No Boomer Generation president (kind of sarcasm)

[arlyellowdog]

The Boomer Generation screwed over all the generations to follow and Donald Trump is the ultimate Boomer. In truth, I was born in 1950 and my friends and siblings are all Boomers. But, I’m anti-Trump and I think some of the young people I know would like that argument. Also, how in hell, out of all the amazing people I knew in school, did that jerk become president ?

[Ocelot II]

1. Every generation has people like that. Exhibit A: JD Vance age 39.

What gets my back up is arguments that divide us by generations.

[Cirsium]

44. Important point

The effort to sow division by pitting one generation against another is reactionary and counter productive. Wealthy people live longer, white people live longer, and wealthy white people of all ages skew Republican. Hence we should expect that the over 65 demographic will skew Republican. Most of my friends, all of whom voted Democratic, are dead. Wealthy people, experiencing less stress, living in safer cleaner neighborhoods where the cops are actually their friend, and having better access to wholesome food and health care, live longer. Voting is easier for them, as well. Try being 75 years old and standing in line to vote for 6 hours in order to cast your vote.

It serves the interests in the infotainment industry to talk endlessly about the supposed different generations, sorting people into categories and then generalizing about people based on that. Within every demographic , within every geographic area, within every age group there are strong and loyal Democratic voters. Beyond that, I firmly believe that 70-80% of the people in the country are potential Democratic party voters.

[thucythucy]

48. Thank you for this post.

And in case no one has said it already: welcome to DU.

[Cirsium]

64. Thanks for the welcome (end message)

.

[getagrip_already]

2. Lets not get carried away here....

I love Kamala, but she was born in October of '64.

Boomers are recognized as having been born between '46 and mid '64.

Just a couple months difference there.

A mere technicality.

But yeah, i still love her youth and vigor compared to the skeevy old weird guy.

[Rebl2]

6. Always

thought the boomer cutoff was 1963.

[jimfields33]

15. Nope! Gex X begins in 1965.

[Bucky]

27. These aren't official designations. The overlap is called Gen Jones

These are marketing terms, not scientific categories. Kamala is, like me, Generation Jones.

[jimfields33]

40. Still not Gen X.

[Bucky]

45. You can pout, but this notion that there are official GenX years is ridiculous

As one business recruitment firm put it:

Researchers and commentators are free to choose their own dates, which variously appear as 1965-1980, 1960-1980 or 1961-1981. Regardless of the exact span, Generation X is widely considered to represent a much smaller population. That makes them easier to discount.

Or it has to do with economic status and "cultural touchstones" as another poster said below. There could be someone born in 1965 who fits all the boomer stereotypes and someone else born in 1962 who missed all the opportunities of the boomers cause of where they lived or what industry they were drawn to. Or maybe one was into classic rock and had lots of older friends and the other was into New Wave or punk.

These are not hard and fast categories like you're treating them. There's no more of a cut off point than there is between generations. They're clusters of categories to explain large groups, not define individuals and the perimeters of their experiences.

I'm a Texan: does than mean I'm a Westerner or a Southerner? That really depends on me more than my exact address.

[jimfields33]

46. I go with facts.

[Bucky]

47. LOL, okay boomer

[jimfields33]

61. I'm a real Gen X!!!!!

[Polybius]

70. Yeah, but even those born in '65--'69 aren't true Xers

They are closer to Boomers than 70's Xers in personality traits. Basically, true Xers were playing with toys and video games in 1983.

[Wingus Dingus]

75. Them's fightin' words--

I was born in '69 and that's quintessential GenX.

[Polybius]

78. You're right before '70, so you will be fine

As long as you played with Transformers and He-Man in the 80's, I'll let you in the honorary Gen X Club. That's the requirement.

[-misanthroptimist]

79. Were it up to me, and it's not...

...I would group generations differently. Bear in mind two things: 1) I have no authority in this field; and 2) any discussion of generations is a discussion of generalities of a given group -plenty of exceptions will exist.

