I DON'T THINK THE WORD "REMARKABLE" MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS

Greg Sargent reports that young voters seem to be even more progressive that previous voters their age, according to data from the Harvard Youth Poll:

Young voters have shifted in a markedly progressive direction on multiple issues that are deeply important to them: Climate change, gun violence, economic inequality and LGBTQ+ rights....

[The] numbers ... all suggest that today’s young voters are substantially more progressive on these issues than young voters were even five or 10 years ago. Sizable majorities now reject the idea that same-sex relationships are morally wrong (53 percent), support stricter gun laws (63 percent) and want government to provide basic necessities (62 percent).

Meanwhile, support for government doing more to curb climate change soared to 57 percent in 2020 before subsiding to 50 percent this year.... While that 50 percent could be higher, the issue has seen a 21-point shift, and the polling question asks if respondents want action on climate “even at the expense of economic growth.”

Sargent looks for an explanation:

... these new voters are politically coming of age during a remarkable confluence of events that appear to be conspiring in an improbable way to push them to the left.

Mass shootings have been on the rise, with the 2018 massacre at a school in Parkland, Fla., acting as a galvanizing moment. Heat waves and wildfire smog have driven home the realities of climate change with new urgency and vividness.

Meanwhile, the pandemic likely drove home the vulnerability of millions to economic shocks as well as the woefully patchy social safety net in the United States. And red states are escalating their assault on LGBTQ+ rights....

Then there’s the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year....

But this isn't "a remarkable confluence of events." There's nothing "improbable" about the fact that all of this has been happening at the same time.

Since the 1970s, and especially since the election of Ronald Reagan, the American right has worked relentlessly to consolidate power. It has created a machine funded by right-wing billionaires that has worked to lock in power on the federal courts, sustain Republican majorities (through gerrymandering and other means) in red and purple states, and limit any threat to fossil-fuel domination of the U.S. economy and to the low-tax, low regulation status of big business in general, an effort that depends on pro-plutocrat Democrats as well as Republicans voting as a bloc. This is all sustained through enraging propaganda from the right-wing media and from conservative culture-war organizations, all of which keeps right- and right-centrist-leaning citizens voting Republican, primarily out of fear of gun confiscation, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ people, feminists, and liberals in general.
It's been working. It's been working since 1980. We've made progress on a few issues, but on the issues Sargent names and many others, right-wingers are either mounting a successful backlash (LGBTQ rights, abortion) or continuing their all-out war against progress (climate, guns).

If all this has young people angry and frustrated, it seems like politics working the way it's supposed to work: Government decisions that are out of step with what much of the public wants appear to be leading to a voter backlash.

But can the backlash lead to better policies? To make a real break from fossil-fuel dependence, for instance -- which, for the plutocracy, really is a line in the sand -- we'd need an environmentally conscious president plus a Democratic majority in the House that isn't compromised by pro-fossil-fuel sellouts plus sixty Democratic senators with a similar profile -- as well as courts that weren't sold out to the industry, and fewer states that are bulwarks of reaction. It's a bigger battle than just sending Democratic majorities to Washington. And when electing Democrats doesn't work, young progressive understandably get frustrated.

Which means we don't know whether they'll turn out in sufficient numbers to at least defeat Donald Trump and keep Congress out of the GOP's hands. In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, 62% of 18-to-34-year-old respondents said they have an unfavorable opinion of Trump -- but 59% have an unfavorable opinion of Joe Biden. They'd vote for Biden over Trump, but only by a 52%-41% margin.

It's hard to imagine that voters who dislike both major-party candidates and who are worried about a planet on fire will vote for Joe Manchin, but many could stay home, and some will vote for Cornel West. That won't get us any closer to the better world they want, but they may not think voting Democratic will, either.