This is the second reliable source I’ve seen reporting this, so I think it’s real:
NEWS: Kamala Harris told staff today she's suspended her presidential campaign. VIDEO coming soon.
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) December 3, 2019
Damn.
Open thread.
Tim C.
It’s a bummer, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She was my first pick too.
Cheryl Rofer
NOOOOOOO!
Zzyzx
I’m pretty stunned. I mean she wasn’t getting traction but you’d think she’d at least wait until Iowa at this point.
ruemara
Fucking rage. Gabbard is still in. Yang is still in. All the fucking plants are still in.
Meets my lived expectations as a black woman, so I can’t say I’m truly surprised at the bullshit folks will support while ignoring candidates of color.
Cheryl Rofer
pat
Hmm, how about a Biden/Harris ticket?
Just a thought….
laura
I’m gutted! I’ve sent every spare penny in the last few weeks hoping that she gets to the primaries – especially Super Tuesday.
Damn, damn, DAMN!
Don’t get me started on the media’s treatment of Senator Harris…
Tom Levenson
I wonder if she saw the rise of Mayor B. and wants to steer some support away from him before the narrative gets locked.
Or maybe it just sucks to be endlessly on the trail when it’s clear that the odds are so strongly against you. It really is no kind of a life.
brantl
I can’t imagine the bulk of her support going to anybody but Warren, can you?
Hildebrand
Well, that sucks. She and Castro were the only two I donated to thus far. I was hoping Harris could hold on long enough for the voting to start.
CaseyL
She was my first or second choice since she announced. But it was clear she wasn’t getting anywhere. Now her supporters will hopefully boost another candidate. It’ll be interesting to see where they go.
Adam L Silverman
MSNBC has just reported it as well.
dr. bloor
Alas, America 2020: Ideas and experience are not nearly as important as money. Steyer, Bloomberg, and Yang will still be in it long after they’ve croaked and met their makers.
Professor Bigfoot
https://twitter.com/flywithkamala/status/1201924259800588289?s=20
I’m not writing Steppin’ Razor off quite yet.
Cacti
Meant one less backstabber to worry about.
Tim C.
@brantl: I’m moving to Warren.
Professor Bigfoot
https://twitter.com/flywithkamala/status/1201927872891490306?s=20
Well, shit.
patrick II
It has been Harris or Warren for me. Harris is a remarkably skilled, qualified and talented person. I don’t know how much effect it had, but after her first debate she was doing fine, but at the second Gabbard kneecapped her with a bunch of lies. I suppose there are a thousand other factors — well one, I guess, being a woman of color — but after that second debate her numbers began to slide.
She will make a great AG at least.
guachi
Not much to fight over when a candidate is at 3% in the polls. I assume what few Harris supporters there are will choose a good candidate
Cheryl Rofer
Garbage candidates Steyer, Bloomberg, and Gabbard still in the race.
dmsilev
Damn. Not really all that surprising I suppose, but not great to hear.
RobertDSC-iPhone 8
Fucked up. She is my first choice.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Fucking media. Fucking boomers. Guarantees that I’ll continue to live under idiot boomer rule into my mid 60s.
Betty Cracker
I wouldn’t assume that at all. I have no idea.
Adam L Silverman
As of right now, there is not one person of color among the Democratic primary candidates who has qualified for the December debate. It will be a bunch of white men and two white women in Senators Warren and Klobuchar.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Klobuchar, Booker, Mayor Pete. I refuse to support a boomer.
Redshift
I’m sad; she was my top choice. But at least I won’t have to agonize about whether my volunteer time should be going to Harris or Warren.
Cacti
Pity. She had great potential, but didn’t really find a coherent message until it was too late.
Ruckus
Damn doesn’t quite do it.
FUCK
The most professional candidate, the person with the best job experience, the candidate who understands the current needs best, the person tied for likability with the other great candidate, EW.
And she drops out while several far less qualified people and a few totally unqualified people are still in? I’m calling racism.
catclub
@Tim C.: and in a link to the stock market, now we know the real reason the market is down today.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Good news — Bernie isn’t a boomer! (He’s too old.)
skerry
Fuck
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer:
I was going to say “at least none of them are in the next debate”, but apparently Steyer just hit the donor threshold today so he’s in. No Gabbard or Yang though.
And just got an “I am suspending my campaign” email from Harris, so it’s real.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Kindly go fuck yourself with the boomer shit. Thanks.
FelonyGovt
Just got this email:
Eleven months ago at the launch of our campaign in Oakland I told you all: “I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. I will speak the truth.”
And that’s what I have tried to do every day of this campaign. So here’s the truth today.
I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life.
My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.
I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.
In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.
So, to you my supporters, it is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today.
dmsilev
Campaign email:
Elizabelle
Damn.
Kamala for Vice President!
Tazj
This is horrible. I’m upset and very disappointed and like everyone else disgusted with some of the people still in like Gabbard, Steyer and BS-yuck!
Mike in NC
This is really a shame because she has a lot of potential as a future VP or cabinet member. But the media is all-in on a horserace between to horrible old white men: Sanders vs. Trump. We all know how that will turn out, right?
Ruckus
@Cacti:
Too late? We haven’t even had one primary vote cast.
How the hell is it too late?
hells littlest angel
That’s too bad. But she’s well-positioned for the VP slot for whatever serious candidate, including and especially Warren, wins the primary.
dmsilev
@Elizabelle: Honestly would rather see her as Attorney General.
kindness
Kamela was my first choice. I’m a Californian and have always liked her. I switched to Elizabeth Warren over the summer. Kamela wasn’t getting any traction and EW is a fabulous fall back candidate. Kamela is young yet so…..
Mike J
She’s the best candidate. Pity she never got the attention she deserved.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: Neither is Joey B.
John S.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I presume you mean for the primary, right? Because come the election, we should all be voting for Trump’s opponent – regardless of who that is or what generation they belong to.
germy
Cacti
@Ruckus: The money had already dried up.
dr. bloor
@Adam L Silverman:
No guarantee Klobuchar will have plane fare to LA by the 19th.
Tazj
I’m very upset and disappointed. Gabbard and BS are still in it -yuck!
FelonyGovt
And by the way, I’m a Boomer and she was my first choice.
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: Or Attorney General! So much to clean up there.
Cacti
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
We’re sorry, Boomer. Thank you for AIDS and conspicuous consumption.
Jacel
Harris has been my first choice. I’ve been impressed by what she’s done in every job along the way to the Senate in California and San Francisco. If she is out now, Warren is my top choice, followed by Booker.
laura
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Please to be kissing my sagging boomer-ass.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@kindness: Warren was my second choice, but I’ve soured on her a bit in the past month or so.
rikyrah
Can’t say that I’m not disappointed. I wanted her to at least go through South Carolina.
Annie
BlueDWarrior
@Ruckus: she’s been mired in the the middle-to-back end of polls, has had trouble raising enough money to run the media side of the campaign, and has basically had all manners of public infighting in her campaign.
It feels like a legitimate case of a good candidate getting destroyed by the mechanics of the campaign in general.
ruemara
@pat: We are not assistants. Thank you
@Cacti: She had very coherent messages. Now, were you hearing them? That’s the question.
Elizabelle
Kamala Harris is very young, and very talented. I wish this were not the outcome of her bid for 2020, but she still has more races to run.
She’d be an excellent Attorney General, or Vice President, or stay as Senator, because that’s very important too.
We have to remember, Obama was a bit of a phenom. He won the presidency on his first attempt. Lightning in a bottle, when you get the good ones.
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Thanks for sharing that excerpt. I respect Senator Harris for assessing her prospects realistically and being straight with her supporters. I wish every candidate would behave so honorably.
Gravenstone
Just saw the same banner at CNN.com so assume it’s real, pending the promised announcement. Unfortunate, as she has been a valuable voice and I think would have been a formidable nominee.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@John S.:
I won’t be voting for Sanders, and will only reluctantly pinch my nose for Warren.
if it is Sanders, I abandon everything and expatriate.
guachi
When I was at the Women’s March many months ago I was behind the stage so I saw all the people who were going on stage walk by us. When Senator Harris (my Senator from Callifornia) walk by I yelled at her that she’d be the next President and she turned and waved in my direction as she walked by.
I really thought she had a good chance.
Cheryl Rofer
I was thinking something like this.
mad citizen
My vehicle remains the only one I’ve seen with a Kamala sticker. Will replace with a Warren one at some point, or maybe just a vote blue one. Really not digging Wilmer, Biden or mayor pete. Of the 3 pete has some positives for me, but he needs some schooling from obama before he takes office.
Steeplejack
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Klobuchar is a boomer, you nitwit. Born in 1960. But thanks for your generational bigotry.
Kent
I wonder how much effect the hatchet job by the fucking NYT had to do with this. Listened to the most recent Pod Save America podcast yesterday and they were pretty stunned by it.
Gravenstone
@Zzyzx: All the stories I’ve seen in recent months were about her efforts to build a firewall in South Carolina. This inane focus on the first handful of states will be the death of us as a nation yet, if it continues to drive out well qualified candidates.
Miss Bianca
@ruemara: God, I hope this isn’t true. I was just writing my sister this morning that I was worried about Harris’s campaign not getting traction.
Meanwhile, Buttigieg, Sanders, and the Ship of White Damn Fools continue to sail on.
Marcopolo
I’ve always expected the field to shrink as we got closer to IA & NH but I did not expect Harris to drop out before voting even started.
Welp, that the second candidate (Inslee was the first) Ive donated to who is out.
Kent
And, of course, so is Obama.
James E Powell
I really like my senator and I had hopes for her campaign, but I see no reason to be sad about her withdrawing. We need someone who is going to win and it is apparent that – for reasons we can all talk about some other time – she wasn’t lighting up the electorate this time around.
david
The clown car is slowly emptying. Besides, Harris as AG would be preferable.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
Well played.
MattF
She was my fave— now looks like Biden will probably prevail. More important than ever now to point out the total bullshit of the whole Ukraine scenario. May I point out that Pelosi has been doing precisely that in multiple ways? Also, I think that pointing out the corruption of the whole Trump family would be good and entirely appropriate now. The Trumpkinder have been treated as merely a bad joke. How about a real attack?
mad citizen
@Betty Cracker: Well, except for the 3 daily emails from her campaign. On Saturday I received a record 5 emails.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: One of the mistakes Obama made was pulling folk out of governorships and the Senate for his cabinet. Even though Sen. Harris would be replaced by a Democrat(certainly on an interim basis and probably via an election), lets not repeat that mistake.
rikyrah
@Gravenstone:
Iowa and New Hampshire have to go. period.
As a Black person, I’m done with letting all -White ANYTHING determine who we should even remotely think about going for. Time for any diverse state to move themselves to the front of the line.
germy
Adam L Silverman
@dr. bloor: If she’s willing to eat a salad with a comb, I assume she’ll walk if she has to.
Zzyzx
@Gravenstone:
just because the system is insanely stupid doesn’t mean that we should stop doing it. Didn’t the founders declare that Iowa needs to decide who wins the nomination?
PJ
@dr. bloor: It’s interesting that someone like Klobuchar, who was polling (nationally) one point below Harris, who was at 4%, and who raised far less money than Harris in 3Q19 (4.8MM vs 11.7MM), can still stay in the race. I guess a big factor is the size of one’s organization and how it is distributed, and where those dollars are put to work. How much do the organization and management of a campaign determine the popularity and fundraising, and thus the ability to go the distance, of a candidate, as opposed to their policies and personality?
opiejeanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Wow! Just wow. What have Boomers done to you personally, because this hatred of us seems very personal.
Cheryl Rofer
BlueDWarrior
@PJ: it feels like there was some kind of structural unsoundness to her campaign separate from the policies.
snoey
She was in it only to win it. She already has all the national cred she needs, so why not get out now, she can only hurt herself.
The remaining minor candidates are all playing other games.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent:
We won’t know that until the President’s top men finally report back on the really interesting stuff they’re finding in Hawaii.
James E Powell
I see quite a few comments along the lines of “This sucks. Harris is out and Gabbard [add or substitute others] is still in it!”