That said, I would get rid of the Boomer designation entirely since there are so many differences between early and late Boomers. I would designate a generation between 1930 and 1955. (I don't have a name for them.) This generation has little to know memory of the Depression and/or WWII, or at the least didn't participate in either due to their age. They grew up watching and hearing about how tough thins were, their elder siblings or parents getting medals and defeating authoritarianism, and getting the moniker "The Greatest Generation". This, based on my observation, affected that group greatly. They felt underestimated and compelled to make their mark in the world and upset long standing traditions. Many of those traditions did indeed badly need changing, of course. But they didn't stop there. They were on a mission to prove their worth and changed everything -including themselves several times. The same people that defined the Sexual Revolution also voted for Reagan in huge numbers just a few years later. The same people that protested Viet Nam approved almost every subsequent military action.

My own observation is that there is a marked difference between Boomers born before 1955 and those born later. The latter group truly is closer to Gen X. I belong to that group and find I have more in common with Gen X than I do Boomers. So do most of the people I've met born after 1955. Again, though, this is a generality and exceptions abound. Worse still, it's based on my own experience and may not represent the world at large. Either way, it's not terribly important who belongs to what generation.

[ArkansasDemocrat1]

37. Show me a Boomer born in late '64 who has the same cultural touchstones as one born in '46.

Woodstock happened when I was in kindergarten, Elvis was a fat Vegas lounge singer who'd made bad movies when I was 10 and JFK's assassination happened before I was born. I'm not a Boomer culturally. My equivalent of Woodstock would be Live Aid - just like the Gen Xs a few months younger born in 65. Michael was our Elvis before he got creepy - wait Elvis got creepy, so yeah the comparison still works and we haven't had a Prez die in office since JFK.

We ARE Generation Jones.

[jimfields33]

41. Irrelevant.

[Crunchy Frog]

65. I was born in early '63, but very similar.

As a kid I thought Woodstock was a little bird in the Peanuts cartoons. I barely knew who Elvis was when his death was announced to us at summer camp (though I now really like his early music). I was around 10 months old when JFK was assassinated, so had no awareness of it or memories connected with it. Wasn't even aware of the assassinations in '68.

I can remember when I was reading a bunch of news articles about how the Boomers were turning 50. And I was in my early 30s.

I'm sorry if I'm offending anyone, but I've never actually self identified as a Boomer.

[Polybius]

71. As a 70's Xer, you're a lot different than us too though

You missed some amazing toys and cartoons in the mid-80's. And video games: to die for!

[Crunchy Frog]

72. On the other hand, I had a very early Xer stepsister,

And our experiences were very similar. We watched the same TV shows and movies, and liked the same music, and had a generally very similar experience of the world.

And I did watch some cartoons in the 80s. And used to play games like Pac Man and Asteroids.

[electric_blue68]

69. I'm in the last year according to the Gen Jones concept of Boomers ('53)...

I totally agree about the cultural touchstone differences between '46, and '64.

Like radio vs TV
Pre Beatles vs The Beatles
No space flight vs space flight
Etc 👍

[Crunchy Frog]

67. Not according to one of the earliest books written about that generation.

https://ew.com/article/1993/05/14/13th-gen-abort-retry-ignore-and-fail/

[Bucky]

29. There isn't a cut off. The date ranges are fuzzy & overlap

These are marketing terms, not scientific categories. Kamala is, like me, Generation Jones.

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. Bill Clinton, GWB, Obama were all Boomers. Nt

[arlyellowdog]

13. Obama was Gen X

But totally missing my point. It’s a way NOW to appeal to the Tik Tok generation

[jimfields33]

16. lol. Not!

[Fiendish Thingy]

17. nope- Obama was Born in 1961 - Boomer. Harris is on the cusp of Boomer/Gen X. nt

[Bucky]

30. Generation Jones

Kamala is, like Barack & me, Generation Jones.

