not to on his own free will. That is a terrible system.

As for academics and giving a 50 even if the kid doesn't turn something in, my wife says the rationale for that is that if a kid through forgetfulness fails to turn something in, a zero would make getting a respectable grade an insurmountable goal. She left the classroom soon before this policy came into effect in her school. This is an area where teachers need discretion. If we're dealing with a little kid who simply forgets to do something, I don't have a big problem with the teacher giving the child an opportunity to turn in the assignment late (with a penalty). However, if the kid is just an unmotivated prick who blew off the assignment, she should have the discretion to give him a zero.

Just out of curiosity, where are these stupid-*** rules coming from? Principals? Districts? TEA? The Legislature?

As for blaming teachers, there is one thing I blame them for. If they know the system is screwed up, then their advocates (Texas State Teachers' Association, Texas Federation of Teachers, and Texas Classroom Teachers' Association) need to stop fighting vouchers. Killing the only option for children to leave something they know to be bad for them is indefensible.

Having said that, teacher groups (Unlike most Republicans, I'm not stupid enough to call them "unions," because in Texas they aren't.) are also blamed as the primary reason vouchers are defeated, which is not true. If it was, vouchers would have become law as soon as the GOP took control of the Legislature.

It's the school districts themselves (especially in rural areas) with their taxpayer-funded lobbyists who kill vouchers. However, if the teacher groups would stop taking the side of a crappy education system, it would free up Democrats in urban areas to support vouchers (as many used to). It would likely be enough to put vouchers over the top.
 
I do think there is a little bit of holdover from the 2008 election as well. I think young people voted for Obama in larger numbers specifically because he was black and wanted to make a statement. I think it is hard to admit you are wrong and therefore many of them doubled down on Obama this time around.

I think the youth inclination toward Dem will be short lived...IF...the GOP does a better job of focusing on middle class jobs. The youth will age out of their rose colored glasses as their need for a job grows.

We see it time and again, people may care about a host of issues but the most critical issue to the largest swath of the public is having a decent job. Everything else is second.

But the GOP message of trickle down doesn't jive with current reality. People see the CEOs pay going up. They see investors doing better but they still see that manufacturing is soft, that entry jobs are soft and that even when they find a job, wages are depressed.

I primarily blame immigration for the soft job market and low wages...the youth blame GOP policies and protection of monied interest.
 
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