No, it's determined by the people who actually go out and vote.
Bizarrely, voter turnout among younger people remains low. It's beyond frustrating to work with large groups of young people who are seemingly always talking politics and angry about something political, then to watch as half of them either forget to vote or act like they're too apathetic to vote.
The craziest part was seeing this apathy play out in states with vote-by-mail systems that required as little effort as possible. I still don't get it.
American democracy is broken. Not in an abstract, hand-wavy feelings way but a hard, numerical, mathematical way. A two party system results in no real choice. First past the post results in a two party system. America uses first past the post. Therefore, Amercian democracy gives voters no real choice.
Blaming broken democracy is just a cop out. Youth voter turnout for primary elections, where there are many candidates, is also low. More parties isn’t going to change anything.
"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things. It allows you to vote for someone who truly represents you and your interests without "throwing away" your vote. That's impossible today.
It’s the job of politicians to pander to us, the good voter. Since they didn’t offer us something good, we didn’t vote, and that results in this current situation.
Politics is not my job, being aware of how politics works is not my job. My job is just to let them know they aren’t good enough. It’s because they aren’t good enough, that we landed up in this situation.
Like, they start running ads 18 months ahead of it... How do you miss all of those ads
Californians are hassled for political donations, not votes.
Interestingly, occasionally I see political ads on Willow.tv which I use to watch Cricket. And most of these ads have Noem threatening to deport people ("if you are here illegally, we are coming after you..."). I am a US citizen.
Because even just the boring sanity of Biden Harris was leagues better than what we all saw coming in 2024. (Putting aside that whole constitutional amendment about insurrections.)
in the grand scheme of history, it's not odd. Voter turnout correlates decently with age. It's an anamoly when they do get out and vote, like in 2008.
That's partially an effect of
1. not having compulsory voting
2. needing to actively register in order to be viable to vote, as opposed to simply being delivered a ballot like many other countries
3. the decades of "no politics at the table" policies to help expose the civic duties to the youth. And since it's not a flashy topic to talk about, they won't really bring it up themselves, or simply have non-informed views.
4. careful strategies to try and disenfranchise voters who may otherwise oppose a party. This is what "both sides are the same" does in a system without #1.
Not to mention the proliferation of social targeted media ads changing the landscape and active loopholes used to try and de-register voters. These all hit youth the most to vote a certain way (or not at all).
Somehow it changed after I watched CGP Greg's "rules for rulers" videos
I understand why my age group has low turnout. It's a disgusting chore that I force myself to do.
In part, it might be a chicken and egg situation. My age cohort doesn't vote because candidates suck. Candidates suck because they pander to those who do vote.
Now to show my political biases:
In 2016 Sanders had a huge amount of support from young people but the DNC did everything it could to tilt favor away from him. He ran a hugely successful grassroots campaign taking small donations from individuals. Where did it get him? On stage with Biden - the anointed candidates with SuperPAC money. That is no small feat. His campaign ended only after the DNC guilted him into quitting as to "not steal votes". That's my perception at least. I temporarily changed my registration from unaffiliated to Democrat to vote for him in the primaries. Young people put in effort and showed up. It bought them exactly one legally rigged primary.
So every election I put on my clown makeup [0] and pretend like any of this is actually real democracy.
It is certainly wise to give up after one failed effort. Never try again. /s
The fact is, it would of been already incredibly hard for someone to be enthusiastic voting for Dems last presidential election; frankly even without even considering the utter and pointed moral failure with Gaza.
You want young people to vote, you can try to tut-tut them to vote for literally whoever, or you can, you know, listen to what they are saying, what they feel passionate about, and try even just a little bit to address it or, heck, put it on the platform. Its supposed to be a political party, something that unites people under some shared vision.
You want every single young person in the US to vote? Just say: free healthcare.
"Put up candidates that don't suck" in this context is basically "put up candidates who will cater to young voters at the expense of literally every other constituency", which is exactly the reason Bernie lost in 2016, and lost even harder in 2020. You can't focus only on one group of people, even if that's the only way to drive their turnout. It's just a losing game, clearly not one worth playing with a group of people who don't yet understand that other people exist, with other priorities.
I just think even granting this framing, what is the point or the lesson here? Is the idea that Clinton in 2016 was more well-rounded, had broader appeal as a candidate and young people were too immature to realize this?