[Eugene]

34. Generation Jones people are alternately called trailing-edge boomers

as opposed to the leading-edge boomers who get all the buzz.

Born in 1963 and have always considered myself a late boomer.

[Bucky]

36. I guess it's legit, since none of it's science

I identify with the Gen Jones label more. Also '63, but, y' know, late 63. I retired in June, but now I'm job hunting

[Fiendish Thingy]

39. Generation Jones is An artificial label that nobody uses

The peak of the baby boom was 1957, the year I was born, and the birth rate didn’t return to pre-war levels until 1964.

[Bucky]

43. All labels are artificial. That's why you put a label on a thing

Someone called a large group of people "boomers" once and now little skaterats at the park have a word to sneer at you with.

Before I was a teacher, I spent 10 years in marketing. I can assure you that people do use the term Generation Jones and make money with it.

[maveric]

14. Trump is a boomer.

[harumph]

4. Yeah, that's not true about the "boomer" generation.

NO. People are people and it's not as if generation X Y Z are generally more enlightened. Boomers and silent gens rode the post war expansion of the US economy and where money is a 'flowin, there's greed a 'growin. The youngest boomers, gen x and miilenials have endured several recessions and the transformation of our economy from a manufacturing base to services based one that generally pay lower wages. Any "wisdom" attributed to younger generations is attributable to the economic reality of their respective young adulthoods. The whole 'boomers fucked everything' has become some kind of lazy shorthand that relieves its adherents of the responsibility to think more deeply about why we're in the present situation.

Donald Trump isn't the 'ultimate boomer' whatever the hell that means - any more than Obama was the ultimate boomer.

[Mariana]

18. The majority of Boomers voted for Trump twice.

You can’t really argue that that didn’t fuck things up for the generations after them.

[Crunchy Frog]

20. Everyone who voted for Trump fucked things up for everyone else, whatever generation they belonged to.

Those of us who didn't vote for Trump don't bear the guilt of those who did.

[Voltaire2]

53. You are part of a set: the generation known as boomers

That set of people were a major factor in electing Trump in 2016, almost electing him in 2020, and will be a major factor again in 2024.
The fact that you in particular didn't vote for Trump is pretty much irrelevant to this particular discussion.

[calguy]

5. The "Boomer" generation didn't screw over the generations to follow

I get the touch of sarcasm here, as I was also born in 1950. As a boomer, I'm proud of the contributions we gave the country, namely civil rights, ending the draft, and lowering the voting age to 18 when we couldn't vote until we were 21, among others.

We failed with some of our dreams, and some of our achievements, like a woman's reproductive choices, have been taken away, because the generations that followed us have been too lazy to show up at the polls to the exercise their power.

Let us hope, as our time on this earth comes to an end, that younger generations begin to see the light and vote to create a country of their choosing like we once did.

[Sky Jewels]

9. The Silent Generation gave us civil rights, for the most part.

[Bucky]

31. And rock & roll

and AIDS. People are complicated. Boomers, X, Generation Jones, and other such short hands are marketing terms, not sociological terms.

[Sky Jewels]

33. Very true. It's all sort of silly.

[Big Blue Marble]

54. What does AIDS have to do with its?

AIDS came from Africa.

[Big Blue Marble]

55. And brought the second wave of feminism,

fighting for ERA. They were the leaders of anti-war movement as well. They
and the early boomers literally and single handedly changed American culture for the better
loosing our sexual mores and increasing tolerance. It was an amazing time of change.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. They broke for Reagan in both 1980 and 1984.

[Crunchy Frog]

60. I wasn't old enough to vote in 1980, and proudly voted for Mondale in 1984.

Am I expected to accept responsibility for the Reagan presidency?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

63. Were you asked to?

Let it fly if it don’t apply.

