Younger voters giving GOP the cold shoulder

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Houston Chronicle

Ben Bronson, 18, is the kind of young voter Republicans have attracted for decades. A Texas Tech University freshman and Fort Worth-area native, he's a deer hunter who hates Hillary Clinton and opposes gay marriage. But he's disappointed with the Iraq war and stops short of identifying with the GOP.

Conrad Camit of Houston is the son of committed Republican immigrants from the Philippines. A former political independent, the Texas A&M University graduate, 33, said the war sealed his conversion to the Democratic Party.

Also, he said, "growing up in an immigrant family, you tend to be supportive of a pro-immigrant stance, which is definitely a Democratic ideal," said Camit, now communications vice president of the Harris County Young Democrats.

These Lone Star State voters reflect a national trend: Exit polls from recent elections and survey research show the nation's young people are less likely to embrace the Republican Party than any generation since the '60s.

The reasons for the GOP's woes among under-30 Americans include frustration with the long-running Iraq war, libertarian or liberal views on social issues, which clash with Republican social conservative orthodoxy, and changing demographic trends that have created the most ethnically and racially diverse group of young people in American history.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5212398.html

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Members of the Harris County Young Democrats meet in Houston. More younger voters are registering as Democrats or becoming independents, shying away from the Republican Party.
BILL OLIVE: FOR THE CHRONICLE

And this from Texas!

[Doctor Cynic]

1. I'm sure Karl is kicking himself...

...creating a coalition of religions fundies, chicken-hawk neocons, and anti-government zealots did buy them several elections, but they've probably doomed their chances of winning the congress for generations to come.

[Olney Blue]

11. Rove did indeed do that, but I doubt he is kicking himself.

Introspection is not a trait of this cabal. Rove had one job- get the blivet elected. The good of the country and the future was never considered.

[AllyCat]

17. Nah. That's what rigged elections will fix. KKKarl doesn't believe in mistakes n/t

[Zambero]

20. Mistake? No way!

It's just another "unintended consequence".

[DrDan]

18. well, if he is kicking himself, I doubt

he feels it with all that money crammed in his pocket . . .

[Bicoastal]

2. These are exactly the sort of valuable Democratic voters...

...who never show up on nationwide polls. They're like me--no landline, only cells!

And they hate the GOP more than ever...

[Froward69]

30. thank you

the fact that those kids have not been polled shows the skew in polls. Current polls are not to be believed.

[rooboy]

3. I would have thought lots of young Americans...

would want to walk around wearing suits and having sex through a hole in the bedsheet...
:sarcasm:

[cstanleytech]

4. Well hopefully only a small handful of gullible people

will believe them about their claims of being the "moral party" or the "fiscally conservative party" and they won't regain control of the government for atleast the next 20 years or so.

[Demeter]

5. Just What the Democrats Need--Southern Bigots

I'm shaking my head here. The best thing about Johnson's Civil Rights Program was it started to clear the virulently prejudiced out of the Democratic Party, and persuaded the less rigidly thinking over into the Light.

I don't want to go back to Dixiecrats. The Blue Dogs are curse enough to bear.

The beginning is the best time to lay down the party principles: the tent isn't big enough for fist-fights.

[recoveringdittohed]

9. Hey, I resemble that remark (somewhat)

I was raised in the South (Tennessee) and was a Democrat (blue doggish) from 1971-1976, then a Republican 1977-2000 and am now a somewhat progressive Democrat. Two issues pushed me in the direction of the Republicans in the 1970 and one was economic (I wrongly perceived the Republicans as more fiscally responsible).

The other issue was my perception that ethnic and gender politics in the Democratic party of the 1970's was sending a message of white guys, we don't need no stinkin white guys. When Republicans would use affirmative action and reparations as wedge issues, I used to buy it hook, line and sinker. I now think the ideal is equality under the law for all and economic opportunity for all and the Democratic Party is the best political vehicle for those ideals in the USA.

I don't want fist fights in the tent, but I do hope the tent is big enough for disagreement within the Democratic party on issues and a big enough tent to put together a winning political coalition.

[Demeter]

13. Congrats On Your Recovery!

May you be the leading edge of a trend!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

33. Lawdy, Bubba...

I sure do hope there is a passle of people just like you out there.

A Mark Twain quotation that may apply: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

;-)

[babylonsister]

34. It is amazing how smart my folks got as I aged!

:D

[QC]

16. What about other bigots?

Are the ones who made Michigan the most segregated state in the nation unwelcome, or just the southern ones?