Please. Gabbard, Yang, Steyer are no “in it” in any sense that matters. They are going nowhere with the people who will caucus in Iowa and vote in New Hampshire
Also too, most of us have been eager for the field to narrow. This is a natural and expected process. Harris is leaving with pretty much no reason for lingering rancor. Let’s move on.
NB – Harris has been my choice all along.
Elizabelle
If we did not still have 301 Democratic candidates, many on vanity runs, Kamala Harris — who is a serious one — could have stood out better.
I think we can lay a lot of this at the feet of fucking Wilmer and his “I can’t stand Democrats” rigged rigged rigged morons.
This has been a horrible primary season. It really has
I think Bloomberg is in to stop Elizabeth Warren from gaining traction. Because her ideas (OK, she has a lot of them) — most of them are rather popular. Which is why all we end up talking about is Medicare for All. Personally, I would go with someone with a commitment to making healthcare more affordable and universal. It’s the broad commitment, not the details. Particularly since the Republicans won’t do anything except make the healthcare situation worser, although they will lie and lie and lie during campaigns.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah:
I support this stand.
zhena gogolia
So depressed. I don’t know who to give my donations to now.
Cheryl Rofer
Nicole
Well, fuck. This sucks.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Annie:
Obama is in my cohort – he’s not a boomer culturally or economically, and really tends to appear as Gen X.
And yeah, EW is a boomer, which is very clear. She is content to sacrifice a who lot of people to some grand society upending vision that she hasn’t actually thought through all that well.
As far as my life has gone, it has always been subject to the whim of boomers, two thirds of which were conservatives from the start. I’ve watched them burn out the next generation of leadership by considering themselves indispensable in business, politics, law and academia.
That’s why I want a younger candidate, because younger candidates have a stake in the consequences of policy changes, whereas all EW and BS have are lifelong grand visions that were previously frustrated.
Yutsano
@Cacti: JFC are you fucking serious with that shit? An apology better be forthcoming for that.
zhena gogolia
She’ll be a fantastic campaigner for the eventual nominee. That’s my only consolation. It better f-ing not be Bernie or Bloomberg.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: I find his comments about Boomers very hurtful. I have always liked this poster but recently they’ve been hard to read. I don’t want to pie them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: It’s been 8 years, I’m sure they’re just being thorough.
germy
PST
Harris was my first choice at the outset too. My idea of a dream ticket would have been her and Sherrod Brown, in either order. Trump’s superpower has been for making fun of opponents, and there’s something about Harris that would have made it tough to lay a glove on her. She would have just laughed at him, and she has a million dollar laugh.
Kent
@PJ:
I’m guessing that Klobuchar and her advisors must feel that both Buttigieg and Biden will slip at some point for the obvious reasons and she is poised to take up the “moderate” banner. Both Buttigieg and Biden have obvious flaws. Harris was in a tougher spot. It wasn’t clear where she was going to peel away support. I think she had counted on peeling away black support, especially in places like South Carolina. But that just didn’t seem to be happening at all. Had she been polling well in South Carolina I expect things would have been different.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The baby boom is a demographic concept defined the the vast increase in birthrates between 1946 and 1964. I’m(born in 1960) and Obama(born in 1961) are part of that demographic.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Steeplejack:
LATE boomer, which doesn’t really count. We’re not at all like the early boomers; the ladder was being pulled up by the early boom by the time we came around.
Gravenstone
@Yutsano: He’s been accelerating down the asshole highway for some time now. Just pie and move on.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Iowa and New Hampshire do have to go. Like last election cycle.
We need to make that happen. Neither is representative, and they’re expensive and ridiculous wastes of resources.
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer:
That’s funny. At lunch I was reading The Economist, which cites a YouGov poll of “net favourability ratings” of ~20-ish Presidential candidates. Those three literally round out the bottom. Bloomberg is lowest. All of them are well below Trump.
WereBear
Such is my hope.
opiejeanne
@Cacti: WTF?? AIDS is our fault now? And conspicuous consumption???
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Then you, like me, like Obama, are in the bottom, benighted side of the boom.
Culturally, economically, socially, it was like two separate generations.
Joe Falco
I had really hoped Sen Harris would’ve stayed in at least until the results of Iowa if things went badly, but this is the most disappointing news to come out yet for the race. I still believe she’ll serve in some capacity in the next Democratic administration (if she wants the job, of course), removing whatever trace of 45’s occupation by root and branch.
Kent
No, please no. That Senate seat would be gone forever if Sherrod Brown leaves it. Sometimes you have to think about the greater good.
opiejeanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I supported Kamala Harris too. I was born in 1950. Your comments about Boomers are very hurtful.
Emerald
Damn. Sickening. She was attacked from the start with slanderous disinformation from the left (and possibly the Russians). The media has been on a full-throated campaign for months to get her out.
Steyer stole her campaign data with no repercussions. Bloomberg planted a hit job in the NYT and bought an online poll.
She was actually our strongest candidate against tRump. She not only was the the toughest, smartest, hardest working and best prepared of the bunch, but she a real chance of getting what she called the Obama coalition to the polls. Hint: Democrats have not won the white vote since 1964.
So if the fabled Establishment really wants to keep tRump in office, they’re doing a good job.
My only consolation is that the Hillary treatment would have continued from all sides all the way through to November 3, 2020.
So now I guess I’m with Booker, Klobuchar, or Castro. But yeah, it’s probably gonna be Biden.
Elizabelle
Iowa and New Hampshire are the functional equivalent of Trump always staying at his own hotels. (By that, I mean it’s a sweet deal for them, making the bucks every election season, but it does not help the rest of us one bit. There’s a shorter word for that, but I forget it … BOONDOGGLE!)
Neither state is representative, and at some point “we’ve always done it that way” has to go as an excuse. And forget caucuses; they are really unrepresentative.
I think the DNC should make a lot of hard changes for 2024. Rotating regional primaries, and particularly ones in blue states. Disclosure of years of tax returns when a candidate files to compete in any state, and presidential candidates must have been elected to a competitive office previously. Mayor, governor, congress, Senate. No more billionaires and dilettantes.
The election calendar is too long, too. We would do better with a lot shorter. There’s a whole campaign-industrial complex out there, sucking up millions upon millions. And media, salivating at paid ads. This does not serve the public well at all.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: No really, I think you may be confusing boomers with an older group.
MrSnrub
@pat: East/West, Young/Old, White/Black, Moderate/Progressive, Doddering/Facile. Checks all the boxes.
chris
Fuck this generation shit! Harris is a boomer, born in ’64 and she’ll be missed.
If I have this generation crap right the next one is GenX which has given us many good things and most of the people at Fox News. So, fuck this generation shit.
Steeplejack
Redacted.
cleek
I think she’d make a fine Senator.
Maybe she could run for that?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@WereBear: Why be AG when she can remain a senator AND be California’s senior senator in a few years (assuming she’s not tapped for VP).
Mary in Ohio
I am almost Hillary losing the general levels of devastated right now. She would have been an incredible President.
lollipopguild
@Adam L Silverman: You mean the stuff about Obama being on Mars?
Hildebrand
@germy: I am really hoping that Castro can find a bit of magic and get back in this thing.
Steeplejack
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
FYWP.
So “boomer” = “people of a certain age that I don’t like.” Thanks for nailing down that definition for us, counselor.
Raoul Paste
I really liked her- an articulate fighter.
She would have been so good in a debate with Trump.
Darkrose
@germy: So much this. It’s ridiculous, and it serves no one except the political media.
MisterForkbeard
I’m really sad about this. Harris was my favored candidate and she brought a LOT to the table. That said, her campaign was kind of a mess and I can sort of see why it didn’t capitalize on her performances during the debates. I can also see that she was kneecapped, and a lot of my former BernieBro friends have this huge hatred of her (and Warren, incidentally) that she was always going to have a hard time getting past.
I really hope she ends up with a position in the future administration. For someone like Bernie she’d go a long way as a VP choice, though I’m not certain about Buttigieg or Biden. She’d also make a good AG, though she’d be entirely disregarded by the right and largely by the media.
James E Powell
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You’re part of the team that wants to defeat Trump & the Republicans so I’m hoping you realize how silly this argument is. Besides, Obama loves boomer icon Stevie Wonder, so you probably can’t pin him down culturally. Economically, his signature policy was health care, the Holy Grail of boomer liberals since forever.
Anyway. Stop it. Please. We have work to do.
Elizabelle
A lot of you just don’t give Warren any kind of chance, do you? Whereas, I see enthusiasm for her. And that she scares the right people, which, actually, are kind of scary adversaries (money, money, money), but need to be defanged.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@cleek: I think she’d get elected in California, good chance of being successful.
VeniceRiley
I hate the early states. I hate their whiteness. I hate Mayo Pete. I hate billionaires and Russia. And I hate this moneyball primary. The way we run our elections sucks balls. Warren/Harris2020
Darkrose
@chris: 1964 is not a Boomer, JFC.
The Baby Boom was a specific time period that coincided with men coming home from World War II. Boomers were in high school in the 1950’s and ’60’s. If you want a marker for the Baby Boom Generation, it’s “were you old enough to remember when Kennedy was assassinated.
The date keeps slipping because someone decided that generations had to be 20 years, and because many Boomers don’t want to admit that they’re old.
MisterForkbeard
@PJ: I think that’s the thing. Harris had a HUGE organization in some states. When her fundraising fell she was in a bad position.
Klobuchar can continue because her spending is really low.
Fair Economist
@Cheryl Rofer: I must say that having Harris as VP would assuage a lot of my concerns about Biden.
Elizabelle
@VeniceRiley: I want Warren/Harris too. And I think they could win.
bupalos
Even as I think it’s pretty valid that the bad structure of the primaries, including the ridiculous Iowa/New Hampshire schedule, is partly what pushed her into dire straits, I really respect the move here and think it may have more to it as a move to accomplish goals than first appears. It may be that she’s looking at the nightmare way the structure is pointing towards barfing out Biden as a winner by divided default.
I doubt it’s the last we’ll hear from Kamala. Personally I hope she teams with Warren here, I think that’s a natural fit.
Major Major Major Major
By all accounts I’d read since she launched, her campaign organization was never working very well. One way I evaluate presidential candidates is their ability to run a campaign; it’s one of the reasons I supported Obama over Hillary in 2008. So, not a huge loss in my book.
Was she burdened by a sexist and racist media narrative, and sexist and racist voters? Yes, and that’s obviously bad, but none of them were running her campaign. Are there other candidates with poorly-run campaigns who are still in? Sure, but I won’t consider it a huge loss when they inevitably drop out either.
She’ll be a valuable surrogate for whoever she ends up supporting, and in the general election. I’m sure she’ll be high on the list for VP and several cabinet spots if she wants them. And she can always fall back on being senator for life from the country’s most populous state.
Kent
Hokay then. I got your millenials right here:
Devin Nunes
Tucker Carlson
Mick Mulvaney
Stephen Miller
Kellyanne Conway
Paul Ryan
Duncan Hunter
Matt Gaet
Jared Kushner
Cacti
Yep. Barack Obama pointedly distanced himself from the “psychodrama of the baby boom generation” and the “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on handful of college campuses long ago” in The Audacity of Hope.
I had thought with his election and reelection, our national political conversation had finally moved past garment rending about who did what during the Vietnam War, hippie punching, 60s nostalgia, etc.
Silly me.
Steeplejack
@Darkrose:
This is complete bullshit. “Boomer” has always been 1946-1964. But thank you for also illustrating how useless these generational generalizations are.
Major Major Major Major
@Kent: Am I missing a joke or do you think millennials were born in the 70s?
Fair Economist
@Darkrose: 1946-64 is the standard definition of the Baby Boom generation. 20 years is a pretty standard range for a generation, too, for the simple reason that people much younger than that rarely have children.
germy
@Darkrose:
Which is why it continues.
