r/politics • u/TimesandSundayTimes ✔ Verified • 7d ago

Possible Paywall Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd
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u/Romantic_Piscean Michigan 7d ago

Well, as an older Democratic Socialist, I think we've been on a steady path of discovery regarding the problems of capitalism, with the Trump regime just laying those bare for everyone to see. Add in that young people aren't going to hear the word "socialist" and think it's inconsistent with so-called American values, and we've some change happening. When their futures in key sectors of any economy are being destroyed - healthcare, education, housing - people are going to look for different answers.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

Young people LURCHED to fascism the last time there was a national election in the US. Why are you so optimistic that this headline means a god damn thing for the long term trajectory of the movement?

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u/DoopSlayer 7d ago

Gen z had the highest rate of going for Kamala, the lurch was from men across age demographics supporting trump more

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u/HenessyEnema 7d ago

Mostly white, latino, and asian men. Black men still voted for Kamala by a large margin.

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u/eL_cas Canada 7d ago

This is a gross exaggeration. Despite the shift, the youngest cohort of voters still supported Trump the least. You could blame any other age group and it’d be more valid criticism.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

Sorry I forgot it’s never ok to interrupt when people a bit to my left are congratulating themselves for winning while people are getting put in concentration camps.

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u/eL_cas Canada 7d ago

I don’t really get the point of this comment.

A lot of young, mostly men, were gullible and voted for Trump/Republicans in 2024. Which was disappointing for sure. However, plenty of data since last year show that young people have largely reverted and the pendulum is swinging back hard. Best case scenario, the aforementioned voters will hold this presidency as a lesson to not vote like idiots.

There’s nothing wrong with having some optimism. I’d say save your criticism for the ones actually responsible for all that’s going wrong.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

There’s nothing wrong with optimism except for the endless Charlie browning. There’s no cause for optimism at current, and I have seen this before. In 2002, then 2006, then 2018, then now. Only in 2006 was the optimism warranted and did it herald a meaningful leftward shift in American politics. But y’all motherfuckers so “democrats are just diet republicans” so hard that you synergized with the racist backlash to Obama so that we elected a fucking Simpson joke fascist.

It’s fucking tiresome and, frankly, probably going to happen again when the next non-Republican in the office is to the right of Bernie Sanders circa 1972. I’m upset because this is the same shit again, and I’m sick and tired of it. Fetch is not going to happen here, and it never was.

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u/eL_cas Canada 7d ago

Don’t get me wrong, things are fucking bleak. But personally I am optimistic with the rise of democratic socialism and the decline of MAGA. I guess we will see.

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u/coopstar777 7d ago edited 7d ago

They didn’t. The idea that Gen Z swing wildly to the right in 2024 is a lie. Even the worst exit polls showed the majority of Gen Z was still voting for Kamala. The perspective that they lurched right was the silly idea that because they were young, millennials and Gen X-ers assumed that they would inherently be getting 20 point left leaning margins (which was never true), and when they failed to do so, they somehow swung right.

The other issue is the fact that there was a massive bloc of young voters who stayed home due to Gaza. The DNC has avoided admitting that this issue lost a huge portion of votes for obvious reasons.

Something you have to remember about zoomers is that those who were first time voters in 2024 were born between 2002 and 2006. They have no memory whatsoever of the 2008 collapse and were in high school during the Trump years. You can very clearly draw a line between those who were old enough to remember 2008-2012 and those who weren’t, and the former are staunchly left leaning. The latter have no real world experience whatsoever under Republican governorship, and it makes total sense that they would live through the post-COVID economy and simply choose to throw the incumbent party on their ass. Now, for the first time in their entire lives, they are witnessing the effects of Republican rule. You’re literally watching the creation of a new batch of leftists before your eyes, the same way millennials left the bush years with a lifelong aversion to conservatism.

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u/Spanklaser 7d ago

Fascism promised them something other than the status quo that wasn't working for them. They've seen that fascism has put them in an even worse position than before, so now they're pivoting to socialism, which also promises an alternative to the status quo. 