[Demeter]

24. Sadly, I Live in Michigan

And a lot of our bigots have deep Southern roots.

PS: They STILL haven't recanted, either. They aren't even thinking of switching to Democrat. Yet.

[Romulox]

26. Detroit is no more segregated than LA

It's just more fragmented.

"East LA" is a part of the city of Los Angeles, and its terribly segregated. If East LA was incorporated into its own city tomorrow, it would easily be majority Hispanic, and LA would therefore become "more segregated" without the population changing in any way at all.

[Romulox]

27. Btw, do you have ANY evidence the people of Michigan are any more bigoted than anyone else

Or is this just another stop on Howard Dean's/Barack Obama's "kick Michigan while it's down" tour? :eyes:

[QC]

38. Yes, I do have some evidence that Michigan is highly segregated,

now that you mention it.

According to the U.S. Census, Michigan is the most segregated state in the nation. Five of the 25 most racially segregated metropolitan regions in America — Detroit, Saginaw, Flint, Benton Harbor, and Muskegon — are in Michigan. The next closest state is New York, with four. Two more Michigan metropolitan regions — Grand Rapids and Jackson — almost made the top 25.

Census figures also show that Michigan has the most segregated public school systems in the nation. For example, 613,000 students attend public schools in 83 school districts in Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties, according to an analysis by the National School Boards Association. Roughly 180,000 of those students are black and 82 percent of black students are enrolled in just three districts — Detroit, Highland Park, and Inkster. Some 90 percent of white students — 540,000 kids — are enrolled in Detroit-region schools where 10 percent or less of the students are black.

http://www.mlui.org/growthmanagement/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16480

[Romulox]

42. Objection! Answer is not responsive to the question!

I didn't ask you if the school system was segregated (as are a vast majority of school systems across the country are.) I asked what made you single out Michigan voters as bigots to the degree they deserved to be singled out. Once again, the schools in East Los Angeles are overwhelmingly hispanic, yet because of LA's size, these children are considered to be "integrated" with white and asian school children in movie stars' neighborhoods.

Finally, you are aware, aren't you, that Arab Americans are counted as "white" by the US Census Bureau? So according to the census bureau, Dearborn, Michigan is "highly segregated" despite the fact that we have the largest population of middle easterners outside of the middle east. :eyes:

[QC]

44. What caused the white flight from Detroit?

Did bigotry have something to do with it, or are you going to give me the old chestnut about people preferring to live among "their own kind"?

What I was responding to originally, of course, was the common idea that some other place--generally one far, far from the speaker--has some sort of monopoly on bigotry. It's a very dangerous idea, but quite popular.

[Romulox]

45. What caused white flight from NYC? Atlanta, Ga? Los Angeles, Ca?

Your analysis would be more powerful if you had a broader perspective.

[QC]

46. Racism is a major factor in white flight.

There--is that so hard to say?

[Romulox]

47. I think you have painted yourself into a corner, and are latching on to ANY justification now

I also note you didn't respond to any of my substantive points. My guess is that you have shared everything you know about the subject.

[QC]

48. As I said above,

my initial objection was to pretending that one part of the country has a monopoly on racism, which I believe to be a very dangerous delusion.

I don't want our party to become a haven for bigots of any description.

[Alcibiades]

51. Before you get all offended about someone assuming

Michiganders are racist, you should imagine what it's like to be southern.

I don't think Michigan, in this example, was selected because people think it's a racist state. It's probably because the poster clicked on the profile button and noted that the person to whom they were responding was from Ann Arbor.

That being said, it's somewhat silly to claim that school segregation does not mirror (i.e. reflect) racism. School segregation is based on housing patterns, on where people choose to live. Racist people don't want to live where the people they are racist against live. For example, a racist being relocated to my area, Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, would probably move to Chapel Hill. They would say it's because of the "good school system," of course, but per student spending in my town is nearly the same. "Good schools" becomes a euphemism for "no Negroes."

Not saying that people in Michigan are racist (lived there for five years, lovely state with lovely people) to any greater degree than people elsewhere. It's just silly to maintain that school segregation as it is today is not measurably related to social racism.

Anyway, the really ugly racism as we know it is not restricted to any geographical area. The vast majority of young people are not racist today--being openly racist is simply unacceptable, and being openly homophobic is becoming so. This is a good trend.