PJ
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It makes zero sense, in terms of her career, for Harris to take a lower political spot (AG) than the one she has now (Senator). If she wants to run again for President, it will be easier as a Senator than AG, and when she is done with being AG, there is nowhere upward for her to go (other than President). AG isn’t like being Secretary of State – it’s not going to give her a skill set or raise her profile in a way that will help her in the future. I can see her deciding to run as someone’s VP, but any other move would be counter-productive for her.
yellowdog
@brantl: I can not vote for Warren in the primary. She accused Hilary and the DNC of rigging the 2016 primaries. Harris has been my pick from the start. Despise Bernie, won’t vote for someone older than me (71), Buttigieg is just a no. My choice with Harris out is Castro.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I’ve soured on Warren as I noted above, I’m just getting a feeling that she doesn’t have the political instincts to make it work. I saw her when she was in town and she was my 2nd choice, but I’ve dropped her down in my rankings since then with Klobuchar moving up as well as Joey B(though I still think he’s way too old). I’ve become less and less impressed with Mayor Pete the more I see of him(other than the being far too young part).
Raoul
Downside: The Democratic establishment/machine is utter bullshit. Tulsi still in, but Kamala out just chaps me like mad. And Bloomberg? FUCK him. And FUCK the Dem elites who want this shitshow.
Upside: Kamala will be scorching during the Senate trail of Donald Trump. Just beyond imagining what she’ll be able to do.
Gin & Tonic
@Darkrose:
Unless they were particularly precocious, the first Baby Boomers would not have reached high school until 1960.
Baud
I was hoping against hope she would find a way to be competitive.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Darkrose: As I noted above, it’s a demographic concept, birth rates didn’t fall off until 1964, that’s the end of the baby boom(hence the term boomer).
Cacti
@PJ:
The next political office that would be most helpful to her future prospects for POTUS would be if she ran for and won Governor of California. But there’s zero chance that she would run against her buddy Newsom.
Baud
I don’t trust anyone over 6.
oatler.
Did anyone see the Millennial Millions skit on SNL? It’s pretty hostile to boomers but it’s hilarious.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Fair Economist: If Joey B is the nominee, he’ll definitely need a younger VP(sorry Bernie).
WaterGirl
@Cacti:
Wow.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: The description I like (I forget where I saw it) is that Boomers are defined by two cohorts: the older ones who were among the Woodstock set, and the younger ones who came of age during the backlash to the Woodstock set.
lol chikinburd
Worst timeline.
bupalos
I hope Buttigieg drops out sooner rather than later too. Not that I think he’s the worst candidate, but this “Mayo Pete” thing is just absolutely made for Russian ratfuckery dividing folks on the worst and dummest of lines. Anyone who wants to zoom in on white privilege, systemic racial inequality, and the kind of real decisions that keep American’s original sin a festering wound that makes us all worse (which all of us should want to do) should honestly hold the mayo and direct something a lot spicier towards Biden. One of the best things Kamala did was try to bring out how problematic Biden’s record is, he’s a go-along, get-along type that brings in whites that want to feel good about doing nothing to make racism better or worse, just float with the status quo. Worse, actively fight for the status quo. That’s why he was put on the Obama ticket anyway, to make old whites feel better about Obama. I mean, literally, that was in our scripts out here in the sticks phone banking for Obama in ’08.
Kent
@Elizabelle: Rotating regional primaries would be the most awesome thing ever.
Instead of the corn farmers and the Iowa State Fair every four years perhaps we could watch the candidates tromp around the New Mexico Navajo reservation some time in their shiny loafers and then hurt themselves eating green chile along the border in southern New Mexico and working on their HS Spanish. Next time maybe North Carolina or the Pacific Northwest. And if you want to really unleash the surreal, start with Florida.
Fucking Iowa isn’t even a swing state anymore.
janesays
@ruemara: Yang and Gabbard are still in, but everybody knows they aren’t going anywhere. Unfortunately, Harris wasn’t either, although I did have hope for her early on.
Looks like a four person race at this point: Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg. Only one of those four people has my enthusiastic support, and it’s the one who doesn’t have external plumbing. But I’ll vote for whomever the nominee is, because they’re all still light years better than the alternative (who is a literal existential threat to the country).
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: This is similar to how I was looking at it. I like Harris. I think she’s got good ideas and really brings the fire.
But her campaign has always been kind of a mess and I noted it way back in May. She never had a good central theme for her campaign, and her campaign was never really sure whether to ‘own’ the prosecutor thing. She went for the ‘liberal’ lane in the primary but was competing against people with better cred in that area.
If she couldn’t get this planning together it makes sense that she’d have a harder time during the general and during the presidency itself. It’s a good argument against her.
patrick II
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Stereotyping and Intolerance to fight stereotyping and intolerance. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Taken4Granite
A bit of history on the New Hampshire primary (from someone who has adopted NH as his home state):
The original idea was to have the NH presidential primary coincide with town meeting day (the second Tuesday in March) as an exercise in Yankee frugality. At the time this was considerably earlier than other states’ presidential primaries. Then the state legislature (which was solidly Republican at the time–NH was still a solidly red state when I first moved here 30 years ago, and had a 100% Republican congressional delegation as recently as 2006) passed a law saying that the NH primary had to come at least a week before any other primary (Iowa is exempt because they have a caucus).
IA and NH are still arguably representative of the Republican party. But both are decidedly lagging in terms of diversity of the Democratic electorate. I can’t speak for Iowa, but New Hampshire has never had the large-scale agricultural sector or large-scale industry that attracted African-Americans to other northern states during the postwar period–to the extent that our diversity is increasing, it is due to Hispanic and Asian people (both immigrants and second-generation) moving up here.
Having the first-in-the-nation presidential primary is definitely a mixed bag. It’s nice to have some attention from the candidates, but there are times when it becomes excessive–too many phone calls from politicos and pollsters. It doesn’t help that I live in what has recently been one of the most competitive House districts, NH-01, which flipped five times between 2006 and 2016.
The one advantage NH does have is geographical compactness: the state is a bit over 100 miles E-W at its widest point, about 250 miles N-S, and most of the population is concentrated in the southeastern part of the state (the Boston exurbs). But MD and NJ also have some degree of geographical compactness along with a more diverse electorate.
So I’m not completely averse to having NH abandon its role of first-in-the-nation primary, as it no longer serves the original purpose. But you would have to convince the legislature and the Governor to go along with it.
PsiFighter37
She needed to drop out today to get off the CA ballot. Not a surprise in my book – she will have primary challengers in 2022, and a home-state loss would have been very bad news.
She was my first choice initially, but I got lukewarm quick once it was clear she had very little / confusing policy direction, and her political instincts were…subpar, IMO, to put it kindly. Been more of a Warren leaner as of late, although her plan for Medicare for All was a silly bit of self-land mining. At this point…it may just come back to Uncle Joe. I dunno.
Ella in New Mexico
Wow, classy.
You can leave the premises at anytime you know…but that’s not gonna meet the trolling addiction, now will it?
janesays
@bupalos: Agree with all of this, but there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell Buttigieg drops out before Iowa. No sane person would drop out if the polls keep showing they have a real solid chance of winning the first contest in the nation.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. Most of those ladders were already pulled up the Silents, and the rest were in the process of being removed. We saw what people just 6 years older than I am were able to afford in their 30s, that we couldn’t until our late 50s.
They and the Greatest were the ones that sent young men to die in Vietnam, that allowed AIDS to kill so many people without caring, that blew up the economy in the late 80s which helped set us back even more.
Darkrose
@Steeplejack: My wife was born in 1963. She was never considered a Boomer growing up. It’s only been fairly recently that 1963 has been considered a Boomer. The seminal events for Boomers have always been the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, and the moon landing.
Skepticat
I really like her, but in a way this reinforces my respect for her—it shows she’s pragmatic and sensible. However, she now has the name recognition for future battles, and depending on the eventual nominee, a good shot at a VP position. It profoundly irritates me that so many old, white, wealthy men stay in, but let them play and waste their money in vanity runs.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Kent has disappeared Gen X.
trollhattan
I’m disappointed, as I thought she added a lot of quality to the field and is a compelling campaigner, with a solid platform.
Campaign team disarray undercut her efforts and at the end of the day, she’ll learn from the missteps and be stronger for it, regardless of where she sets her sights. In the meantime she’s our senator and I’m still a supporter. IDK about VP but depending on the candidate (please, not Joe or Wilmer) she could be a stellar running mate. But would she give up a senate seat for Mike Pence’s job?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Vietnam would define the Boomers, the older ones either served or managed to avoid service(Dick “I had other priorities” Cheney) and the younger group that watched the war every night on the TV news.
PJ
@Steeplejack:
@Fair Economist:
I get that the “baby boomer” generation is tied by the name to the actual “baby boom” of births following WWII, but as a cultural grouping, putting the people who were born between 1945 and 1964 in one basket makes little sense in terms of their life experiences and opportunities. When people think of the “boomers”, they think of the people who came of age in the 1960’s – that is, people born between 1940 and 1952. As a cohort, they had no memory of the Depression, and little of WWII. These are the people who created and consumed the cultural works that the define the 1960’s, and would be fighting in, or against, the war in Vietnam. People born between 1953 and 1964 have much less in common with the first group, having missed the 1960’s as young adults, and, for the last of them, having a memory of it only as little children. More to the point, they, like the rest of us that followed, had to fight for scraps in the shadow of the 1940-1952 cohort, who have dominated our culture, our economy, and our politics with their particular issues and desires ever since (I had hoped that the election of Obama in 2008 would put an end to it, but that was not to be.)
Kent
@bupalos: Buttigieg has nowhere else to go. That’s the curse of being a young ambitious Democrat in a ruby red state. The obvious play would be Governor or maybe Congress but the Indiana 2nd (South Bend) is a R+11 district. Unlike Harris, he doesn’t really have much of a day job to go back to as he sees himself as way too big for South Bend.
I expect he is really angling for a cabinet spot as he isn’t really VP material in any traditional way. He’s not going to bring Indiana with him or any other state I can think of. I’m guessing Secretary of Commerce (Census, Small Business Administration, and NOAA).
Just One More Canuck
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
She was born in 1964. Doesnt that make her a boomer?
Kent
@schrodingers_cat: Sorry, I meant Gen-X obviously.
janesays
@Kent: Yes, Iowa is still a swing state.
Roughly half of their statewide elected officers are Democrats, and the Republican who won the governor’s race in 2018 only won by 2.8% and had the advantage of incumbency going into the election. The state has four congressional seats, and three of them are held by Democrats.
dlwchico
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Ok, bigot
Darkrose
@?BillinGlendaleCA: As a Gen-Xer, Boomers were the people who went from Hippies to Yuppies. Thirtysomething and The Big Chill were representative of the generation before mine. All of the cultural touchstones of that generation are things that happened in the ’60’s.
But I’m from the generation that doesn’t exist, so what do I know.
Adam L Silverman
@lollipopguild: That’s Dr. Manhattan.
SFAW
@Darkrose:
Except when it is. !946-1964 is the generally accepted period (although Wikipedia says “1941” and “post-war” in the same sentence, unironically)
Also: except when someone-who-fucking-hates-boomers-hates-them-I tells-ya turns out to be a Boomer; at that point, Calvinball rules supersede.
Darkrose
@PJ: This is what I was trying to say. Thank you.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Their parents were boomers and thus their fates were sealed!
Kent
@Major Major Major Major:
No, I brain-farted and skipped a generation. Obviously I meant Gen-X of which I am a part.
Martin
Meanwhile, this is where we are.
Kent
@janesays: Is Iowa in play for the presidency? My impression was not.
zhena gogolia
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Oh, please, this is getting ridiculous.
When I see the “OK Boomer” phrase I burst into tears and then I nearly faint. It’s just so clever and cutting I don’t know what to do with myself. //
geg6
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You can seriously go fuck yourself with your Boomer hate. Sideways with a rusty chainsaw. Seriously. How the fuck is this the Boomers’ fault?
I blame white men with more money than brains. I wasn’t ever on her bandwagon, but Harris has it right that white men are trying to buy the Democratic nomination. Fuck them. I wish they’d fuck off and die already. Pretty much the same way I feel about assholes who do nothing but blame people like me for their plight in life. Funny but they all seem to turn out to be white men.
Major Major Major Major
@bupalos: you think the candidate leading the polls in the first state should drop out because Russia could find a way to manipulate voters should his long-shot candidacy somehow pan out?
AJ
Born in mid to late 50s to mid 60s?
Generation Jones.
