'A dying empire led by bad people': Poll finds young voters despairing over US politics

[TheProle]

Young voters overwhelmingly believe that almost all politicians are corrupt and that the country will end up worse off than when they were born, according to new polling from Democratic firm Blueprint obtained exclusively by Semafor.

The sour mood points to potential trouble for Joe Biden, who is struggling with Gen Z and younger Millennials in polls compared with 2020, and needs to convince them he can be relied on to improve their lives.

As part of the online poll of 943 18-30-year-old registered voters, Blueprint asked participants to respond to a series of questions about the American political system: 49% agreed to some extent that elections in the country don’t represent people like them; 51% agreed to some extent that the political system in the US “doesn’t work for people like me;” and 64% backed the statement that “America is in decline.” A whopping 65% agreed either strongly or somewhat that “nearly all politicians are corrupt, and make money from their political power” — only 7% disagreed.

“I think these statements blow me away, the scale of these numbers with young voters,” Evan Roth Smith, Blueprint’s lead pollster, told Semafor. “Young voters do not look at our politics and see any good guys. They see a dying empire led by bad people.”

https://www.semafor.com/article/05/28/2024/a-dying-empire-led-by-bad-people-poll-finds-young-voters-despairing-over-us-politics?utm_campaign=semaforreddit

[Fullduplexxx]

1. So get involved and fix it instead of whining about it

[TheProle]

2. Obviously.

The question is how to get them productively involved with a reasonable expectation that they can effect change.

[Fullduplexxx]

4. The same way anyone else who ran and won

[TheProle]

7. So basically:

"Fuck you; figure it out."

Got it.

[BannonsLiver]

8. Local govt is always the best place to start

But it’s not glamorous and is often less tribal so people have been conditioned to pay little attention to it.

[Squaredeal]

3. They're too wound up in their own personal lives and don't have any time to pay attention to the state of the nation.

Start mandatory national service for all 18-year-olds, male and female, so they have some stake in our country.

[Ninga]

5. They are befuddled. Most things are handed to them. They are the ones we have been waiting for.nt

[flamingdem]

6. They need better information

so much is received on social media and it's 75% propaganda.

[Model35mech]

9. They'll hate this, but I remember the 60's. Teens were in dispair back then

The Cold War (certainty of yer ass becoming radioactive ash), recession after recession from late 50's into the 60's then a decade pf inflation. Pesticides (think Silent Spring), Cuban Missle Crisis, Civil Rights, the War (not War) in Vietnam and its subthreads: The Draft, My Lai, Agent Orange/operation Ranch Hand, The Summer of 68, JKK dead, Martin Luther King dead, RFK dead, The riots at the Democratic National Convention, The Population Bomb, the 1st Earth Day the 1967 Arab Israeli war etc. etc. etc.

Yes, these are troubling times. Really. Young folks really do face tough times. We all struggled. As students, we pushed for environmental protections... after years of effort we got the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, The Endangered Species Act (God Bless the Sand Darter) under a Republican President! We set up the climate for the Equal RIghts Amendment. We helped set up the political climate in which Roe V Wade made it through SCOTUS.

Our outspokeness helped put America back on a path toward moral relationships within our nation and with countries that aren't capitalism deluded autocrat leaning democracies. We brought you: The Smothers Brothers, That Was the Week That Was, and when it wasn't anymore, we set the nation up to laugh at its own insanity via Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Strange that Lawerence Welk is still replayed in Milwaukee and most people don't remember TWTWTW (TW# as we called it). But that's reality.

I don't want to lecture young people. I don't want to brag about Boomers. I just want to point out that life in modern times is a huge challenge. The exploiters are out there intently exploiting. The rich are out there intently buying off governments. Fear of Nukes and Nuclear Winter won't end unless there are no nukes, and that really is quite unlikely to happen without young people's commitments to a shared future with the rest of the world.

My experience leaves me open seeing the anxiety and fear presented by rapidly changing unpredictable future by people who can't afford to live NOW.

But, I do believe in young people. They -WILL- find a way through this, because the alternative--not getting through this is absolutely unthinkable. Really, they will carry humanity through all this.

All I can really offer is an ask: for them to be careful not to kill themselves as they charge the guard-rails that they -must- crash. The future is REALLY going to NEED THEM alive and solving problems.

[misanthrope]

10. It takes exceptional character to withstand corruption's allure in politics

It so often starts small, then becomes larger as time passes. First their egos become addicted to the rush, to the deference and constant stroking. Then they begin to feel a little impervious and rationalize their efforts to "help" peers and pals, then finally themselves as the swaddling of rationalizations mount.

As someone whose political awareness was constructed when I was in grade school watching the Watergate hearings then catching up to the details through MAD magazine, I can't fault these kids. Such a perspective circumvents the naiveté that allowed things like the Reagan Revolution's undercutting of a preceding POTUS bearing refreshingly high character.

And those who are more acutely aware of politicos' susceptibility to corruption should be more determined to devise and maintain safeguards to our system. And to hold feet to the fire.