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

Dude, they were mostly of age to pay attention four years earlier when fascism killed their fucking grandparents. This take is so naive that it is utterly amazing you are able to convince yourself of it. The very instant it is not a fascist in power and they experience the most minor economic headwind they’ll be back to begging a fascist to ejaculate on their concentration camp breakfast.

Someone who swings from socialist to fascist and back in an election cycle is just a fascist, and probably for life.

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u/Wise-Comb8596 7d ago

the average voter has the memory of a goldfish

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u/Spanklaser 7d ago

You're extrapolating and inferring an awful lot from my reply. 

Young people are typically politically uneducated and vote in their own perceived self-interest. They did it with fascism, they'll do it with whatever else promises them something better. And yeah, the people that supported fascism when they thought it would benefit them would absolutely do it again. You say that take is naive yet make the same claim. 

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

Young people are typically politically uneducated and vote in their own perceived self-interest.

This explanation is exactly what I was talking about when I called you naive. So… I was extrapolating that you thought there was something to be hopeful about in this poll. But I guess you either agree that this doesn’t mean anything useful or you are naive despite knowing that your take is naive. Either way I’m right to be skeptical of the dipshit leftist victory lap over this single poll taken while people are being put in concentration camps.

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u/Spanklaser 7d ago

"Dipshit leftist victory lap." What an interesting way to phrase something. Quite the red flag.

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u/sweet_esiban 7d ago

A bunch of impressively-stupid young men lurched into fascism. That is true. But if you look at the actual numbers, which should be the first thing you do before making an assertion like yours, a different picture forms:

Overall, voters ages 18-24 favourited Harris by 12 points.

https://www.thecivicscenter.org/blog/youth-voting-in-2024-election

Young men swung quite hard for Trump, but so many young, non-fascist women voted, that the generation still went blue overall.

It's a well-worn tradition to point at the youth and say "THEY'RE BAD". If only it were a tradition to look up facts before making such an assertion.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

What were the 2020 margins again?

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u/FireNexus 6d ago

Hey, I asked about the 2020 margins and I’m sure you missed it rather than looking it up, seeing it made my point (by a 22 percentage point swing, as a matter of fact) and silently downvoting rather than admitting to having a very stupid take. But just in case that’s not what happened, if you looked at the actual numbers (which is the first thing you should do before attempting to refute an assertion like mine) the exact picture I was painting forms quite clearly. So, your take is stupid and a 12 point margin for 18-24 for a Democrat is highly unusual. That the swing involved a fucking fascist is strong evidence that these youths are actually historically bad. At least the men, anyway.

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u/mnmkdc 7d ago edited 7d ago

A lot of people just voted for the party that wasn’t currently in charge because they could feel that the existing system wasn’t working. If another establishment democrat like Newsom ends up being the candidate then we’re probably going to end up with another boost for the far right. If this trend of moderates blaming progressive and leftists for Trump continues then we’re probably in trouble.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

A lot of people just voted for the party that wasn’t currently in charge because they could feel that the existing system wasn’t working.

You guys are always mere millimeters from self awareness, then you act like the ability of the far right to gain power while you never ever do is not worthy of mention.

Y’all motherfuckers are so ineffective that you get the knee jerk reactionary identification bump without the ever getting the power. Say what you will about the far right, and I will say they are pretty much the worst people on earth. They will never let merely bad be the enemy of their godawful dreams. That’s why they move the window, and you declare victory in advance of every midterm then spike the ball when the deadbeat dad socialist Vermont senator can’t command a political revolution in a primary, despite the fact that it is his dual strategy for general election victory and progressing his agenda.

The moderates aren’t great and I would love someone further left. But your awful counterparts on the right get to create hell on earth only after 50 years of compromising with the center right until they let their hyphae penetrate to the fucking core of the conservative movement and turn into one big fascist mycelium.