Betty Cracker
As we’ve heard ad infinitum, black candidates running for office as Democrats have to convince black voters that white people will vote for them. I think that’s true as far as it goes, but it’s not the whole story.
I think that scenario takes a combination of a talented politician AND the right environment in the primary. Obama managed it in 2008 against Clinton, and I suspect if 2020 pitted Harris against Biden with a few nonentities hovering around Iowa rather than other candidates who started out with strong support in their own right, Harris could have pulled it off too. The field was just too crowded.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: Call it whatever you like but that thing that so many of you saw in her, that thing that said “yes, this person should be president?”
I never saw it. Not once. Not a race thing for me, I was more than happy to vote for her both as CA AG and Senate.
She’s a perfectly capable Dem Senator and by God we need those almost more than we need a new president. And God help us, we need both.
ruemara
@Elizabelle: It’s not about her at this time.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Darkrose: All Boomers would remember the Vietnam War or the Moon landing.
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
We’re here for ya, kid.
Cacti
But in doing so, you accidentally captured the Generation X experience in a nutshell. lol
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think that coming of age during the reactionary backlash to early Boomers is an important part of what defines later Boomers!
Starting to think this may have been something my mom said.
PsiFighter37
@Betty Cracker: Perhaps, but I still think that Harris’ campaign was a mess, and her perceived vacillation on policy matters reinforced someone who didn’t seem to have strongly-held views.
That said, Democrats love the perfect being the enemy of the good, so maybe that’s what I am doing as well. But by the end of her campaign, a lot of Harris’ comments and quips seemed canned / primed for social media and not to be taken seriously.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Just One More Canuck: Yes.
NotMax
@Raoul
Senators, other than any appointed to positions of specific authority in conducting an impeachment trial, are obligated by the rules to remain silent. Although they may submit questions or other pertinent communication in writing, which is subsequently ruled as in or out of order by the directing authorities.
(Emphasis mine.)
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: Youz funny Betty. Youz reeeeal funny.
Omnes Omnibus
I really have no idea who to support now. I had Harris first and Biden fourth, but my 2 and 3 were open.
janesays
@Just One More Canuck: 1964 is right on the cusp of Boomer and Gen X. Most consider it the last year of the Boomer generation, but there’s no universally agreed upon end date for that generation (or most generations, for that matter). The only generation for which there is universal agreement for its beginning year is Boomers – 1946 (nine months after the return of U.S. armed forces from WWII).
I consider anybody born in the first or last year of any generation to really be an amalgam of both generations. If you were born between 1963-65, you can identify with Boomers and Xers. If you were born between 1980-82, you can identify with both Xers and Millennials.
Biden and Sanders are both Silent Generation members, and both Trump and Obama are Boomers, but I imagine Trump has a lot more in common in his cultural upbringing with the former two than the latter, even when putting aside the race and socioeconomic factors.
Somebody born in 1946 usually has a lot more in common with somebody born in 1942 than they do with somebody born in 1961.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
WTF is with you? Trying to use facts to refute “feelings”? [As in “I feel that Boomers were born no later than 1961. Or 1960. Or whatever year curve-fits my hypothesis.”]
Major Major Major Major
@Kent: not that millennials don’t have our share of monsters, you named one, Miller. And of course Ivanka and J-Kush, by my reckoning of the birth years at least.
Cacti
She tried to occupy a lane that doesn’t seem to exist to any significant degree in this primary cycle: right of Warren but left of Biden.
Just One More Canuck
@Steeplejack:
I hope his arguments in court are a little stronger
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: Hahaha
Martin
@Betty Cracker: I think that’s correct, but I’ll also add in the catch 22 that POC voters find themselves in. If they view the boomer white male as the statistically best choice for winning, then a candidate like Harris will never rise up. The only way for a POC candidate to rise to the top is for POC voters to take a chance on them early. It’s hard. (And to be clear, I think Harris was the best candidate to actually win in November, even though I agree that Biden is the candidate best perceived to win)
I think it worked for Obama both because he had a smaller field as you note, but also because there wasn’t an incumbent in the race. Ousting an incumbent always feels like a tougher hill to climb, making it even harder to give those candidates a shot. Back in Jan 2008, Democrats didn’t know McCain would be the nominee, so it was hard to game out the best opposition to the GOP nominee. This year we know exactly who the opposition is.
Kent
The boomer thing really isn’t that hard to figure out.
After the war all the troops came home and everyone started breeding like bunnies to make up for lost time. The entire country embarked on a giant middle class suburban family-making project with all the freeways, suburbs, endless new schools, and all the dads in suits with moms at home taking care of children.
Around the early 1960s we had Kennedy and the Beatles and suddenly young people started looking around and realizing that there was more to life than Leave it to Beaver and young people started doing things other than getting married and breeding. Like the Peace Corps and freedom marches and anti-Nuclear protests and it all quickly spiraled into the Vietnam War and Woodstock and all the rest of the late 60s as the early boomers started to jump off the “let’s get married and have kids” bandwagon. That was the theme of pretty much every 1960s movie from the Graduate to Easy Rider.
Boomers started in 1946 as soon as the returning troops started to breed. And ended in the early 1960s when the early boomers and young war babies started to jump off the baby making bandwagon.
catclub
@Hildebrand: Harris wrote she is suspending, not ending, her campaign. …. just in case.
mad citizen
@VeniceRiley: Agree with this comment 1000%.
I’m a 1960 and have never liked being included with the Boomers. I know where le compte is coming from. By the time we go to something, the older boomers had already decided or phucked it up. Not that I’ve spent a lot of time being butthurt about it. That said, although Warren is now my choice of the frontrunners, Castro would be even better.
germy
wkwv
@Darkrose:1958 here. Yes I remember Kennedy’s assassination, I was in the carpool on the way home from Kindergarten. I was in High school for Nixon-Ford. Not a happy childhood either.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It just hit me that I am going to have to think about who I will vote for in the CA primary. Harris was my original choice.
MazeDancer
Crushed. So wanted Senator Harris for POTUS.
Well, she can still be a great Veep.
Have to note my niece, a very experienced former Dem operative, who lives in Iowa, went to a Harris event recently. Said it was the worst political staff she had ever seen. So, maybe there were some problems.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: given the source, I can confidently say that this opinion is wrong.
catclub
Also the economy cratered and McCain showed himself to have no idea what to do about it. I think without that cratering, the safe choice would still have been another Republican.
SFAW
@catclub:
I think candidates generally “suspend,” rather than “end,” their campaigns for financial reasons, such as letting them still receive donations. Of course, as I’m a Boomer, I might have fucked that up, too.
Darkrose
@SFAW: The reason for using generational definitions is as a shorthand for a group of people that share certain cultural touchstones. 1946-1964 is a grouping so broad as to be useless. People born after 1960 are not going to remember the Kennedy assassination. They weren’t old enough to worry about being drafted, or to protest the war.
Similar creep is happening on the other end of the generational scale, where “millenial” is being used for anyone from 20 to 40. Meawhile, the cohorts in between the larger ones are ignored, because there aren’t enough of us/them to have the cultural impact of the larger ones.
PsiFighter37
@Martin: FWIW, the field Obama ran in was smaller but not tiny – I think there 10 candidates at the maximum – and many of those candidates were folks with serious experience (Biden, Dodd, Richardson), as well as the last cycle’s hot new kid (John Edwards), and obviously HRC. By the time Iowa rolled around, only 3 candidates had a real shot. This year, it’s 4 – not a huge difference IMO.
janesays
@Darkrose: 1964 is widely considered the end year for Boomers. And generations generally are 20 years, for a reason – most people don’t have babies when they are 10-15 years old.
You’re correct that Boomers born in 1946 have very little in common with Boomers born in 1964, but the same can be said of Gen Xers born in 1965 compared to Gen Xers born in 1980. Or Millennials born in 1981 compared to Millennials born in 1996.
If you were born in ’65, you were in high school in the late 1970s. If you were born in 1980, you didn’t start high school until the mid-90s. Very, very few kids born in 1981 had cell phones in high school. Almost every kid born in the late ’90s had a cellphone before they even started high school. Very, very different experiences.
janesays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Some just barely so. Obama is a Boomer, but both of those things happened when he was very young.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: My bad. I’ll try to do better in future.
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: ‘suspending’ your campaign has something to do with financing laws; suspended presidential campaigns never pick back up. (McCain’s fake 2008 suspension notwithstanding)
PsiFighter37
@germy: Fuck Glenn Greenwald. If he told me the sky was blue, I’d still want to see how many rubles he got paid to say it.
Emerald
@Raoul:
Sadly, Senators do not get to speak during the trial. They are jurors. They just have to sit there and listen.
catclub
@germy: I hope you are putting in to show GG is an idiot. Bloomberg cares a whole lot more about Trump not getting re-elected that anything else – even his tax rate.
He just views the other Democratic candidates (completely unbiassed view of his) as being risks for not beating Trump.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: I still wonder how much campaign organization and management plays into this. Harris raised a lot of money – fifth overall, if we discount Steyer, whose money came out of his own pocket. She was only a million or two behind Biden in fundraising. Other candidates who raised far less are still in the race. I don’t know why she shouldn’t have been able to stay in until at least South Carolina, but her campaign has to play a big part in it.
janesays
@Darkrose: 1965-1980 is also a group so broad as to be meaningless.
germy
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah.
cheap jim
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: OK, Boomer.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@janesays: As someone a year and a half older than President Obama, I know what I speak of.
Kent
My HS daughter says that it has basically become the go-to phrase any time any teacher says anything stupid or objectionable. Of course most teachers these days are Gen-X .
As in:
“You students these days are just on your phones way too much”
“I’m not sure those tight leggings or ripped jeans really follow the dress code.
“He/she/they? I just don’t get these new pronouns”
“OK Boomer…”
The Moar You Know
@Kent: The only ones here who are millennials are Kushner and Miller. The rest are all GenX. Mostly the shitty, early cohort of GenX (mine) that went for Reagan in droves.
I cannot tell you the horror of finding out that I’m older than Kellyanne Conway.
Martin
@janesays: It’s not really about cultural affiliations, it’s about scale in the case of boomers. They’re called boomers because there’s a fuckton of them, all in that age range. Regardless of their shared culture, they spurred a construction boom for schools, then a housing boom as they came of age, now a boom in retirement homes, etc. I think boomers typically under-appreciate how much of US society had to adapt simply to cope with their sheer numbers. That’s not projecting onto them a common mindset, they were simply an elephant in the room that couldn’t be ignored.
Plus boomers have outweighed political clout simply due to scale. No previous pensioner generation had that kind of political clout, and it’s really fucking things up badly, simply because other generations that are facing these problems square on – housing affordability, jobs, college, climate change and so on can’t possibly outvote the zillions of retirees. It’s not that the retiree concerns are invalid, it’s that the balance between generational concerns is completely thrown off and young people in particular are completely shut out of the political space unless they force their way in through social media and the like (which then has the corresponding effect of causing them to be ridiculed by the boomers for changing the rules of a game that the boomers can’t help but win)
SFAW
@Darkrose:
And yet that is the generally accepted definition of the Post-WW2 Baby Boom. And, amazingly, that term has been in use far longer than “recently.” Like, since the 1980s, maybe earlier (or so it is per my Boomer-and-therefore-suspect recollection).
As Bill (I think) pointed out, 1964 was when the birth rate dropped back down to “normal” (so to speak) levels, thus ending the Boom. Sorry that doesn’t fit with what a few commenters here appear to want.
Kay
Trump campaign openly promoting Gabbard now. I think it’s good for base Democratic turnout when they attack sitting D Senators.
Every once in a while they should resist their natural tendency to be assholes.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: GG is an idiot, but you knew that. Bloomberg made it clear last January, via his senior advisor, that he wasn’t going to run 3rd party because he knows it will allow the President to eke out another narrow victory via the Electoral College.
Darkrose
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Using my wife as an example: she vaguely remembers the moon landing. She doesn’t remember the Vietnam war because she was too young to watch the news. And she doesn’t remember the Kennedy assassination because she was three months old. Technically, she’s a Boomer, but she doesn’t share the cultural touchstones. The music of her teenaged years was prog rock, not early Beatles and Stones.