[Crunchy Frog]

66. I thought I belonged to the "they" category that you referenced in your previous post.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

68. You do, apparently, but "broke for" in political contexts tends to mean that a majority of the cohort mentioned

supported the object in question (in this case, Reagan). It can be helpful when talking about demographic trends.

[Wicked Blue]

35. I'm a boomer

I was born in 1952, and I am sick and tired of the media and others blaming Boomers for everything that's wrong in this country.

Dammit, we tried to fix things!! We got efforts going on the environment, protested and helped force an end to the Vietnam War, opposed racial discrimination and started the wave of feminism that continues today. We boycotted and worked to help force the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Some of us chose low-paying careers in the hope of doing some good in the world, careers in social work, for example. I went into journalism - and at times could barely afford food or rent - because I thought I could highlight issues of significance. Such as local recycling efforts and community protests against dumping of toxic wastes (in NJ).

When I was in college, I couldn't get a credit card because I was female. I couldn't get a job driving a school bus because that was for men only. I couldn't get a job delivering prescriptions for a pharmacy because I was female and therefore couldn't do "heavy lifting." As if a bottle of pills weighed 50 pounds. I couldn't get a job at the post office because "heavy lifting."

I did manage to become the first female ice cream truck driver in NJ as far as I know.

When I was in high school we were told the only career choices for women were teaching, secretarial work and nursing. Or becoming a beautician, waitress or sales clerk. The guidance counselors wanted young women who qualified for college to apply to "teachers college" only.

When I first got into journalism, very few women worked as reporters, and they tried to shuffle us off to the "social" section of the papers. We pushed back.

If people want to blame us for problems that exist today, take a look at our parents' generation. They had the G.I. Bill, low mortgage rates and taxes, and were able to afford homes and support families on a single income.

It was Ronald Reagan who led the charge to raise college tuitions to levels that the middle class could no longer afford. It was his generation that cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, leading to the vast economic inequality we experience today. It was his generation that subtly retaliated against feminism by keeping wages so low that it began to take two incomes to afford a house and a family. And as a result, young people today have difficulty even affording rent, let alone a mortgage, and face astronomical costs for child care.

Please allocate some of the blame where it really belongs.

[jimfields33]

42. Then why did they insist we use plastic bags instead of paper?

That definitely was a boomer generation thing.

[Wicked Blue]

49. It was the corporations! They thought using plastic bags would save money

Corporations will do anything for a profit, including poison the environment and kill whistleblowers.

Why are people so eager to blame my generation? Media brainwashing?

[raging moderate]

52. Yes! And WE were told that plastic bags would SAVE the environment!

The corporations said they would melt down the used plastic bags and make new ones, using the same plastic over and over again, if we would bring the plastic bags to recycling bins. "Paper or Plastic?" was the constant question to us. "Choose plastic - SAVE A TREE!"

[jimfields33]

62. Did they stand up and say, "no. The trees will be fine."

[3catwoman3]

76. Did you ever notice that no one EVER told a 5 foot...

…90 pound woman that she couldn’t be a nurse because she might have to logroll a 300 pound bedridden stroke patient so their bed linens could be changed?

Yeah - never.

[LisaM]

7. I don't think we are ever going to have a President born in the 1950s.

We have had early Boomers (1940s) and late Boomers (1964), but no one born in the 1950s. It doesn't really mean, anything, I guess. It's just odd.

I always understood the Boomer to be between 1946 and 1964, but I find that to be pretty artificial as a measure, since early and late Boomers don't have very many similar experiences.

[Crunchy Frog]

23. Technically it would be possible to have a pair of identical twins,

one of whom is a Boomer, and the other of whom is a Gen X. It's a pretty arbitrary cutoff.

[LisaM]

25. It is, and it really encourages generational bashing, IMO.

There is an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story where he says the mother in the story had more in common with her great-grandmother's generation than with her son's. I think that's true. Generations are better defined by circumstances than by any other metric.

