One is happenstance, twice is coincidence

and three times in enemy fire.

A couple of days ago a poster suggested that boomers are racist in proportions that will turn 50% or more of us against Senator Obama. He had no facts or even a good theory to back that up, he just stated it.

I shrugged that off as random happenstance...

Today it's suggested that boomers are the reason for PUMA-panic, that somehow we're the ones fracturing the Democratic Party out of puerile spite.

I'm gonna count that as a coincidence...


Senator Obama has energized younger voters and new political participant like no one I can think of since Gene McCarthy, and he has re-energized a lot of old fogies who had become a bit jaded about political participation. It would be a useful wedge to drive if someone could find a way to separate older supporters from younger ones.

Think about that one...

class status sinking down, down, down.

Another big bank down south was closed by the government today and it's only going to get worse.

They know if they vote McCain in that everything that they have earned will be destroyed. They know this and they know what risk they are taking. When they are in that voting booth that's what they will be thinking about.

not our pocket books, going back to the 80s.

Will be delighted to have a late Boomer and a War Baby in office.

Please. I can't take another stolen election. The 2004 one brought me here for solace. I'd rather be celebrating this time. May we win over the machines.

is very enthusiastic about Obama.

I am quite happy to turn the governance of this country over to the next generation. It's not like we've done such a stellar job of it.

Wisdom and youth, good combo. :)

Or give other condescending lectures any young person is frequently subjected to in political conversations with boomers. It happens. It happened in the primary. There's no doubt that other Democratic campaigns tried to exploit divisions by spinning some statements Obama made to make him sound anti-boomer. He'll win anyway.

I "came clean for Gene", and we got our legs cut off by RFK and the party hacks.

Chicago happened. I've still got a red bandanna that I swear has a faint reminder of tear gas in it.

The current method of selecting a nominee via primaries and caucuses happened. The events of 1968 were pivotal in bringing about a severe curtailment to the old ways of doing party business. Not to say that there aren't still vestiges of the party bosses and smoke filled rooms, but it's nothing like it was up until then.

A jaded attitude towards electoral politics and the part of many new participants happened, but that seems to have been changed by Senator Obama. If he can turn the enthusiasm and plain hard work he's managed to motivate into trips to the polls in November then the lingering effects of what happened to McCarthy may be a thing of the past.

in part because of what they did to McCarthy! The groups I was with felt abandoned by the "powers that be" in the party.

Get your hippy on, Vote Barack America.

Boomers for Barack!

is the first one to bring back that sense of "we can change the world"
attitude I had in the late 60's as a college student marching on the freeways...

Kent State was a real impactful event in my life.

All that enthusiasm about politics seemed to fall away after working
on the McGovern campaign...could not get excited about any of the candidates
nor muster up any belief that the ways of government could/would change.

For the first time in a long time, I feel inspired
and dare I say...hopeful.

... in a good way.

I'm so excited.

And hope/pray/expect that there's feets on the ground working to keep those machines recording our votes correctly.

Biden's age.

Damn right they are going to exploit this--if they can.

H2OMan has a great thread about the Nixonian Dirty Tricksters; EVERY DUer should read it.

:hi:

even though, technically, Biden is not a boomer.

Unfortunately, this anti-boomer campaign has been going for a long time.

Starting with both the Obamas bashing the Clinton administration (thankfully, Obama has now come to his senses) and the 60s, even though, of course, had it not been for the the Civil Right Movement of the 60s - that we joined and some paid with their lives - the chances of a black candidate now would have been slim.

But all the young turks at Newsweek and at MSNBC joined the boomers bashing. Jonathan Alter, born in the 50s, claimed that he always felt like a "step generation" and, again, trashing the Clintons, though admitted that the Clintons and Al Gore are "Velcro" while Obama, and Reagan, are "Teflon."

Trying to drive a wedge in my age group with PUMAs is like trying to dig a canal with a straw. lol


And, I'll overlook the remaining ageist remarks in your OP because you seem to be unaware you made them. :)

and what we need in this country and I love the way both of my mid 20's kids are not only going to vote but actually (on their own) telling others to do so to!

and then there is my 80 yr old mom who says "sweet caroline kennedy endorsed him so i do to!)

People are just trying to stir up crap...if Clinton can speak to her people strong when she has the floor this week it will help alot. I know what its like not to have your candidate win, I have seen this in many elections, but after you lose if you care about your party and especially the supreme court she should swallow her pain and come on stronger for Obama.

Most older people care about social security and medicare and if they can do some good ads proving the republicans want to get rid of these programs it will help.

