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Baby boomers comprised a larger share of voters in 2024, accounting for 32%, but they are trending lower after hitting a peak of 36% in 2016.

Ocasio-Cortez, a millennial herself, expects the younger generation will soon tip the scales in American politics.

“Millennials are not punk kids anymore. We’re grown adults with mortgages and kids,” she said. “And we—that generation is starting to be decisive at the polls. And there is anger at being ignored, sidelined, having our economic futures mortgaged by the generations that came before us on everything from the economy to climate. And we’re taking the reins.”

From global warming to debt crisis to lack of affordable health insurance (all intentional), Boomers have definitely overstayed their welcome.

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[-] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 14 points 19 hours ago

Just like the death of the Republican party, we've been hearing this too for a decade now.

Millennials will be the next biggest voting block! Gen Y is pissed and going to change everything in the voting landscape!

So far, not a god damn thing. I mean, we're not seeing record turn out outside of one single election and in the last election we even saw that millennials increased their voting share to Republicans.

They may be mad but they're the exact same morons as the rest of America.

[-] datrenaissancebro@mtgzone.com 1 points 12 hours ago

One thing to remember is that, even now, we live in a gerontocracy. The wave of younger candidates winning in primaries is a sign of things to come, but more than the voting population shifting to younger people, we're still waiting for the candidates and politicians themselves to be younger on average. Still so many very old people in the US senate/house.

[-] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

The momentum was never there because we were all busy following the boomer path of trying to go to college to make aoemthing of ourselves and ended up in college debt for life and then got shat on, by the very people who raised us to take that path in food faith hoping it would work out the same for us as it did them but it fucking didn't.

It's 50/50 here ya know. Like we all had the chance to not do what they said to do or go against the paths we were raised to follow and do our own thing. They also failed to see the absolute state of the changing world and only focused on what benefits them.

[-] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Every single generation in the past 100 years has said the same thing. "My generation will fix it when we're in charge".

The God Damn boomers were the hippies from the 60s. What the fuck happened to peace and love?

My generation (Gen X), my goodness, we could see through all the bullshit. We're the original centrists.

Every single one of my children's Gen Z friends are all so woke they never sleep.

Turns out every generation is full of selfish shortsighted dumbasses just like the one before it. Just like "The Greatest Generation". Just like the boomers. Just like Gen X.

Faith in humanity...fading

[-] djsiete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Humanity is doing good in many places. Its just Americans who are the absolute worst

[-] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Yes agreed, please don't let Americans ruin the "human" name.

[-] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Nah its just that nice progressive people are also not ruthless murderous cunts, and thus bad at sezing power which then just ends up in the new generation of ruthless murderous cunts. Most people are pretty great which is sadly not a good trait for enacting change.

[-] TipRing@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago

The people who were hippies in the 60s are mostly still hippies today. Well, the ones who subscribed to the peace and love philosophy at least. Despite the media attention the hippies were never large enough to be a politically influential group in that generation. Most of the boomers grew up bullying the hippies.

[-] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 18 hours ago

Both my boomer parents were hippies. My Mom literally lived in a commune for some time in her early 20s. She voted for the T-Dog in 2016 because she wanted to see real change.

I used to chuckle when I was a kid the way my Dad would look at me and roll his eyes when my grandparents would talk about politics and religion. My Dad loves his MAGA hats now. And wonders why his grandchildren don't want to be around him.

My sample size of 2 says otherwise!

[-] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago

Counter anecdote: my parents are still far left. My mom was a local union rep, still attends protests, and is volunteering today.

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[-] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Gen X got skipped in politics. The boomers refused to cede power, and it's like the Xers largely aged out of entering the political space.

[-] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago

Gen X chose to be the "I'm not really into politics" generation. As if electing our leaders was a spectator sport we could just not participate in. And then we all claimed to be too cool for political parties when we started noticing the world was really going to shit. Which is how we got centrists.

I know because that was me.

[-] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

"My generation will fix it when we’re in charge”.

Except my generation hasn't had a chance yet to prove that they will. My generation is fucked.

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[-] hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is not old versus young, plenty of old heads want what the younger gen wants.

This is class warfare. The Epstein class has been attacking the rest of us for ages with impunity. The first strike came from Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

I appreciate what AOC does in most respects, but this is a miss for her. We can’t afford this divisive messaging and she needs to be told this.

Accountability to the people for ALL politicians.

[-] GalacticRobot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Except in a way it is old vs young. The old will need more and more care, and that ends up coming from the youth. The same youth that were promised a future that doesn't exist, and now have little desire to give giving what they cannot afford. Many countries are going to have to have a real reckoning with aging populations, and few have even started the conversation.

