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RainDog

(28,784 posts)
Sat Dec 29, 2012, 01:50 PM Dec 2012

Millennials are more liberal than the politicians they elected [View all]

This is the voting bloc for the future. It's not concerned with making nice with Republicans. Millennials want real change - not cuts to their grandparents social security nor medical services provided by govt. programs. They are the voters Democrats should be thinking about as they create the reality of who they are by the policies they endorse and the compromises they make.

According to Pew -

They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They’re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.


Higher levels of education equate with less religious belief so there goes that one for the conservatives. Already one in four are unaffiliated with any religious belief. With fewer in the military, they won't see it as a personal bread and butter issue and will be more willing to cut out a lot of the fiscal irresponsibility from defense contractors, who are like Napoleon the pig at the govt trough.

But at the moment, fully 37% of 18- to 29-year-olds are unemployed or out of the workforce, the highest share among this age group in more than three decades. Research shows that young people who graduate from college in a bad economy typically suffer long-term consequences — with effects on their careers and earnings that linger as long as 15 years.


This is the age cohort that would benefit from federal jobs programs that was part of climbing out of the last depression forced upon the American public by the parasitic "ownership class" that's always too big to fail. or jail.

More so than other generations, they believe government should do more to solve problems. (See chapter 8 in the full report).

Well, there's a loser for Republicans and conservatives who pretended they wanted govt out of people's lives.

Politically, Millennials were among Barack Obama’s strongest supporters in 2008, backing him for president by more than a two-to-one ratio (66% to 32%)

Yet

...the political enthusiasms of Millennials have since cooled -for Obama and his message of change, for the Democratic Party and, quite possibly, for politics itself. About half of Millennials say the president has failed to change the way Washington works, which had been the central promise of his candidacy. Of those who say this, three-in-ten blame Obama himself, while more than half blame his political opponents and special interests.

To be sure, Millennials remain the most likely of any generation to self-identify as liberals; they are less supportive than their elders of an assertive national security policy and more supportive of a progressive domestic social agenda. They are still more likely than any other age group to identify as Democrats. Yet by early 2010, their support for Obama and the Democrats had reced
ed, as evidenced both by survey data and by their low level of participation in recent off-year and special elections.


They are also the largest segment of the population to favor legalization of marijuana. but again we see that D.C. lives in a bit of a bubble and can't move the bureaucratic ship that is bad policy in this regard... which is one of the most disappointing things to mils about politics.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/02/24/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change/

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