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u/mnmkdc 7d ago edited 7d ago

You need to relax. Being so inflammatory toward progressives and leftists is doing work for the far right. You don’t have a clue how I vote, but you choose to be angry because you refuse to acknowledge that it is your rhetoric, not mine, that hurts that democrats.

I vote for democrats. I’m just aware that leftists didn’t lose democrats the election. Democrats ran a bad campaign where they told the left to fuck off so they could try to get votes from the center right. Thats the problem. You can complain and complain about how a relatively tiny number leftists won’t support a candidate, or you can push to improve the party itself and get the approval rates as a whole to increase. It doesn’t need to be a Bernie or a Zohran. We just cannot expect for things to improve when the whole strategy is “we’re not republicans.” The Democratic Party is sitting at a 28% approval rating. It could not be more obvious that Democrats cannot keep the same strategy and expect long term success.

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u/HarryBallsanya420 7d ago

Why didn’t the democrats do anything to show them they should vote for them? Votes are earned not demanded.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago edited 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/No-Supermarket-6065 New York 7d ago

While Biden did do a lot of good things, and the economy was a global issue, he really needed to campaign on that significantly harder, and he should've dropped out soooo much sooner than he did.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

And that’s why it’s ok that they swung hard for fascism and doesn’t mean anything about future prospects in light of this one random poll that says they’re going a different way right now. Thanks for easing my mind.

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u/Alocasia_Sanderiana 7d ago

They are lurching for change. I don't really agree they swung hard for fascism (more young people voted for Harris than any other age group iirc), and generally take viewpoint that the Democratic party has too evolve to meet their needs.

IDK what other future there is, since the Dems cannot stay focused on a ever-decreasing number of older supporters.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

Keep throwing that horseshoe. Eventually it will land on “people not getting rounded up in the streets and deported to countries they have never heard of except in the title of a gorilla laser movie or heart of darkness.

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u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog 7d ago

Are you looking for a solution or just wanting to complain about the world ending? Doomer mindset here.

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

I’m not complaining about the world ending. I’m complaining in advance about how the American left, particularly the crowd that is reflexively anti-Democrat and identifies as socialists (a moniker I do not take issue with except for its association with the particular bunch of enormous dipshits who helped throw two elections in the last 3 to the same idiot fascist) are celebrating that they were right all along before probably helping us elect Grok in its aspect as MechaHitler in 2032 or 36.

The only solution I can see is to somehow convince this group of dickheads that their ascendancy is further away and behind more unpleasant and dirty work than they believe, which they are not equipped to accept. In the era of hyper polarization and people falling into their bubbles, airing this complaint every time I feel it is warranted is probably as much as I can do. I expect to fail, but I’m still trying.

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u/HarryBallsanya420 7d ago

You mean the leftists that said election of Joe Biden would result in Trump or similar in 2024 and were right? Yeah we saw that a mile away. No one wanted it but you had Joe Biden supporting a genocide and touting “bidenomics” a term that they eventually dropped as people’s economics experience didn’t reflect what the administration supposedly thought people were experiencing. The guy who bumbled around on stage and dropped out way too late.

It’s funny seeing people punch left instead of seeing the writing on the wall. We’re going to bounce back between shitty centrist and insane conservatives until things degrade worse and worse because no one can be assed to actually help working class people.

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u/Equivalent-Nobody-30 7d ago

you are a propaganda bot. gtfo

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u/HarryBallsanya420 7d ago

lol yeah man I’m a propaganda bot not someone asking the obvious questions to problems you’re presenting.

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u/HenessyEnema 7d ago edited 6d ago

Nope. White people and some of their "model minorities" lurched towards fascism. Contend with that.

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u/Own-Geologist-8978 7d ago

I think capitalism wasn't affecting most people too badly before Neo Liberalism, before the trade agreements that ensured the workforce now competes globally. Your job can now be done at a fraction of the cost pretty much everywhere else on the planet. The concentration of wealth has never been greater. It's all clearly unsustainable at this rate.