I think music is one of the best ways to define a generation: what was popular when you were in high school? I was a huge Duran Duran fan. I remember when the Thriller video dropped, and I got up early to watch the London Live Aid broadcast.Without knowing when exactly I was born, the soundtrack of my teenage years situates me right in the middle of Gen X, and if we need to define a generation, its probably a more useful metric than 20 years.
janesays
@Darkrose: Most of the generations are defined in 15-18 year spans. There are a few that are even longer than the typical definition for Boomers. Here’s how Pew Research defines each group.
Greatest Generation: 1901-1927
Silent Generation: 1928-1945
Baby Boomers: 1946-1964
Generation X: 1965-1980
Millennials: 1981-1996
Generation Z: 1997-2012
If you shortened Boomers to 1946-1960, the generation would actually be smaller than both Gen X and Millennials in terms of length of time.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: The good news is you look at least 100 years younger than her.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: Good point about no incumbent in 2008. I agree about Harris being (on paper, at least) the strongest 2020 nominee. I think POC candidates are generally in a better position than white counterparts to hold the fractious Democratic coalition together.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Ha ha ha ?
rikyrah
Martin
@Kent: Exactly. ‘Ok Boomer’ is an expression of a mindset. Hell, I used it on my daughter a few days ago. Neither one of us is either a millennial or a boomer.
I equate it to ‘thank you for refusing to take the time to empathize with my situation and belittling my views, kindly fuck off’. If addressing climate change immediately causes you anxiety about the cost of steak going up, or having to take a train now and then, then you’re deserving of ‘OK Boomer’ and I don’t fucking care how old you are.
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Dick Cheney—not a boomer. Born in 1941.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m completely stymied. The only thing that would lift my mood a little bit in recent months was sending Kamala a donation. But of all the others, nobody jumps out at me as the most desirable candidate for the general election. I truly have no preference, except that I can’t abide Sanders or Gabbard.
ellenr
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m a boomer. These three are avatars for the “boomer” policies you dislike.
Cacti
You’ve actually hit the key point. The grouping is based on birthrates rather than common cultural experiences.
The first, placeholder name for Generation X was the Baby Bust.
Brachiator
@Kent:
I hadn’t really thought about it in these terms, but you are right.
Or maybe an ambassadorship. But something like Commerce might be a good spot for him.
germy
@Adam L Silverman:
GG never let facts get in the way of a good story.
geg6
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Obama is pretty much the same age as me and we are most definitely NOT Gen X. We are late Boomers, what some call Generation Jones. An asshole like you doesn’t get to claim him or me as part of your cohort. And just to make it clear how much contempt I have for your stupid bullshit, there is no generation that has a larger cohort of idiots than Gen X. You dimwits were the ones who loved them some King Ronnie. So you can just shut the fuck up now.
zhena gogolia
@Kay:
Gabbard is Putin’s candidate, so it makes sense.
janesays
@The Moar You Know:
@The Moar You Know: Matt Gaetz is an old Millennial – born in 1982. 1980 is the most widely accepted cutoff year for Generation X.
Mick Mulvaney and Tucker Carlson aren’t just Gen Xers, they’re old Gen Xers – had either been born 5 years earlier, they would be considered young Boomers. No idea how anyone could confuse them for Millennials. The oldest Millennials are in their late 30s right now.
Kay
@Martin:
If I had a lot of money I would invest in building low cost, simple retirement housing. If this town is any indication there is a huge group of people who aren’t going to have housing they can afford (and handle) on just Social Security. I think about it when I see minimansions for sale- how you could convert them into multi-units :)
You see lots of upscale, and we have some of that, but there’s so little downscale. We have ONE complex and it has a huge waiting list.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Darkrose: My parents had the evening news with Uncle Walter on every week night, so I’d see the reports from Vietnam. I was a space geek(I guess my photos show I still am) so the Moon landing was a BFD(it also helped that a lot of the rockets and stuff were built and tested here in Southern CA). I still remember the Saturn V rocket tests about 15 miles from where I grew up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub: also Obama was the only (major?) candidate in the primary who had opposed the Iraq War, and his Senate campaign in Illinois, when he spent a lot of time “downstate”, was a precursor to his campaign in Iowa. I think, but I’m not sure, he visited every county in IL in ’05/’06, and every county in IA two years later.
(trying to remember now if there were any other IW opponents in the ’08 field. Did Kucinich mount up Windmill Charging Express that cycle?)
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
I think celebrating Harris getting out will just enrage out base. There’s no upside to Trump doing it, other than pure nastiness.
Cacti
You mean the president that Boomers massively voted into office twice?
Darkrose
@SFAW: My point is that people born in 1964 have more in common, culturally, with people born in 1970 than with people born in 1950, and putting them in the same group from the standpoint of shared experiences doesn’t actually make a lot of sense, regardless of whether it’s technically correct. Technically, someone born in 1980 is considered Gen X, but they’re not going to share the cultural touchstones that I do. If we’re going to insist that generational distinctions are a thing, it’s worth looking at how and why they’re constructed.
Adam L Silverman
@janesays: The real problem with this breakdown is it doesn’t account for specific socio-cultural/societal breaks within each cohort. For instance, my parents are war babies. Dad was born in 1940, mom in 1942. But they also had children late. Dad was 30, mom was 28. I’m the oldest, my brother is 4 years younger than me. All of our peers parents were boomers. And my brother and I grew up in very different homes/familial cultures than our friends and acquaintances. The cultural and social and political and economic references were all different. So the commonality socially with most of the GenXers my age/around my age is kind of whacked. I grew up in a home where different music was being played and listened to, different literature was being read and available to read, different economic priorities existed and were being socialized to my brother and I. Etc, etc, etc.
ETA: At one point my cohort was referred to as Buby Busters as we came after the boom. Or Notch Babies for the same reason.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: Bad example, I actually thought he was older but too lazy(and didn’t want it in my browser history) to look it up.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: POC candidates are what get Democrats to volunteer, give money, enthusiastically talk up a candidate with their neighbors. That’s really important for democrats. I don’t dislike Biden, but he does none of those things. (Opposing Trump might, but it’s not the same thing)
Katie Porter got me to knock on doors. I was excited about her. I could walk up to any random human and go on and on about her. You could not mistake my enthusiasm for anything other than I simply adored her.
The Moar You Know
@MazeDancer: Kay’s constant ranting about “low-quality hires” has found fertile ground in my brain; Nowadays I REALLY pay attention to the caliber of who is getting hired by the people I do business with, and the people political campaigns hire. The people that get brought on to do the work of organizations I work with. And y’know what? She’s not wrong. If Harris had crap campaign staff, that says something very important about her.
trollhattan
@Kent:
Just to add that post-WWII families also had left the Depression behind, as well as the war, which made marrying and establishing households far more viable than pre-war. I suspect it’s not well understood how very long and pernicious the Depression really was.
janesays
@geg6: I’m Gen X, and I had zilch to do with Reagan becoming president, namely because I wasn’t even in high school when he was president. The first presidential election in which I could vote was in 1996 (I just barely missed out on 1992).
Just to clarify – there isn’t a single member of Generation X who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, because there isn’t a single member of Gen X who was old enough to even vote that year. Less than 25% of us were even able to vote for him in 1984.
Elizabelle
@MazeDancer:
What does that mean? Did your niece share any specifics?
dnfree
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: a lot of early boomers were involved in the rights movements of the sixties and seventies, and a lot of us still are. We might not be a majority of our cohort, but it’s an injustice to any “generation” to paint them all with the same brush. Why do it? How does it improve anything? Turning away allies isn’t a good way to build a majority.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti:
You might want to check the 1980 exit polling, the 18-35 age group voted to re-elect President Carter.
ETA: They were the only age group that voted to re-elect President Carter.
Cacti
@janesays: A Boomer blaming Generation X for Reagan is about as laughable as a Boomer taking credit for the Civil Rights movement.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: You won’t believe what they’re finding!
Cacti
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And here’s where you get an “Ok, Boomer”.
The very oldest members of Generation X were 19 in 1984.
All of them were too young to vote in 1980.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: That’s funny because it’s true. I look like I could be one of her kids (please God, don’t let her have kids)
Adam L Silverman
@germy:
Fixed it for you.
Steeplejack
@PJ:
I agree completely. That’s why I think it’s ridiculous when people start using “boomer”—or other generational epithets—as a cudgel to bash large groups of people. Because when you drill down a millimeter or so, you find that they really mean, as I said above, “people of a certain age that I don’t like.” Christ, Le Comte is a boomer himself—but not one of the bad ones. All righty, then.
“People think.” Everybody wants to define “boomer” in their own way and then assumes that everyone agrees with them. Which is why the term has become almost meaningless except in the demographic sense.
NotMax
Jeeze, “Boomer” is a label to describe a particular span of years of birth. Stretching the term wildly out of shape beyond that to ascribe cultural, social, personality, political or other qualities being defined (even unto ascribing them as being somehow innate) is a ludicrous exercise. All that is defined is a demographically assigned time frame.
The whole ‘this cohort is unlike the other in some cases, therefore they are not a part of the same group’ thing is like arguing that chihuahuas aren’t dogs because if they are hooked up to a sled one won’t travel very far.
In short, stop tarring people for the happenstance of when they were born. Or elevating them for same, for that matter.
janesays
@Adam L Silverman: I’m the same – I’m just in the younger half of Gen X, my oldest sibling is technically a Boomer (1964), and my youngest sibling is just shy of being a Millennial. My parents were both smack dab in the middle of the Silent Generation (mid 1930s), but virtually all of my peers parents were Boomers. My parents were both in their 50s before I began high school.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I also grew up in an older parent household(my parents were Greatest Gen, my dad was 40 and mom was 33). Most of the kids I grew up with had Silent Gen parents so they rocked on Elvis while my parents loved Glen Miller.
geg6
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Oh god, now after reading some of your responses to others, you’re even worse than a Gen Xer asshole. You’re a Boomer who wishes you were a Gen Xer. Jesus. Go away with your shit.
PJ
@geg6:
@Cacti: Gen-X-ers were not old enough to vote for Reagan in 1980, and only the first two years would have been old enough in 1984. The Boomers own the Reagan Revolution.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti: Did you read what I wrote? All age groups voted to re-elect Reagan in 1984 by a large margin.
ETA: Anyone over 55 is a Boomer, right?
The Moar You Know
@geg6: As an early GenXer (the Reaganite generation) I just feel compelled to say: preach it to the skies. My generation is full of people whose best contribution to the national welfare would be to SHUT THEIR FUCKING MOUTHS, GO OFFLINE FOREVER, and then voluntarily serve as lubricant for wood chippers.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: I hear you!
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: She has four kids.
janesays
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Amy Klobuchar is a Boomer – she was born in 1960.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
If you can’t be
With the one you want (to bite)
Bite the one you’re with
Needs some work, but my point stands.
The too-early campaign kickoff and far-too-many candidates assured most people are going to be disappointed, because their chosen candidate will almost assuredly not be nominated.
tobie
My heart goes out to all Kamala Harris supporters. This is terrible on so many fronts but especially given that Harris is the one African-American woman in the race. As someone who had her heart broken when Jay Inslee and Beto O’Rourke dropped out, I know how much this hurts. All three, I believe, showed far more wisdom and courage than a certain young mayor who likes to rail against DC and tout the can-do attitude of the midwest. (Sigh.) Kamala Harris changed the discussion on education, healthcare, criminal justice reform, and gun control and should be congratulated for all of this.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I remember on GOS in 2010, folk were equating Boomer and elderly, spoiler alert: there were no Boomers over 65 in 2010.
Cacti
Boomers and Silents.
geg6
@Darkrose:
There is an actual demographic definition of the years of the generation. It is generally agreed that the Baby Boomers were born from 1947 to 1964. Not all Boomers were hippies, tripping out during the Summer of Love.
Adam L Silverman
@janesays: It was very weird being the only person I knew whose parents weren’t separated, divorced, etc. It didn’t make sense until I was old enough to understand the societal differences in their experiences. Also, my friends’ parents were all fucked up.
