The 2008 Electoral Map if only Young People Voted

[Gutenberg]

freeradical wrote:
Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore has made some interesting and controversial comments about suffrage in the past. Some of it even makes sense. IIRC, he feels that married working peoples vote should count more than the young or the old. The young are basically to dumb to vote - who here was really informed at age 18. And then you have the old folks, an incredibly powerful voting block that is able to get what ever it wants. They don't call social security the third rail of American politics for nothing...

Ah, Singapore. That bastion of civil liberties and freedom.

[OWC Jamie]

Reading is Fundamental.
Good thing we don't stop at 18.


Not everyone hung out with you and the smokers and dopers behing the gym, Roger.

[Ted King]

freeradical wrote:
The young are basically to dumb to vote - who here was really informed at age 18.

And yet they are informed enough to decide who to shoot and not to shoot in Iraq and Afghanistan. And old enough to be put in harms way to help protect older people's "right" to make stupid decisions like buy hundreds of thousands of gas guzzling SUV's.

Mac-A-Matic wrote:
Probably because the "young people" don't have anything to lose yet.

Except their idealism.

Most of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan are 18 to 29 year olds. When guys in Vietnam my age were being killed I knew what my generation was losing; I'm sure younger people do now as well. And they see the future the older generation has been creating for them through electing George Bush twice and saw a continuation of it if McCain was elected and they rejected that future and chose a future they hope Obama can bring. I hope so, too, and I'm a fairly old guy - one who never lost his idealistic goals, just maybe gained a little smidgeon of pragmatism about how to achieve those goals.

[MacGurl]

Yeah - I think the younger ones saw where things have gone, and where they were headed (who could miss it, after all) and it scared the crap out of them. So much so that they got out and voted! I personally think they have as much, or more, to lose or gain as any of the rest of us, since they have so much of their lives left ahead of them to "be" in this world.

[swampy]

Yeah, they'll "be" around to pay the bills.

[$tevie]

Gutenberg wrote:
[quote=freeradical]
Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore has made some interesting and controversial comments about suffrage in the past. Some of it even makes sense. IIRC, he feels that married working peoples vote should count more than the young or the old. The young are basically to dumb to vote - who here was really informed at age 18. And then you have the old folks, an incredibly powerful voting block that is able to get what ever it wants. They don't call social security the third rail of American politics for nothing...

Ah, Singapore. That bastion of civil liberties and freedom.
Maybe we can cut the hands off the 18 year olds to prevent them from using the voting machines. Then we can cane them.

[MacGurl]

swampy wrote:
Yeah, they'll "be" around to pay the bills.

Yeep, "bills" in a real, and figurative, sense. It's a bad situation.

I'm 47, so I still felt the weight up numerous upcoming years upon me, but someone who is just 20 must really feel burdened by it all.

[kj]

>>>I'm 47, so I still felt the weight up numerous upcoming years upon me, but someone who is just 20 must really feel burdened by it all.

They should, but I don't think most of them realize what trouble we're in. I base that only on talking to, hiring, managing a lot of them, so I realize the limitations. But, I can't think of one who has adjusted for the bad times. I would think most of us can agree that experience can (tends to) provide some perspective. Young people tend to care a lot about fashion, and trendy-ness and Obama was the fashionable choice. I'm not saying that makes it a bad choice, but that may partly explain why a larger percentage of young people would have voted for Obama. Could be "right choice for wrong reasons". kj.

[OWC Jamie]

they found 18-29 year olds who vote ?
or
They found 18-29 year olds who prefer the color blue ?

[Mac-A-Matic]

MacGurl wrote:
Yeah - I think the younger ones saw where things have gone, and where they were headed (who could miss it, after all) and it scared the crap out of them. So much so that they got out and voted!

Hmmm, perhaps that might have some thought had any in the 18-29 same actually been around to vote during the 1994 election that ousted the democrats after twenty years of control.

In 1994, the 29 year old of today was fifteen.

At 39, I've been around long enough to watch my idealism change into realism and have accepted the fact that it matters little which of the two parties are in control - the people get screwed all the same.