[Romulox]

52. No, I don't agree. The numbers don't bear this out

Los Angeles County, California

Population, 2006 estimate 9,948,081
White persons, percent, 2005 (a) 74.1%
Black persons, percent, 2005 (a) 9.7%
American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2005 (a) 1.1%
Asian persons, percent, 2005 (a) 13.1%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent, 2005 (a) 0.3%
Persons reporting two or more races, percent, 2005 1.7%
Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent, 2005 (b) 46.8%
White persons not Hispanic, percent, 2005 29.5%

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html


Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit)

Population, 2006 estimate 1,971,853
White persons, percent, 2005 (a) 53.7%
Black persons, percent, 2005 (a) 42.0%
American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2005 (a) 0.4%
Asian persons, percent, 2005 (a) 2.3%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent, 2005 (a) 0.0%
Persons reporting two or more races, percent, 2005 1.6%
Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent, 2005 (b) 4.6%
White persons not Hispanic, percent, 2005 49.7%

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26/26163.html


Note that LA County is far more white that Wayne County, Michigan (where Detroit is located, and the bulk of Michigan's population live.) Also note the bizarre way the census bureau breaks down ethnicity. Arab Americans, who live in Michigan in their hundreds of thousands, are counted as "white, not hispanic" as are all white ethnics. :wtf:

According to the census bureau, if 10,000 more Iraqi refugees come to Michigan as planned, the state will become "more white"! :eyes:

[Alcibiades]

53. Not quite sure what you're getting at

Is the point that people in LA are racist? Or not? Or that school segregation does not reflect racism? I'm arguing it's at least partly an epiphenomenon, exacerbated by social class, for sure.

I do agree that the Census reporting should be updated to include Arab as a category. It's probably the case that, when they came up with the current system, most of the US simply didn't have enough Arabs to warrant a separate category.

[fujiyama]

50. I'm just curious where you got that from?

It wouldn't necessarily surprise me, but I'd like a link to show that.

[Skittles]

6. Ben Bronson sounds like a complete dickwad

two guys or gals getting married: bad
slaughtering deer for entertainment: FUN!!!!

[bigscott]

8. no kidding

I am not a big Hillary fan but how does an 18 year old (NEVER voted before) actually HATE HRC? she was out of the WH when he was 11 years old. She is a senator from NY so really has NO impact on him. So how does he come to HATE her? just wondering

I would rather love a man than shoot a deer

[sendero]

10. Because.

... the right wing hate machine has been working on her for 15 years. If you asked the kid WHY he hates HRC, he will not be able to give a cogent answer.

There are MILLIONS of them out there, something a lot of folks here just don't get.

[bigscott]

15. that is exactly my point

the Democratic party thinks they won over these people but they have not. when it comes down to actually voting for a candidate, they will pull the lever AGAINST HRC or some other Dem that they have been programmed to "Hate". not FOR a change, but AGAINST an ingrained hatred.

I just dont buy that these converts are any more than fair-weather poll responders!

[erpowers]

29. I Had Similar Thoughts

When I first started reading the article it seemed to me that some of the people who are coming over to the Democratic Party this year may only be doing it for a short period of time. My first thought was to ask the question is this really a good thing are is it just a sign of how much some of these young Republicans do not want to go to Iraq. Once a Democrat gets in and cleans up the mess in Iraq will these Republicans just jump back into the Republican Party or are they really planning on staying in the Democratic Party. So, should Democrats really be happy about this? I am not trying to put a downer on Democrats. If these kid really like the Democratic Party that is great. However, if they just want to vote against the Republican Party so they do not have to go to war is that a really good thing?

[Odin2005]

21. Hey, I'm a hunter and I resent that comment.

:rant:

[Indenturedebtor]

7. Anyone know how to register people to vote?

When I was in college I remember voter registration booths being set up by nfp organizations... how does one do that?

It would be good if we could all do this for a couple of days, a few months before the election at our local college campuses. I wouldn't have voted in a couple of elections back then had these booths not been around. I was REALLY busy and REALLY irresponsible ;)

[comtec]

12. you just need a bunch of register to vote forms

What you are doing, basically, is getting people to fill out the registration form, that's it. You can also provide the service of taking their forms to the post office for mailing/registration, but that's the extent to what you are legally allowed to do.

There is a big kerfuffle about this years ago, where the GOP would set up booths PRETENDING TO BE NON-PARTISAN, the major problem was that AFTER they were done registering people they would THROW AWAY ALL DEMOCRATIC PARTY FORMS!!!!!

So the net result was all these kids thought they were registered weren't and all the ditto heads were.

That aside, you need to also be careful that every reg form is sent, because there is a law (ironically passed by the gop) that FINES YOU if you misplace ANY reg forms. So you are probably better off telling the kids to mail it themselves, after you give them the forms to fill out. (BTW that bill was written to screw all the non-profits that do REAL non-party registrations).