Kent
@Brachiator: An ambassadorship? Hadn’t considered that. He does speak what….8 languages or something ridiculous like that? He might be well suited for one of the bigger ambassadorships. But those are sort of dead-end jobs unless you plan a foreign service career. A cabinet job would seem to be more of a stepping stone to future national politics. A good Secretary of Commerce could be on the road to every part of the country pretty much every week. Ron Brown (Clinton’s Commerce Secretary) did that and looked to be angling for bigger things until he died in a plane crash. I was working for NOAA at that time and remember him well.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s a weird sort of perspective.
janesays
@dmsilev: Unfortunately, Gabbard and Yang are right on the cusp of eligibility – they only need to hit the target (4%) in one more poll each. There is a solid possibility that one or both of them will make the cut.
Booker isn’t going to be on the stage – he’s met the donor threshold, but has zero polls at 4%. The deadline is 9 days from now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@PJ: I guess the Silents and Greatest Gen sat out the 1980 and 1984 elections.
SFAW
@Darkrose:
Yes, you’ve stated that numerous times. Maybe I’m mis-reading you — I am a Boomer, after all — but it seems that the “cultural touchstones” thing is somewhat more arbitrary, and based on your preferences (and those of other non-Boomers, as well as Boomers who claim they aren’t). I think Martin laid things out pretty well (don’t recall which comment #), with little or no “it’s the way I say it is because that’s what works for me and various prejudices I have.” [Note: I’m distinguishing between “prejudice” — i.e., pre-judging in general — and bigotry.]
It’s unfortunate (for some) that the Baby Boom has been defined as a demographic phenomenon, rather than as a cultural/economic/political thing. Although it’s certainly convenient to ascribe certain behaviors and beliefs to Boomers — I’ve probably done it, too, although I can’t recall any specific instances — it’s not very different from ascribing certain sets of beliefs to any particular ethnicity, sex, orientation, and so on.
Although we can probably safely say that all Trump voters are either racists/bigots, assholes, or some combination. But outside of them ….
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: LMAO. But would Rick Perry be able to suck on a corn dog in New Mexico?
Honestly, rotating primaries would be good. Getting sick of lilly white Iowa starting the campaign ad season every 4 years.
Nelle
@Martin: Last month, I went to a joint fundraiser for my Congressional Rep (Cindy Axne – Iowa) and Katie Porter (who is actually an Iowa farm girl way back. I was so impressed that my pen slipped and I wrote the check for more than twice what I had intended to contribute.
My husband and niece were at a house party for Kamala on Saturday afternoon. I said, I’ll catch her later as I had the rest of the family to host. She was tied for first choice with Castro for me. I’m going to have to sit back and think.
I’m new to Iowa so watching this whole process is a revelation. I like the way that people around me are watching, listening, and not committing early. I don’t feel under pressure to make up my mind. I’m disturbed by the huge billboards for Gabbard – someone has got big bucks pushing her. And I would put my marker on the Russians.
The only time I ever heard my father curse was when he was dying and reviewing his life. He said, “Verdammt Russians.” He survived WWI, the Russian Revolution and resulting civil war (in what is now Ukraine, where it lasted nearly the longest), was, with his family, under house arrest when he was 10, nearly starved to death in the famine. He witnessed horrors he wouldn’t speak about. When I hear the Russian propaganda coming from Republicans, I shudder.
Elizabelle
@tobie: Gracious comment.
Thread has been totally derailed by comment about (yawn) Boomers.
Cacti
Weird how the Boomers have their fingerprints all over the Reagan Revolution, but disclaim it, and were too young to have done any of the heavy lifting for Civil Rights, but claim it as a generational triumph.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cacti: Greatest Gen sat out those elections?
janesays
@Adam L Silverman: Gabbard and Yang both have decent shots of qualifying, and both are POC, but I kinda feel those aren’t the POC most of us were hoping for.
Martin
@geg6: Um, I’m an old Gen Xer (born 1968) and Reagan was elected on my 12th birthday. Hell, the last of the Gen Xers were born the day Reagan was elected.
Reagan was the first president elected where boomers were the largest voting block, in terms of age cohorts. That’s been true of every President since, including Trump. It will remain true in 2020, though Millennials will at least be close.
For Clinton’s second term, there were 50% more Boomer voters than Gen X – 25 million. Even today there’s 15 million more Boomer voters than Gen X. Millennials have outnumbered Gen X since Obama’s 2nd term. Gen X has very little political clout. We are a tiny group, relatively speaking. We didn’t get the benefit of the post war population boom and we didn’t get the benefit of large scale immigration (which is what really pushed the Gen X numbers up).
Boomers have been make or break for every election since Ford. You did good with Obama, though.
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Except for the advanced students.
Steeplejack
@SFAW:
LOL. True.
Adam L Silverman
@mrmoshpotato: Stuffed sopapilla.
And now I’m hungry!
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Shame.
She was the best debater.
Anyways, she’ll make a great running mate. She’ll excite the base, while running circles around Pence, Dump, and corporate media.
taumaturgo
Another middle of the road centrist democrat goes down, while the bonafide progressives keep on keeping on. The country and the electorate have changed and catering to the boomers with half measures and incrementalism is not going to be enough to sustain enthusiasm for a large portion of the base. Ms Harris, take the coming four years to truly align yourself with the liberal values that made the Democrat party the people’s party.
Nicole
@Kent:
Oh well, whatever, never mind.
PST
@Kent: Yeah, that’s one reason it was just a dream.
janesays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t have an issue with it as long as it is a seat that is absolutely safe – like Harris’ seat. I would not risk it with an officeholder in say, Colorado or Virginia, however.
Nelle
Maybe the thread is dead…or should be, but I’ll toss one more comment in. I’m in the Boomer crowd (born in 1951). I’ve taught younger people all my life. My children were born in 84 and 90. My granddaughters in 17 and 19. I’m in it for my former students, for my family, and for the future. We’ve drastically rearranged our lives (I wanted to return to living in NZ; I’m a dual citizen) by moving to Iowa to support my son and daughter-in-law in whatever way we can. I meet so many people here in the Des Moines area who have moved here to be part of a supportive network for grandchildren. We vote for tax increases for schools. We believe in the common good and building a society that works for everyone, even the Republicans who repudiate us. I’m not alone in those in my cohort. I expect better thinking among this crowd.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Right? One great thing about Twitter is that it lets you “pie” words and phrases as well as people.
Betty Cracker
@Nicole: Annnnnd Nicole wins the damned thread!
PJ
One good thing about this thread is that we now know a well-placed “Ok, Boomer” is the key to being on our way to a T-Bogg unit.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@mad citizen: I have “Kamala” and “Warren” stickers on my car. I’m planning to leave the Kamala sticker on for now. Just in case she’s on the ticket…
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: They didn’t sit it out, but they were pretty seriously outnumbered by then. There are a LOT of boomers.
Elizabelle
@PJ: I know.
@Betty Cracker: I am wishing BJuice had that feature too. Cuz I’d pie this thread for Boomer. Poof — Kamala completely disappeared amidst it. Sad. (That’s actually a kind of amazing metaphor, is it not? Couldn’t get press coverage. Can’t even hold her own in a thread dedicated to her because — look — BOOMER!)
tobie
@Elizabelle: Hugs to you, Elizabelle. We put our heart and soul into campaigns because we believe in a candidate’s vision. I could well imagine wanting to live in Kamala’s America–an America that embraces diversity, values public education and the teachers who care for kids, keeps military grade weapons out of the public square, has a fair, equitable justice system, and offers a first-class health care to everyone. It’s not that other campaigns don’t value this but it was and is Kamala’s mark and to lose that promise hurts like hell. Yes, we pick up and move on eventually but having some time to mourn is important.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@taumaturgo: <blockquote>middle of the road centrist</blockquote>
I don’t even know where to begin…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
Asshole
Elizabelle
I mean, it’s ridiculous. Kamala didn’t even get traction in her own damn thread.
But maybe news about her withdrawal will reduce some of the time our corporate media devotes to the impeachment report. You know, the one where “Democrats said.”
geg6
@Darkrose:
My younger sister is a ’64 Boomer. She wasn’t even born when Kennedy was assassinated. But she certainly remembers seeing Vietnam on TV, she remembers the assassinations of MLK and RFK, she remembers our brothers having to go through the draft lottery and she has always been a Beatles and Stones fan, from her toddler days.
She has the same cultural touchstones as I do (born in 1958), though I have a few more in that I can remember Kennedy as president and the assassination/funeral and the first time the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. I also was in my early twenties in the 80s and have many cultural touchstones that you do from that era. Which means that it’s not really about culture when these generational categories are delineated. It’s about demographics. Nothing more.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: But, Boomers really didn’t vote for Reagan in 1980.
janesays
@Kent: Yeah, this. Sherrod Brown needs to stay in the U.S. Senate for a long time. He absolutely cannot be the VP nominee, unless you want to vastly increase the odds that McConnell is still the Senate Majority Leader in 2021.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: Well, Kamala is a Boomer. //
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Thanks for relieving me of having to look this up. We have hashed this over several times in the past.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
I think Griftwald is onto something here. Stopped clocks and all that.
I hate to see Harris dropping out. It’s always been either her or Warren for me. I’ve always liked them for their no nonsense, anti-corruption attitudes
geg6
@Cacti:
As a Boomer who hangs out with a lot of Boomers and GenXers, anecdotally, I know not a single Boomer who voted for him. And every single GenXer, with one exception, voted for him. I know I sure didn’t.
Steeplejack
@Cacti:
This doesn’t make any sense. Bill didn’t say anything about Gen-Xers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: I don’t remember the Kennedy assassination, but I have a vague memory of seeing him giving a speech on the TV machine(in black and white, we didn’t have color until the early 70’s).
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: In the 80s, GenXers, if they had nascent political opinions at all, were usually more conservative than the Boomers. Most of us weren’t actually old enough to vote during Reagan’s elections, but there were a lot of Reagan Youth among us. Now it seems to be the other way around–they moved right and we actually moved left, a little (the only living generation to do that).
geg6
@Darkrose:
You are extrapolating your experience onto others. I and my younger sister are both late Boomers (or Generation Jones, if you like) and we have little to nothing in common with people born in 1970. We grew up in a family with six kids, where we were the two youngest and were separated by the four older siblings by, respectively, five years and 10 years. Our “culture” was that of our older brothers and sisters.
NotMax
Have never once made mention of it here but have been a Harris person since the day she announced (although also intensely Castro-curious). Disappointed that she never managed the feat of projecting an in focus, steady image of who she is and what her campaign brings to the table*, yes. But not so disappointed by this announcement that I’m going to go about rending my garments.
Digest the bitter pill and move on.
*The campaign’s “I can beat Trump” message is fine as a starting point but one cannot and ought not coast through four years in office on that. Without putting meat on the bone one is left with little in the way of hope for nourishment.
James E Powell
@PJ:
I always split the Boomer male generation based on whether they were subject to the draft. My oldest brother (b 1946) was drafted while the draft ended before I (b 1955) turned 18. I don’t know what the equivalent divider might be for females, but for males this one was huge.
Cacti
@geg6: Hey, that’s great. But meanwhile, outside of your personal circle, only 2-years worth of Gen X was old enough to have ever voted for Reagan. The entire Baby Boom was voting age in 1984, and voted for Ronnie with gusto.
Sent him to the biggest landslide victory in US history, as a matter of fact. 49 states.
geg6
@Cacti:
Yeah, but they sure voted for him when they could and well after they should have seen he was a piece of shit. Then they went out and voted for Bush. Both I and II. At least, the ones I know did.
Steeplejack
@PJ:
Wrong again. See ?BillinGlendaleCA above.
Ramalama
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yeah, I’m an expat and I still vote.
You could easily just stay where you are and don’t head for the polls if you wanted to.
Adam L Silverman
@janesays: I just wish he’d start making those Carmel ice cream commercials again.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@geg6:
A lot of Gen Xers came of age (voting age) during Reagan and the rise of yuppies, didn’t they?
Like you, I’m not sure it’s wise to blame one generation for all the ills of society. What about all of the people who came before the Baby Boomers? Didn’t they have a role in creating the world as it is? Or the ones that came after them?
