• hperrin@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Boomers have been consistently voting conservative since the Nixon era. Sure, not all of them, but the majority. And they’ve been the largest voting bloc since. Millennials are due to overtake them soon though.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      Right, but relying on the voting habits of a majority to justify mocking a poor old person becoming homeless is pretty reductive and just ever so slightly cruel. It really doesn’t make for a compelling discussion.

      Edit: thanks for the downvotes, but in case you didn’t read lolcatnip’s first comment, I’m agreeing with them as a rebuttal to hperrin, not saying hperrin is doing the things I said. hperrin was going to bat for the commenters.

      • hperrin@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I’m not a fan of mocking homeless people. Calling it a consequence of the voting habits of their generation is a perfectly valid argument though. It’s a good jumping off point to a larger discussion about the consequences of a generational rejection of progressive policies. We’ve consistently allowed wealth, property, and power to accumulate in the hands of a tiny group of powerful people/companies, and this is the result of those policies. We already knew that this would be the result, because it always is, every time.

      • hperrin@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Republican and conservative are not identical terms. Boomers are not a majority Republican, but they are a majority conservative. (Actually it’s a plurality, not a majority, so I did misspeak. It’s a very hefty plurality, though.) Conservative Democrats are a minority in the Democrat party, but they exist, and they help pass conservative legislation, and they block progressive legislation.

        https://news.gallup.com/poll/181325/baby-boomers-likely-identify-conservative.aspx

        Also, as of the 2016 election, boomers still outnumbered millennials, but maybe that’s changed. I haven’t heard the news if it has. The trend line for boomers is going to accelerate down as boomers become older. You also have to factor that around 70% of boomers vote whereas only about 50% of millennials vote.

        https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/04/03/millennials-approach-baby-boomers-as-largest-generation-in-u-s-electorate/

        Also, where was I scapegoating boomers? I said they’re consistently conservative. That doesn’t mean they deserve to be homeless or each one is personally responsible for the housing crisis. I think you might be assuming that everyone younger than the boomers is a monolith.