[Wicked Blue]

38. Some of us were idealists hoping to save the world

and never amassed the kind of money that could help them get into serious politics.

[Sky Jewels]

8. Kamala Harris is a Boomer.

The most-used cut-off is the end of 1964, the year she was born.

[arlyellowdog]

11. She's a cusper

[Sky Jewels]

28. Yep. I was born a bit more than a year after she was, and

and I don't really feel a part of any generation. I mean, I like Nirvana well enough, but I'm just not a classic Gen Xer, like those born in the 70s. As Kurt sang, "Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind."

[Bucky]

32. She's a Joneser

Generation Jones

[WarGamer]

12. She looks so young and is so energetic most people don't realize she will be 60 on Election Day.

[WarGamer]

10. Born in 1964... VP Harris is also a Boomer...

Trump's a boomer... Harris is a boomer... Vance is an asshole... I mean millennial.

[Crunchy Frog]

19. Kamala is a late boomer, as am I.

How about we evaluate the individual, rather than reacting to an arbitrary label slapped on them?

[valleyrogue]

24. Yes, she is a Baby Boomer.

The cohort, the only one recognized by the US Census, is called the Baby Boom generation solely because of the high birthrates of the postwar era, which started to noticeably decline in 1965. Kamala Harris and Barack Obama are Baby Boomers.

What events that went on in the world or popular culture trends have nothing to do with the label of this generation. It is entirely because of the high birthrates. The peak year of the cohort was 1957, which belongs in the second half of the Baby Boom generation.

[valleyrogue]

22. Trump, Bush II, and Clinton are the exact age.

Trump was born in June, Bush II in July, and Clinton in August, all in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom (1946-1964).

The Boomer generation did not "screw" over the other generations. I suppose you actually think this generation was responsible for getting Reagan into the White House in 1980 (never mind those born in 1963 and 1964, the last two years of the cohort, were not old enough to vote), and not their parents or even their grandparents (some 5 million people born in the 19th century were still alive in 1980).

When Trump was born had nothing to do with him being a jerk. Being born into privilege is what did it.

[CousinIT]

26. Boomer here. It's true at least based on my former friends from high school...

...they're ALL MAGAts. I looked them up when I was on FaceButt (I have since removed my account) and they were disappointing as hell.

I don't know WTF happened to these people.

As for myself, THIS BOOMER has never and will NEVER vote Republican. I've been on here since 2001 and vote every election - FOR DEMOCRATS.

I'm not offended. If "No Boomer POTUS" works to get young people to vote for Harris, DO IT.

[Wicked Blue]

51. My friends from high school and college are gung-ho Democrats

and I choose to not associate with those who are not.

Though I almost never go on Facebook, it was heartwarming yesterday to see so many friends' posts cheering Kamala Harris and continuing to denounce the Orange Felon.

[CousinIT]

73. You're so lucky.

I could have stayed in touch or gotten in touch with some of my friends from school. But they all went Christofascist and MAGA. And I'm not stepping into that!

[Wicked Blue]

74. That is such a shame

I grew up in NJ about 20 miles from NYC, so maybe that explains my classmates' politics.

[WhiteTara]

50. I'm so grateful that the next generation is picking up the mantle

I've gone to Democratic meetings for decades and the youth presence has been slight. I'm so happy to sit in the back of the room while they do the work.

[poozwah]

56. doomers

born in 1949, i qualify as a boomer. our time has past……..THANKFULLY! it is time for new ideas and new priorities.

[mucholderthandirt]

57. I'm technically a boomer.

But I don't really feel like it. Born in '58, grew up in a different era than earlier boomers. I was just a tad too young for the hippie generation, too old for the yuppies. Caught between, never fit in. I believe that boomers need to be broken up into other designations. My brother born in '59 (I was early in the year, he was later in the next year, so almost two years difference) was more like me, but my sister born in '61 was really a different generation. The brother born 13 months after her was more her generation, and the two sisters who came later were totally different from the rest of us.