I drive a car to school and work every day. I mean, I have to because public transit is virtually nonexistent where I live, aside from buses. I contribute to climate change. We all do. The ones to blame are the rich, the privileged, and the corporations that depend on destroying society to make a profit.
I’ve noticed that “boomer” and “millennial” have come to mean “old” and “young” and have lost their original meanings.
gvg
@Darkrose: Um, I was born in 1963 and I have always been considered a boomer. Your wife may have somehow managed not to notice she is considered a boomer but ot beats me how. Its always been part of the boomer cohort.
By the way I think the considering different name generations alike came later and is a product of advertising becoming so important. If you look at a birth rate graph of the US, it’s really obvious which ones are “boomers” and why that demographic group got noticed so much. It looks like a snake ate a cow compared to past population growth, and it’s also had carry on effects to future generations as the big bulge group got to having children age all together and caused more lumps in our growth.
Boomers aren’t really as alike as talking heads have liked to say. There are just a lot of them born in those years and they needed to buy baby stuff and houses and autos at about the same time. They made companies richer if they sold the right things at the right time. That’s what boomer really means.
Nicole
I’m grieving pretty hard about this right now, and she wasn’t my #1 choice (although I was a monthly contributor to her campaign). I was thinking each of the other candidates were having their moment to peak, and, because we now appear to live in an era of perpetual campaigning, they were peaking too soon (I like Warren a lot, but I very much did not like her briefly pulling ahead of Biden last month because then the knives are out in the media, ready to take down the front runner). I thought Harris would have a chance to gain traction as the primary ground on, and the successive frontrunners got cut up by the MSM. Ugh. Fucking money, man. Ridiculous that candidates, over a year before the election, are having to raise these obscene amounts to stay competitive months before a ballot is even cast.
I’m so tired of rich white men.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
I really think she stumbled when she said she would do away with all private health insurance (I think, please don’t kill me ^^;) and then backtracked.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
Reagan made his bones attacking boomers.
Raven Onthill
Entirely sympathetic to the disappointed people here. The faces in the next Democratic debate will all be light-skinned and male. I did not and do not love Harris. But why is she out, and why is Castro out, and why is Booker out, and Steyer still in?
And a shout-out to the Supreme Court Justices who made sure that the only way to become a Presidential candidate is to buy your way in.
chopper
@SFAW:
a lot of the generational analysis reminds me of ‘what sign of the zodiac you were born under’ but what do i know.
Cacti
@trollhattan: And they got their revenge by…
Becoming yuppies and voting for him en masse.
Raven Onthill
@chopper: most social scientists agree with you.
Betty Cracker
@Nicole: If I didn’t have the political instincts of a concussed garden slug, Warren’s rise would have alarmed me too because you’re right — that’s when the knives come out. But she’s been left for politically dead before, so who knows? Not me, but my guess is it’ll be Biden, and even though he’s a horrible candidate, he’ll be smart enough to choose someone good as a running mate, maybe even Harris.
@Raven Onthill: Warren will be in the next debate, and she’s a woman.
Chris Johnson
Kamala Harris was my second choice, in part as a slap in the face to the russian-guided hard lefties. That made me really mad, though it’s in character for Putin to back all the extremes to create more chaos and I saw it personally, both in the Sanders campaign and bigtime in the ‘dirtbag left’.
We can kind of tell the candidates who are NOT shit by how much is up against them. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Harris is NOT shit, not co-opted by Putin, not the puppet of oligarchs… and so this is a setback, because she is not a billionaire and I earnestly believe if there are staff problems it’s because Putin has people fucking with her too. That is a given. We are heavily infiltrated, in a stochastic-just-making-trouble kind of way that doesn’t require detailed coordination or a master plan.
I want to see more of Kamala Harris. I want to see her as Veep just to send a message (and then, as President after our next one) because I think we can get many fierce lawyers but she means more than that. I want to see her debate Pence. I’d watch the shit out of that.
She’s young compared to our geriatric power-seekers. She ain’t going anywhere. I want to get to vote for her, much as I got to vote for Obama twice. Ideally we get Warren/Harris, and I want to see Warren support her hardcore: you know her reference to being forced out because she is not a billionaire is a direct attack on the people currently trying to force Warren out as well, and I am fed up with it.
We haven’t seen the last of Harris. This is a tactical move and a smart one, which is what I’d expect of her (especially if some of her staff is compromised and not actually on her side, which is distinctly possible given what’s been happening in our politics for years). This cuts any weak staff loose (let ’em go work for Mayor Pete) and keeps her powder dry. We’re not done with Kamala and she’s not going anywhere.
NotMax
@NotMax
Less verbose version: She didn’t come across as dexterous in fully embracing her potential.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Actually, I finally found the data, and you’re right. I wasn’t accounting for lower turnout rates by younger voters. Boomers had more eligible voters in 1980, but weren’t turning out yet. Clinton was when that spike hit.
Litany
Officer down!
PJ
@Steeplejack: this analysis shows that in the 1980 election, 18-29 year olds were evenly divided between Carter and Reagan, while it was a 7 point lean among 30-45 year olds for Reagan: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1980
In 1984, when only two years of Gen X-er’s were eligible to vote, all age groups overwhelmingly voted for Reagan: https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1984
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yup, anyone over 55 is a “boomer” and anyone under 55 is a “millennial”.
chopper
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
yeah, i definitely don’t understand wth ‘reagan love’ would have to do with gen x. the oldest gen x-ers were 19 or so when he was reelected, just old enough to vote. and as you point out, they voted for carter.
PaulWartenberg
This is a really bad day for Trekkies as well. DC Fontana, writer for the early Trek series, the one other than Nimoy himself who built up the backstory to Spock and to the Vulcan culture, passed away today. :(
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Yup, the hippies at Berkeley when he was Governor.
Tazj
@janesays: Unfortunately they do which is the reason why I lamented the fact that they are still “in” the race while Harris is definitively out and won’t be on the debate stage. I know neither one of them have any chance of winning but I hate them potentially taking time from better candidates or being on stage when Booker and Castro aren’t.
I liked Harris a lot and I loved the fact that she really got on Trump’s nerves.
Martin
I’m not seeking to blame Boomers for it. Millennials favored Clinton by 20 points. GenXers favored Clinton by 10 points. There weren’t enough Greatest/Silent generation alive to make a huge difference, but there were so many Boomers that had a slight favor for Trump that it carried the election despite the overwhelming preference for Clinton among younger generations. Boomers don’t need to have a strong opinion, they make up for a weak opinion in sheer numbers.
Put another way, if the electoral college were generational instead of geographic, tempering large birth years and boosting small birth years, Clinton would have won in a landslide.
PJ
@PJ: Interestingly (to me), in 1976, Carter carried the entire South, while in 1980, he only won in Georgia. I guess Reagan was very effective at enacting the Southern Strategy.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Hippies and the Panthers. People might forget they were also boomers, along with every single draftee shipped off to ‘Nam.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think it’s ‘anyone older than me that I disagree with is a boomer, and anyone younger than me that I disagree with is a millennial’
PaulWartenberg
Generation X grew up in the haze and mythos of Reaganism, developing a sizable amount of cynicism while coping with a ton of sh-t – single parent homes, declining schools, bad sci-fi movies, pop metal, mullets and perms – that kinda turned us into the Slacker generation. One trend that nobody pays much mind to is the drop of membership in the community organizations like Rotary, local Veterans, non-profit groups, etc. They missing out on a lot of people in the 35-55 age range who tended to join such groups for socializing and activism. Gen Xers tend not to join things. It’s not that a lot of us are going to be Reagan zombies crying for tax cuts and deregulation and vote suppression of minorities, it’s that a lot of us aren’t even going to care one way or another. :/
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: LOL, I think you have a point there.
NotMax
@PaulWartenberg
Besides Roddenberry, a major, major force of nature for things Star Trek. About all that’s now left of the old guard movers and shakers behind keeping StarTrek viable is Bjo Trimble.
The Moar You Know
Hey, that’s great. But meanwhile, outside of your personal circle, only 2-years worth of Gen X was old enough to have ever voted for Reagan. The entire Baby Boom was voting age in 1984, and voted for Ronnie with gusto.
Sent him to the biggest landslide victory in US history, as a matter of fact. 49 states.
@Cacti: I’m one of those two years worth of cannon fodder. Can you imagine? My first election. I get to vote. Reagan vs. Mondale. I knew Reagan was a monster (I mean that in the “as bad as Hitler” way) but was, as you’ve noted, far too young to have voted in 1980. So I cast my vote for Mondale, thinking the American people must be utterly disgusted and repulsed by the nature of the lobotomized gargoyle with a pompadour after the previous four years. Yeah, virtually every last asshole at my high school thought he was the Greatest American Of All America Ever, but they were stupid high school kids.
I got a good lesson in the reality of American politics that evening. It’s fucking amazing I voted ever again, after that blowout.
Betty Cracker
@PJ: Yep. By opening his campaign in Philadelphia, MS and yapping about states rights, Reagan finally hit white Southerners over the head with a clue-by-four. Regional provincialism and reflexive identification with the Dixiecrats allowed Carter to sneak in, but Reagan figured out which buttons to push, and the GOP has been pushing those same buttons ever since.
Adam L Silverman
anarchoRex
Damn. She wasn’t my candidate, but I always thought she had it in her to beat Trump, and probably would’ve been fine as president. It’s a shame candidates like her and Castro can’t hang on while Biden and Buttigieg keep stinking up the place.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: It didn’t hurt with the Dixicrats that Reagan used to be a Democrat.
The Truffle
@Chris Johnson: To be honest, Warren is my first choice, and Harris my second. While I like Harris, I liked Warren just a little bit more.
I do agree that Harris’ time in the sun hasn’t ended. I hope to see her as a US attorney general one day and maybe even as a presidential candidate again.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: It took me a second to place the reference – but only a second.
Not bad for a Boomer, eh? ; )
Nicole
@Betty Cracker: My political instincts are about as good as you say yours are, and I’m going to continue to say it’s NOT going to be Biden. So make of THAT what you will.
Maybe I should start making monthly contributions to him, since right now I’m 1/3 for my monthly contribution candidates. That means a 66% chance I’ll jinx him out of the race
(That’s why I don’t contribute to Baud’s campaign)
Steeplejack
@chopper:
That’s it in a nutshell.
NotMax
@Nicole
That’s hunky-dory. Baud doesn’t contribute to the Baud! campaign, so you’re in good company.
;)
Ruckus
@Cacti:
You think BinG is responsible for those? Just because he (or me as well) was born in a timeframe defined by not really anything at all?
That earns you a gigantic FUCK OFF ASSHOLE.
Mo MacArbie
I’m glad we’ve all embraced the marketing terms that advertisers have devised for our respective generations. We all have the appropriate t-shirts, yes? Mine’s an iron-on. Not the cheesy, home-ironed one, but the professionally-done one from the mall.
taumaturgo
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Begin with her less than progressive record as a tough on crime prosecutor, then, continue with her pretzel twisting logic on the M4A endorsement – not endorsement. Wishy-washy won’t do this time around. Sorry disgruntled.
Nicole
@NotMax: Sweet! He’s gonna win in a landslide
(Baud, if Senator Harris turns you down for the VP slot, I want you to know that I AM still available.)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: I voted for Carter and Mondale, don’t blame me!
janesays
@SFAW:
I think you may have misread the Wiki article, there were only two uses of the words “post-war”, and this is the only one that had a year in it:
Nicole
I cast my very first vote in a presidential primary for Paul Tsongas, two days before he dropped out. I started my tradition of backing winners early.
janesays
Fair point. Iowa is probably not in play for the presidency, though it might be one of those states just on the cusp – if the Democrat wins by an Obama-sized margin, Iowa may be one of the states that gets flipped. Iowa went blue in 6 out of the last 8 presidential elections, and 2 out of the last 3.
burnspbesq
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Who would you prefer to Harris as AG in a Dem administration? Srinivasan would be good, but his seat on the D.C. Circuit is too important. Preet? Andrew Ceresney?
Yutsano
@PaulWartenberg: Oh man. Broke that news to some of my fellow Trek heads on Twitter. She really was a fantastic science fiction writer outside of Trek as well. And Gene insisted that she get a spot in the writing room.