[-] hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We’re going to be old one day and need care. Society as a whole takes responsibility for this.

The young need to support the old and in turn, we will be supported when the time comes.

Socialist mentality is about benefit to all, including the elderly. The rich also have it in for the elderly. To them, the death of the boomer generation profits them, because they can come up with more excuses to eliminate social security, thereby screwing us all. They want to saddle us with a privatized retirement system that they control for their own profits.

We also need to fight for ourselves and our own interests.

We can fight for the interests of all, not just our select group.

[-] Triasha@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Young people would not mind providing that care if they were paid for it.

If we soaked the rich to fund the welfare state there wouldn't be so much simmering anger.

Not doctors and lawyers, the billionaires and decimillionaires. The epstein class.

Tax wealth not work.

[-] Dojan@pawb.social 185 points 1 day ago

This day and age with a growing positive sentiment toward authoritarianism, anti intellectualism, and fascism, I think some punk would be good. A lot of punk, even.

[-] itsjustachairmary@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

Yea I feel this lol. I've never put dye in my hair but fuck am I considering it lol. Fuck the system and YES I am 32 who CARES we're all BURNING

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[-] samsamsamsam@discuss.online 51 points 1 day ago

This framing gets it wrong. It isn’t boomers vs. millennials. It isn’t immigrants vs. citizens. It’s ordinary people fighting over a shrinking share while an extraordinarily wealthy few accumulate more money, assets and political power than they could ever need. Stop turning class problems into generational wars. Tax extreme wealth.

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 1 day ago

I agree that is class war but boomers are enabling the wealthy.

Boomers would rather punish millennials for our avocado toast than see billionaires taxed.

[-] Rothe@piefed.social 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Again, you are falling for their propaganda. "Boomers" wants no such thing, but fascists do. Fascists comes in all ages, including millenials and gen zs. This is not about age, it is about whether you are in the ruling class or not.

It is not generational war, it is class war.

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[-] kreskin@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We're also mad about the corruption, industrial scale pedophilia, and the land theft and genocide. Thats not going away. There needs to be paybacks. The guillotines arent for show. We have criminals to round up.

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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 20 hours ago

And there is anger at being ignored

Hey now, being ignored is the Gen X identity, millennials don't get to steal that!

But seriously, although the whole "generation names" stuff is BS, people are influenced by what things are like when they were growing up. People who had access to the Internet when they were kids are naturally going to see the world differently than those who didn't.

It has also been a consistent fact that older voters vote more. So, as "Millennials" get older, they'll probably vote more, like every group does.

older voters vote more often

The real question is whether those votes will matter. I'm not going to claim that there's no difference between democrats and republicans. But, in the past the democrats and republicans that won their primaries were both heavily constrained in what they were allowed to do after taking office by powerful special interest groups. So, a democrat might be more likely to vote for something like more federal funding for the arts, and a republican might be more likely to vote for something like more tax cuts (without lowering spending of course), neither one would likely vote for an increase in the minimum wage because the people who fund their campaigns don't want that to be considered.

This time, it could actually be different. There's enough anger out there that people who aren't owned by the wealthy are surviving the primary process. Some "traditional" democrats are either finding their courage, or are getting scared of what might happen to them if they don't stand for the things their constituents care about.

[-] Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Because everything benefits them so they got to vote. Nothing benefits Gen X to the current generation, so voting seems useless.

[-] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 70 points 1 day ago

In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the price of the average US home was $11,000.00

A Boomer could graduate high school and be living in their own place with no roommates with money they'd earned delivering newspapers.

[-] Damage@feddit.it 1 points 17 hours ago

Which seems reasonable to me

[-] TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago

And depending on their area, that house may sell for a million+ now to millenials who have no other option if they want to live the classic american white picket fence dream

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[-] PodPerson@lemmy.zip 49 points 1 day ago

True to form - Gen X getting skipped over in the discussion again.

[-] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 73 points 1 day ago

Make no mistake, Gen-X is part of the problem.

~And I fully expect to be downvoted for my unpopular opinion.~

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 70 points 1 day ago

In my experience, the older Gen X are not distinguishable from boomers while the younger Gen X are not distinguishable from millenials.

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[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Nope, still whiny little bitches now with mortgages and kids. They shouldn't be ignored but still whiny little bitches…

And yes the boomers fucked us all.

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[-] BioDriver@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

We may not be punk kids anymore but we’re definitely still punk.

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[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah we're middle aged punks now!

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 day ago

...driven by anger over economic futures...

Sounds pretty punk rock to me.

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago

I'm Xillenial. There is NO part of my life that has not been dominated by boomers. Even now, it's still the boomers running things. There Gen X didn't exist. Millennials only exist because they complained after being denied the dream.

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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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