Wait, are you serious? It would shock the hell out of me, but it would be so encouraging to learn that boomers were changing their minds.
Unless we’re talking about a specific national progressive policy that benefits them directly, like improving social security, or local progressive policies they rely on, like increasing agricultural subsidies, in my life I’ve only ever seen that cohort grow more conservative.
Or are you saying that gen xyz are rapidly becoming more conservative, such that they’ve surpassed the boomers?
I’m not disbelieving you, just trying to make this make sense since it defies the trend. I’ll look for these polls but if there are specific ones you mean, I would be interested to know which.
Update: so far I’m finding the complete opposite to be true (at least from anything close to a reputable source, which doesn’t include opt-in online polls). It appears the generational group often referred to as boomers is now polling more conservative than ever before. Part of this trend might be explained by the fact that we are losing the oldest boomers first, and these were the ones who had the chance to identify with the countercultural movements of the 60s and 70s, whereas most of the younger boomers, who were famously outspoken fans of the Vietnam war and Reagan, are still present.
Younger generations are more exposed to social media and disinformation that the older generations dismissed decades ago. Boomers also had the experience of fighting for and gaining rights during their lifetime that are now being taken away again. Unfortunately, they largely failed to teach younger generations the value of those fights or the tactics by which they were fought, so many young people don’t understand the implications behind a lot of these cultural shifts. Time is a flat circle.
While this is all plausible, may describe your personal experience fully, and may to some extent be true for a subset of the population, it appears that the notion of the baby boomer generation being, or ever having been, more progressive than the generations that followed is unequivocally false, according to any high quality polling data I’ve yet found. If this is something you are reading somewhere, I would be curious to know where so I can discover how they arrive at that conclusion.
I’m certainly not saying there aren’t progressive boomers or conservative younger people. There’s always a spectrum for every group, no matter how you define the cohorts. The baby boomers on the whole just happen to skew more conservative than the younger generations, and it is an especially strong correlation at that.
My comment wasn’t based on a body of research other than high school us history and some political science classes in college. Agree completely that modern day boomers are not progressives, I was thinking more specifically about the social progress of the mid-late 20th century and how many more people we’ve agreed to include in the conversation than ever before. Hell, women couldn’t vote 106+ years ago. Now we have gay and trans people in Congress, we’ve had a black president, women mostly have rights to their own bodies, etc etc etc. The boomers were, broadly, part of those social changes, though clearly they didn’t all agree, just as they don’t now.
A lot of those wins are getting erased now, by DOGE and others, and there are way more old people at protests than I would expect to see. I’m simply suggesting that the older generations remember the feeling of making progress in a way that younger generations haven’t. It’s probably hyperbolic but it feels like we’ve been slowly regressing, on balance, since Jeb Bush was the governor of Florida and fixed the 2000 election results for his brother George Dubya.
Tl:Dr you don’t know the value of what you have now until it is gone, unless you’ve gone without before.
Everyone under 50 is very underwhelmed
As someone over 50 I understand that I am not marrying these people.
I want someone to stop Trump and Putin from destroying America.
Given the choice between Biden and Trump, the choice was Biden.
Harris and Trump = Harris
It is now pre primary season so now is the time to find someone who can approximate your views and get enough support to get elected.
If your favorite candidate doesn’t win the primary, don’t be a little bitch and stay at home.
If you don’t spend your free time and money supporting someone in the primaries, then you choose from what you get like the rest of us.
Every poll I have seen recently shows Boomers being more progressive than the next younger groups.
Edit: yeah this is misinformation
———
Wait, are you serious? It would shock the hell out of me, but it would be so encouraging to learn that boomers were changing their minds.
Unless we’re talking about a specific national progressive policy that benefits them directly, like improving social security, or local progressive policies they rely on, like increasing agricultural subsidies, in my life I’ve only ever seen that cohort grow more conservative.
Or are you saying that gen xyz are rapidly becoming more conservative, such that they’ve surpassed the boomers?
I’m not disbelieving you, just trying to make this make sense since it defies the trend. I’ll look for these polls but if there are specific ones you mean, I would be interested to know which.
Update: so far I’m finding the complete opposite to be true (at least from anything close to a reputable source, which doesn’t include opt-in online polls). It appears the generational group often referred to as boomers is now polling more conservative than ever before. Part of this trend might be explained by the fact that we are losing the oldest boomers first, and these were the ones who had the chance to identify with the countercultural movements of the 60s and 70s, whereas most of the younger boomers, who were famously outspoken fans of the Vietnam war and Reagan, are still present.
Younger generations are more exposed to social media and disinformation that the older generations dismissed decades ago. Boomers also had the experience of fighting for and gaining rights during their lifetime that are now being taken away again. Unfortunately, they largely failed to teach younger generations the value of those fights or the tactics by which they were fought, so many young people don’t understand the implications behind a lot of these cultural shifts. Time is a flat circle.
While this is all plausible, may describe your personal experience fully, and may to some extent be true for a subset of the population, it appears that the notion of the baby boomer generation being, or ever having been, more progressive than the generations that followed is unequivocally false, according to any high quality polling data I’ve yet found. If this is something you are reading somewhere, I would be curious to know where so I can discover how they arrive at that conclusion.
I’m certainly not saying there aren’t progressive boomers or conservative younger people. There’s always a spectrum for every group, no matter how you define the cohorts. The baby boomers on the whole just happen to skew more conservative than the younger generations, and it is an especially strong correlation at that.
My comment wasn’t based on a body of research other than high school us history and some political science classes in college. Agree completely that modern day boomers are not progressives, I was thinking more specifically about the social progress of the mid-late 20th century and how many more people we’ve agreed to include in the conversation than ever before. Hell, women couldn’t vote 106+ years ago. Now we have gay and trans people in Congress, we’ve had a black president, women mostly have rights to their own bodies, etc etc etc. The boomers were, broadly, part of those social changes, though clearly they didn’t all agree, just as they don’t now.
A lot of those wins are getting erased now, by DOGE and others, and there are way more old people at protests than I would expect to see. I’m simply suggesting that the older generations remember the feeling of making progress in a way that younger generations haven’t. It’s probably hyperbolic but it feels like we’ve been slowly regressing, on balance, since Jeb Bush was the governor of Florida and fixed the 2000 election results for his brother George Dubya.
Tl:Dr you don’t know the value of what you have now until it is gone, unless you’ve gone without before.