Martin
@Martin: If I can reframe this in a way that people here might better identify with.
POC voters cannot directly implement the change they need to see. They don’t have the political strength, even voting 95% for Clinton. They can only succeed when white voters are willing to stop, listen, empathize, and then agree to give up (in real or opportunity terms) some benefit for those voters. In other words, white voters must take the initiative to step out of their local interests for POC to feel that they have any political power. And denying them even the feeling of political power is incredibly damaging to the community. That sense of helplessness is difficult to not give into (and a lot of credit to the POC communities for saying in the fight).
The disparity between GenX and Boomer generations isn’t so great, but it’s large enough that even with huge solidarity among GenX, we get wiped out in the margin of error of Boomer voting. No election in US history has been decided by more votes than Boomers carry in surplus. It’s been worse for Millennials. So, in order for these generations to feel as though they have any real political power (we have some, we are not as badly outnumbered as POC) then Boomers need to similarly take the initiative. It’s not that there aren’t solidarities across generational lines. I think this community shows that clearly enough. It’s that Boomers steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that they have a kind of political privilege simply due to the size of their voting constituency.
White voters cannot blame ANY presidential election on POC voters. There is no way any of them would have been elected without white voters coming through. That can be good in the case of Obama, and it can be bad in the case of, well, Trump comes to mind. White voters have the privilege of deciding presidential elections no matter how unified POC communities are. We should at least recognize that and take responsibility for it. It does not matter how many Candace Owens there are in the world, there’s a Cleetus vote which is orders of magnitude larger. Similarly, Millennials and GenX need to form unrealistic degrees of solidarity to produce a vote differential large enough to overake even modest differences in the Boomer population. Please just acknowledge that you carry outsized political authority. It’s not just a US phenomenon either. Brexit broke for exactly the same reasons. Slight preferences to leave among Boomers overpowered overwhelming preferences to stay among younger voters.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Please take the lead.
Some old white people have been screwing up for a long time, worrying about what they can get out of it, rather than what we all can get out of it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: Preet would be good, I’m sure there are some pretty good Democratic state AG’s out there as well.
NotMax
@burnspbesq
Preet Bharara? Sally Yates?
Disrupting the build-up of Harris’ seniority in the Senate strikes me as counterproductive.
Nora Lenderbee
Every time someone says, “OK, boomer,” I decided to work another year at my (somewhat) high-paying job. At this rate, my cushy seat won’t be open until 2057.
janesays
@catclub: Not sure I agree with that. No doubt, the fall of Lehman Brothers in mid-September was the beginning of the end for the McCain Campaign, but it’s not as if Obama just barely won that race by the skin of his teeth. He won by more than 7 points, and his EC victory, while perhaps not technically a landslide, was still quite substantial. There was little doubt the day before the election in 2008 that Obama would become the 44th president. Even McCain’s own campaign manager (Steve Schmidt) knew McCain wasn’t going to win. Without the collapse of the economy, Obama’s victory becomes a lot less certain, but I still think he probably squeaks it out, although it would have been much closer. He probably doesn’t win Indiana and North Carolina. I still think he wins though. I don’t think the economy alone caused an 8 point swing in his favor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Just remember in a close election Silent Gens still count.
janesays
@PsiFighter37: The 2008 Democratic primary field maxed out at eight, at least as far as candidates who polled strong enough to make it on any debate stage goes. And two of those eight “serious” candidates were Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich.
janesays
DELETED DUPLICATE COMMENT
Elizabelle
Just here to get us to 400.
Kamala Harris. BOOMER!
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Doesn’t that mean he’s the Greatest Generation? Or the Silient Majority? Something like that… The despicable solitary grandpa?
Pretty bummed about Harris, the only presidential candidate we’ve donated to… I’ve hit up some congressional and legislative candidates… the same folks I supported in the mid-term wave.
Sad for her too, worked so hard, hit the media racist wall.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
I did not know about her non-Trek work. She will be greatly missed, and greatly remembered.
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
I was born 3 years into the boomer age bracket and started HS in 62. I guess I’ll have to blame my parents for doing what grown ups do making me a part of this horrible group of humans who had no say in when they were fucking born. Should they have waited till they were in their 60s to have kids so we wouldn’t be scarred with such horrible birth dates?
mrmoshpotato
@AJ: Is Generation Jones related to Basketball Jones?
janesays
@The Moar You Know: Nobody on that list would have been old enough to vote for Reagan, either time. The two oldest Gen Xers listed are Kellyanne Conway and Mick Mulvaney – both of whom were 17 when Reagan was re-elected.
Exactly zero Gen Xers voted for Reagan in 1980 (because the oldest members of the generation were only 15 at the time), and very few of them were able to vote for him in 1984 (when the oldest members were 19).
Croaker
IN the name of Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell.
The 12 year me remembers playing D&D and Risk but nothing about Ronald Raygun. No Cell Phones but Bikes everywhere. Biggest conspiracy Q theory back in the day was Mikey blowing up from drinking soda while eating pop rocks.
One of the Best Boomers OK signing the Anthem my Generation and it has CATS which care nothing of your silly arguments.
Brachiator
@Martin:
According to Pew Research:
A new generational shift is coming.
Croaker
janesays
Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel were both candidates in 2008, both opposed to the Iraq War, both were able to get on the debate stage in the summer and fall of 2007, but neither was “major” enough to ever be taken seriously as a real contender.
The three frontrunners were Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Nobody else ever really had a prayer in that race.
PJ
@mrmoshpotato: Generation Jones was married to Love Jones, their son was Basketball Jones.
planetjanet
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Are we really going to get into the one true Scotman fallacy? Or are you arguing Not. All. Boomers?
Just silly.
janesays
@Cacti: I blame Michael J. Fox for the bizarre association some have between Gen Xers and Reagan. Or more accurately, Alex P. Keaton – who epitomized Gen X young Reaganites.
PJ
@janesays: Michael J. Fox has no Elvis in him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaD5mAC3P2s
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: No. No I won’t believe it, because the whole birther thing was racist bullllllllshit.
Ben Cisco
I’m a Boomer, and everyone banging on us can take a long walk off a short pier.
Really disappointed at Harris’ withdrawal – the electorate’s/media’s/oligarchs’ open contempt for anything not white/male/old af is going to skullfuck this country.
RIP DC, you were amazing.
NotMax
@janesays
Croaker
Trying one more time. Feeling rather stupid and contagious trying to embed
Patti Smith Smells Like Teen Spirit
janesays
@Martin:
I imagine it may be true in 2024 as well, given that every single Millennial is old enough to vote and has been since 2016. Meaning, there aren’t going to be more eligible Millennial voters next year or five years from now than there were in 2016. Granted, the oldest Boomers will turn 78 in 2024, so we may see enough of them die off before then to allow Millennials to overtake them as the largest voting bloc. Certainly they will by 2028 if not in 2024.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars
janesays
I’m impressed. I have literally no memories of major news events from when I was 3-4 years old. I have no memory of the Carter presidency at all, and I was born during the Ford presidency.
janesays
@geg6: You don’t know a single Gen Xer who voted for Reagan in 1980, because the very oldest Gen Xers were only 15 years old in 1980. Very, very few Gen Xers voted for him in 1984, given that very, very few Gen Xers were old enough to vote in 1984. The vast majority of us were in pre-school, elementary school, or early in high school when Reagan was re-elected. Only 1 year and 10 months of Gen X was old enough to vote in November 1984. The other 14+ years of the generation were 17 years old and younger.
Martin
@Brachiator: Note that Boomers are 80% of the ‘Boomer and older’ while the GenX + Millennials are roughly the same size and are just barely keeping up.
The generational shift is coming, but it’ll be a while before Millennials really turn out steadily. Meanwhile, GenX is getting ready to retire, so it’s going to be a while before the pensioner population loses their political clout.
I think that’s the bigger issue than which particular generational group we’re referring to. Having a near majority of the voting pool be retirees doesn’t sound like a great thing, regardless of what generation they are.
janesays
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No, they didn’t. Gen X starts in 1965 and ends in 1980. By the end of Reagan’s presidency, more than half of all Gen Xers were still too young to vote (they were between 8-17 years old). Zero Gen Xers votes in 1980, and less than 15% of Gen Xers were eligible to vote in 1984. Only 36% were old enough in 1988. The vast majority of Gen X came of age in time to vote in 1992 and 1996.
Martin
@janesays: I have one memory of sitting in my mothers lap watching a moon landing on our little B&W TV. Assuming it was Apollo 17 (she’s not sure as she recalls watching all of them) I would have just turned 4. I can describe details of the room, which we moved out of when I was 5, so I think it’s a valid memory.
janesays
@Nora Lenderbee: So… you plan to work until you’re (at least) 93 years old?
janesays
@J R in WV:
The designation “Silent Generation” is widely believed to have been derived from the fact that this group came of age during McCarthyism – when it was literally dangerous to speak out.
Wilmer is Silent Gen, but so is Biden. And to be fair, the Silent Generation is the group who led the Civil Rights Movement.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, but Ms Conway looks like the walking Mummy from the Tomb of the Unknown Monster, regardless of her age. Skeletal, deformed, evil, despicable, all part of her appearance…
Most people just look like other folks, not Kellyanne… special evil looking.
janesays
@PJ: The most ironic thing about Alex P. Keaton becoming the fictional archetype for Gen X Reagan youth is that Michael J. Fox is himself a Baby Boomer.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Dumm-ra the Ever Grifting.
:)
Raoul
@NotMax: Oh. I guess that deflates that notion. Not that, were the shoe on the other foot, I’d expect McConnell to bother with comity.
janesays
@Martin:
I think your math is a little off.
Gen X is still quite a way from retiring – the very oldest members won’t be eligible for Medicare (at least in its present form) until 2030. The vast majority of us are in our 40s, so… at least 20 years away from retirement for most of us. The youngest members of our generation won’t turn 40 until next year. The first presidential election in which the majority of us will be retirees is 2040.
J R in WV
@dnfree:
I got tear gassed in Washington DC during anti-war demonstrations, I knew we weren’t going to get Nixon to do the right thing, but I also knew it would go down in history that many people opposed his war crimes.
Same for W Bush the second and his father problems. Plenty of Boomers opposed that war too.
Cacti
@janesays: We’ll be retiring just in time to be well and truly screwed.
The Social Security Trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2035, 4-years after the last of the Boomers have hit full retirement age.
Annie
@Darkrose:
When I was in college in 1975, the Boomer generation was already defined as people born between 1946-1964.
Omnes Omnibus
You are all assholes.
Martin
@janesays: I’m in the high end of GenX, and I can say uncategorically I’m getting ready to retire. Not imminently, but if we’ve got another 10 years or so before Millennials start voting at GenX/Boomer rates, then me and other GenXers will be voting from the retirement category, not from the affording a house, paying off college, raising kids category.
My pension maxes out when I turn 61. Pretty much no reason for me to keep showing up at that point. If I do keep working until I’m 61, I’ll have worked longer than my parents or step-parents did, or my grandparents.
Felanius Kootea
The three campaigns I’ve been giving money to monthly are Harris, Castro and Warren’s.
I felt gut-punched when I read Kamala’s email about suspending her campaign.
A part of me hopes she’ll reconsider – I still really think she’ll be the best candidate to take
on Trump. And I have this irrational urge to stomp on a Tulsi Gabbard look-alike doll.
Looks like Warren is the only candidate among the three Dems I support who still has any chance. Here’s hoping she goes the distance.
janesays
@Martin: The overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t positioned to retire at 61.
The oldest Gen Xers won’t turn 65 until 2030. And a lot of people work past 65. It will be 2038 before half of Generation X has hit standard retirement age (65).
In other words… you’re the exception, not the rule. I’d hazard to guess that fewer than 10% of all Gen Xers will already be retired by 2030. The majority will retire between 2035 and 2040.
AxelFoley
@janesays:
Glad you checked geg6 on this. There’s NO fucking way Gen X can be blamed for Reagan. I was 7 when Saint Ronnie was elected. The first election I could participate in was in 1992 when I voted for Clinton.