Oh those darned kids
by digby
So I see that some wags are upset at the millenials for failing to deliver their votes to the Democratic Party on Tuesday. It's true that they failed to come through. But don't blame them, blame the fools who ever thought they would. Young people never vote as much as older people do in mid-terms:
They didn't come out in 2010 either. I don't know why this is so or if it's written in granite but it's a fact of life, nonetheless. All voters get more excited about presidential races than mid-terms but young people are apparently bored rigid by elections that don't feature the excitement of a big national race.
Right now the Republican base is older and whiter and they do vote in midterms elections. That's a big advantage for the GOP. But these younger voters of today will get older and they are likely to stay with the Democrats (since most people don't change parties once they've signed on to one) and they'll vote more often in these sorts of election than they do today. And the kids who are in grade school today will be the ones who don't vote in mid-terms. So it goes.
You can't fault these young people since it appears that all of us do this when we're that age. That chart above gos back to the dark ages when I was kid so it's been that way for a very long time. Perhaps the Democrats need to figure out a different approach if they want to win these sorts of elections. Call me crazy but they used to have a pretty effective appeal to old people: "they want to take your Social Security and we won't let them." It had the benefit of being true. Sadly, we decided that we needed to please Wall Street more than we needed any votes from older people so we threw that one in the trash can.
I'm sure they'll think of something.
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