[JohnnyLib2]

14. I see that glass as half full, not empty.

How many of us, at 18, reflected the ignorance and bigotry we had always heard? I, for one. Bring ol' Ben and others into the fold, let them test out a few comments that won't go over in wider circles, and foster some change.

JL2, unrepentant optimist

[mark414]

19. my generation will succeed where previous generations have failed

[progressoid]

22. Bleech. They can have Ben Bronson.

We don't need that kind of crossover.

[Odin2005]

23. The under 30 demographic is very strongly Democratic

It's the younger Boomers and older Gen-Xers that keep voting for the Pukes.

[Romulox]

28. The under-30 crowd may be Democratic, but it's also considerably MORE CONSERVATIVE

than previous generations.

Thus these "young Democrats" are primarily agitating for the status quo.

[Odin2005]

31. "MORE CONSERVATIVE" Any proof for this assertion?

Most things I've heard say that folks my age (college age) lean left economically and socially.

[Romulox]

32. Admittedly, my observation is anecdotal.

But from a practical POV, it's elementary to observe that "lean left" means "centrist" in the context of modern politics, which tends to support my point.

Another good indication is the overwhelming anemia of modern youth culture, despite the "liberating" influence of technology on the means of cultural production.

[Odin2005]

39. That's because my generation isn't that interested in culture, it's interested in technology.

It's a cyclical thing based on what I've read. The "Lost" Generation and the WW2 Generation created a new technological-institutional paradigm in the 30's and 40s. The Korean War Generation (the Beats) and the Boomers created a new cultural paradigm in the 60s and 70s. Now Generation X and my Millennial Generation is creating a new technological-institutional paradigm to replace the technological-institutional paradigm created by the Lost and WW2 generations.

[Romulox]

43. You *are* joking, aren't you? For one thing, technology IS culture

For another, I see no evidence for this assertion whatever. Finally, you've lumped two generations together (X and Y), but Generation X is well known for making its mark in music, literature, and the arts.

Nice theory though.

[Norrin Radd]

36. Gen-Xer here! please put that broad brush away.

All of my friends would never vote republic.

[Odin2005]

40. What I've read says that older Gen-Xers lean Republican and...

...younger Gen-Xers lean Democratic. I'm guessing this in because the older Gen-Xers came of age when Reagan was President and the younger Gen-Xers came of age when Clinton was president.

[Alcibiades]

54. Hard to say

This could also be in part due to differing party affiliations of their parents. People tend to inherit their parents' political party affiliation. If there were differences between the party affiliations of those born in the 1960's and the 1970's, maybe so.

Gender also confounds the issue. I think most of the supposed "increased Republicanism" of Gen X has been among Gen X men. Makes some sense, as they came of age politically at the peak of the drift of white men away from the Democratic Party.

[Vogon_Glory]

37. The Problem With The Under-Thirties Is That They Don't Vote

The problem with the under-thirties is that they DON'T vote. The voter turnout among the under-thirties is MISERABLE. If even half the kids who supposedly were registered during Howard Dean's slacker turnout had taken a holiday from slacking and bothered to vote in 2004, the John F. Kerry administration would be neck-deep in investigating and prosecuting the corruption left to him by his feckless predecessor from Texas.

[Odin2005]

41. Youth voter turnout has gone up in the last couple of elections.

Based on what I've read youth voter turnout should continue to climb as Generation X ages out of the Young Adult demographic and more and more by us folks of Generation Y/Millennial Generation come to dominate that age bracket.

[Vogon_Glory]

55. I Hope You're Right

I hope you're right. I would love to see a tidal wave of angry, motivated voters descend on the polls and throw out the corrupt a@@-holes that have FUBAR-ed the US and the planet. The Generation Y age cohort is one that is particularly victimized by GOPster-nomics and right-wing political economy.

When I was in my twenties, I was convinced that our generation (The younger baby-boomers) would change the planet. May Almighty G*d forgive us, we did. We're also the generation that brought you climate change denial, the Iraq War, George W. Bush, and all too soon masive extinctions and ecological devastation.

[Deep13]

25. Deep13 giving GOP the cold finger.

[babylonsister]

35. This is good-whatever it takes, I welcome the converts. nt

[Arugula Latte]

49. So much for Rove's 1,000 Year Reich

The Internet and the Daily Show have played a huge part in this. The younger generation sees through propaganda that fooled my generation of 40-somethings (not me, though :) )