...in order to reach CRITICAL MASS ~ to take our eye off the prize is unthinkable!

JFK, RFK, MLK...

I never sold out for a big house and 2 cars in the suburbs, I've lived by my principles, brought my children up to question authority and to eschew the shallowness of materialism and consumerism.

As someone else on this thread has said, this is the first time since the 60s that many of us have felt any sense of the sort of hopefulness that we had in our youth. I'm pleased as all get out that a younger generation seems to be waking up, and I'd love to see them take the reins and move forward.

No one is going to drive a wedge using *me*, and they damn well better not try!

sw
:hippie:

Paul McCartney's age.

Age, Race, and Gender knows no bounds for definitive Leadership!

That Obama has a problem with people over 35. (Seems the age increased since the primaries)

That Obama has much bigger support from young voters than McCain but he needed a majority of them to vote in November, which Matthews believes is doubtful.

All year, the polling numbers have substantiated that.

It's not someone's imagination that Obama's toughest, harshest critics are over 55 years old. Over 60, even tougher.

I don't buy into the whole generational method of addressing issues. That is contrivance. Anyone who runs around trying to place blame because of the generation (boomer, x, y) is an idiot. But it is true that many of those who are being a problem about party unity today are people from the Boomer generation. That's my generation, and we have some members who have never had any real political philosophy beyond "I want whatever it is I want!" That's why some can so easily jump into bed with a McCain - because they've never really done anything but support the issues that affect them. How else does a woman support abortion rights until she's 50, then suddenly say "oh, well, fuck Roe v. Wade!"?

The older the person the more likely he or she is to belong to a socio-economic group that reject Obama. It has nothing to do with how old the person is, however. With the exception of those groups for which age is a controlling factor there are also younger members of each.

And nothing to do with socio economic group.

Here's your correlation:

People who graduated from all white, unintegrated schools in the 1950s and 1960s are much more likely to be racist than those who grew up in more enlightened times regarding race. They can't handle voting for a black man, and practically faint at the thought. That's the reality, and that's the correlation.

and I still don't agree. Please try to explain how a 88 year old man, son of a southern bigot from Arkansas managed to raise a now 58 year old son who went to a 99% white school manages to raise a 19 year old son who travels the country campaigning for a black man, when 21 year old children of those who went to supposedly 'enlightened' schools can't bring themselves to even vote for him?

Easy - class awareness.

At least I think that's pretty easy to figure out, but I do believe that it has everything to do with class and very little to do with age.

YMMV

I see no point in trying to get you to acknowledge what everyone else in America knows is a fact: the older a person is, the more likely they are to have a problem voting for a black man for president.

Have fun chasing your tail on that "my life proves otherwise" approach to logic. If you wish to think of yourself as one of the exceptions, it has no bearing on the fact that most older people will not vote for a black man for president. Your status, like that of any other member of the class, has no bearing on the reality that most of your contemporaries are terrified of a black president.

see Correlation does not imply causation

Let us take, for example, the fact that people from Texas tend to vote for George Bush and Dick Cheney. There is a strong correlation there. However, taking a progressive Democrat and moving him to Texas is unlikely to get him/her to start voting Republican (although it may frustrate the living bejesus out of him). No causality.

Selecting a population based on age may indeed yield a group that can be correlated to various choices. For instance, there are many ways in which age can be correlated to various aspects of wealth. None of them are 'caused' by age; if they were then there would be very few sick old men on the streets. Again, no causality.

On the subject of class and class analysis:

'Class' is one of the means by which people locate themselves within a social structure of inequality. It can also be viewed as an explanation for the inequalities in economically-defined life opportunities or accomplishments. For Marxists, class is the source of the dichotomies and struggles that lead to economic emancipation. Age doesn't seem an adequate selector for any of those. If you want to claim that there is a class of people in any of those senses that is determined by whether or not one's parents came from the era of World War II you're going to have to dig a bit deeper.

If you've got data proving that there are more old bigots than there are young bigots then roll it on out. I haven't seen it. On a purely anecdotal level I seem to count up a pretty even distribution of bigotry across age groups.


(Not my life, btw: I'm older than that, have no children and grew up with even less exposure to an 'enlightened' life. And, appealing to things 'that everyone in America knows' as a supporting argument is a bit weak.)

divisive, GOP enabling idiots.

Best tuned out.

I worked for Eugene McCarthy..didn't go to the convention but watched TV in horror as my friends got beaten.
I don't consider myself as an old fogie, just as a woman of experience.

this really. Obama isn't leaving any age group behind.