We also need to end the Electoral Collage and Gerrymandering. And in my opinion if we've come to a consensus on the Senate not being for it's original purpose, we should just abolish it altogether.
But with how things are Republicans can still win the Popular Vote sometimes, they did in 2004 and for just over half of all elections in the 20th Century. And while individually Trump had the weakest popular percentage of any winner in my lifetime, and even weaker then some past losers. When you look at all the 3rd Party Votes cast, Johnson, that Mormon guy in Utah and the Constitution Party candidate got enough votes to put the number of people who voted for right of center candidates over 50% of the Popular Vote, and that's without even adding the write in votes for Ron Paul and Colin Powell.
However there was a Map floating around Tumblr back in late 2016 showing that if only Millennials could vote the only State Trump would have won was Wyoming. And exit-polling data for this recent 2018 Midterm that only broke things down by age and ethnicity, showed the only demographics Republicans won were White People over 45, White People 30-44 were close however, a nearly 50/50 split, but White People 18-29 were significantly voting Democrat, meanwhile People of Color that young were a downright landslide for the Dems.
Now many Republicans might feel vindicated by this, "older people are wiser" says conventional wisdom. There is a quote attributed to Winston Churchill that goes something like "A man who isn't a liberal at 20 has no Heart and a Man who isn't a Conservative at 50 has no Brain". And so some Conservatives even try to argue for raising the age you can Vote at. However the way things actually work isn't that simple.
One factor in why this is is that Wealthier people live longer statistically, between being able to afford better medical care to lower income communities always having more Crime and Violence. That same data on the 2018 Midterms did have the Dems winning People of Color over 45 and even over 65.
And then there is the factor that as society has Progressed the political "Center" has moved to the Left.
But emphasizing those two factors too much might seem like an attempt to deny the commonality of people who's minds actually did change to the right as they got older. Because current young Liberals don't want to think they will become their Bigoted Parents some day.
I know from my own family of the existence of Baby Boomers who were radical Bobby Kennedy and McGovern voting hippies in the 60s and 70s but were voting pretty consistently Republican by the end of the 80s. So does that change happen because of time and experience making one smarter and wiser? Again, actual Marginalized groups continue to not trust Conservatives no matter how old and experienced they get.
This is another product of Toxic Nostalgia, young voters tend to vote thinking about the future, but then once you've been working for awhile you get more and more worried about the present and start more and more voting on short term needs, and then once you get old you start looking at the past with rose tinted glasses (especially if you were relatively privileged in your youth) and next thing you know you wanna "Make America Great Again".
Nothing makes me laugh more then seeing Baby Boomers on Facebook share "In my day kids respected their elders" sentiments.
So basically, if I'm going to trust older voters for their age and experience it's gonna be the less privileged ones, who've actually lived through tough experiences, but it's more difficult for those people to live long enough to get old.
With all those factors in mind, the fact that the age at which privileged White People on average start moving to the right is about half way through the average life expectancy, makes it really unfair that you're not allowed to vote till your life is statistically almost a quarter over.
In some states you're old enough to consent to sexual intercourse and get married at is as young as 16. If you're old enough to contribute to the future by starting a family and potentially create new life, you should be old enough to vote. People have been tried as Adults for crimes including the crime of murder at as young as 15. And plenty of religious customs declare a person an adult at as young as 12 or 13. Also anyone in High School is able to get a part time Job, and sometimes are expected to, which means they're paying Taxes which means they should have a vote in how that Tax money is used.
I'm an unusual person in that I'm a White Christian Cis-Male (who's mostly identified as Heterosexual) who's political life has been the opposite. First year I was old enough to Vote was 2004 and I'm ashamed to admit I voted for Bush back then, and probably would have if I could've voted in 2000. But from 2007-2012 I was a radical Ron Paul Libertarian. By the time I started this Blog I had already become more liberal then I was during the Ron Paul era, and over the course of this blog my further progression to The Left has been documented. I wish I could say that change was because of some life experience Secular Conservatives would respect, but it wasn't. It's mostly been caused by my reading The Bible and deciding to trust what it plainly says removing the filter of Western Traditionalism.
Of course at no time during my past as a Young Conservative was I a proto Alt-Right person, and I'm not just saying that because of the worst stereotypes about the Alt-Right, as a Young Earth Creationist both then and now I would never have supported even the most sanitized form of "Race Realisim", and if anything I questioned the traditional narrative of WWII less then then I do now. I never even trusted the Tea Party.
I make this distinction because the Alt-Right are also an exception to this general trend, they come from the minority of under 30 White People who voted for Trump. They have a few older intellectuals in their pocket, but no one born before 1980 has ever been a regular 4Chan contributor. So I can't help but wonder how many Kekistani flag wavers will be Communists by the time Trump leaves office?
And that's why The Alt-Right can't truly be called Reactionaries in any true sense of that term, they don't want to restore any past status quo, they are proposing a twisted kind of Utopian Fantasy.
Now I'm not gonna suggest a maximum voting age, even the oldest people have the right to be concerned about what future they have left. But I do think we should have a maximum age at which you can hold office, even Aristotle, a pretty Conservative guy in his time, argued against allowing people over 70 to hold office.
But back to the main topic. This is also why Liberals should be concerned about declining Birth Rates, this Birthrate problem is going to give older voters even more of an advantage in coming Elections. In Japan it's already the main reason the Left can't win, they probably still have more people Nostalgic for the 30s then the 90s. The Overpopulation myth was always Capitalist Propaganda in origin as documented in Peter Coffin's documentary.
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