So, boomers aren't one monolithic group, we have a lot of variation. Bill Clinton to me was more of a boomer, he was old enough to have the hippie experience. He's only a dozen years older, I think. I have an aunt and uncle his age, to me it's weird to consider them anything like me, generationally

At any rate, people of any generation can vote in ways that seem to be destructive, so we can't lump them all into one thing. Not all boomers are conservative freaks. Some are so liberal we don't even really fit with Democrats.

[Metaphorical]

58. Generational Confusion

In 1991, Sociologists William Strauss and Niel Howe (S&H) wrote a book called The Fourth Turning, where they introduced the idea that generations tend to follow distinct patterns, and where they first laid out all of the Generation A, B, C nonsense going back some 400 years. Their thesis was that population patterns (based primarily on a demographic measure called adjusted fertility rate, which is more or less the number of children who survived past infancy of a woman over her lifetime) followed a clear sinusoidal period of around 36 years (peak to trough and back). Their contention was that because this was a regular cycle, it should have been measured from midpoint to midpoint In this case from around 1946 to around 1964, with the midpoint peak being in 1955.

Now, this is complicated by five factors:
1. The Baby Boom generation was anomalous in that it marked a period where fertility rates overall fell from an average of about 6-7 children per family, to the more recent regime where it was about 1-2 children per family.
2. Infant Mortality was also in the midst of falling, which also affected the average life expectancy (which rose proportionately to the drop off of infant mortality.
3. This marked the period during which women's rights became a major societal factor - more women were better educated, which has a major impact on the number of children that they have.
4. The pill was introduced in 1958, which caused the number of children born to drop dramatically.
5. The population went from largely agrarian in 1900 to mainly urban by 2024, where the cost of raising children has grown dramatically.

I've long been of the belief that, because of this, the "Boomers" should have been measured from about 1936 to1954. This is consonant with cultural phenomenon - most of the first real rockers were all born in within a few years of one another between 1935 and 1938, while 1955 saw the birth of most of the major leading figures in the tech boom such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc., - these were major inflection points where birth rates hit their nadir and zenith respectively. By that measure, Obama and Harris are in the same cohort both temporally and socially.

It's worth noting as well that after 1971, the birth rate dropped down to about 1.75 children per family, below the replacement rate of 2.1 children, and it only touched that replacement rate again (for a year) around 2007. Since then the birth rate has been dropping steadily, and is now down to 1.66 in the US, and outside of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricon is about 1.45 globally.

Also, if you've ever wondered, this has largely been warped into the Race Replacement Theory by the MAGAt conspiracy theorists- that the population is declining, and soon all the brown people from the Tropics will emigrate to take their place as part of some vast conspiracy. There is a (small) grain of truth in that - the only place where population is still above the replacement rate is along the equator to about 30 degrees north and south of it, primarily because most of these cultures are (or at least have been) largely agrarian, meaning that the factors given above are only just now coming into play for these populations.

China's population peaked last year, India's is still growing but should peak by 2030 (both have negative birth rates but still rising life expectancy and falling infant mortality rates). By 2050, most of the world should have falling fertility rates, and by 2100, the population should end up peaking at around 9.5 billion people. US population will likely have stalled at around 400 million, and will be declining by 2050.

So, anyway, I personally believe both Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are GenX. Their values are definitely not Boomers (Born in 1963, Im about halfway between the two, and I do not consider myself a Boomer either). It doesn't make that much difference after about 1971 - until about 2007, when there was a decided drop off of birth rates that I think coincided with the start of the Great Recession.

[MaryMagdaline]

77. GenX will claim her - Exhibit A below

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQg0Q6R_OPc6JM5G6iYsc6Crsd0KhN1X479JwP-GDL5Hw&s

[Torchlight]

80. All things being equal,

denying a vote to a candidate due to age is as short-sighted and meritless as voting for a candidate due to their age. Kind of not sarcasm.