By generation, Biden has the highest disapproval rating from Generation X (62%), compared with the Silent/Greatest Generation (48%), baby boomers (48%) and Generation Z/millennials (50%). Biden also has the highest “strongly disapprove” rating from Gen X (52%), compared with the Silent/Greatest Generation (41%), boomers (39%) and Gen Z/millennials (35%).
The article ascribes Gen X’s affinity for Republicans to the relative popularity of Reagan vs. Carter, but I wonder if it isn’t really the influence of Alex P. Keaton…
“I have a distinct memory of when Carter was in office and we had to wait in line for gas," Schoettle told NPR, in reference to the gas shortages that impacted the U.S. under Democratic President Jimmy Carter. “I feel the liberals just have always done this sort of thing and they love to word things as socially responsible and things like that, but they’re fiscally very irresponsible.”
To me it’s more telling that they have to go back 50 years, to a time most of today’s people weren’t yet born. But sure.
Also remember a couple years back when we had an R guy and like half a million people died? Yeah those gas lines two generations ago were pretty rough.
I’m Gen X, and I disapprove of much of what Biden has done (although I did vote for him – which STILL won’t stop some of y’all from accusing me of A vOtE fOr TrUmP). None of the people interviewed in this article represent my views or anyone else I know from Gen X. I’m an anarchist. My brother is a Dem Soc, and one of my best friends is a socialist.
I have no doubt there’s a problem with Republicanism in my generation. I grew up with these people, after all, and they were pretty shit-tier humans for the most part. My bullies grew up, and they’re just as worthless now as they were back then. But disapproval of Biden does NOT a Republican make. Many of us disapprove of him because he’s a fucking conservative upholding the genocidal and imperialist ideals of this fucked up nation. And doing a bang-up job of it too, considering one of his first acts was to open more concentration camps and then send his VP on a gaslighting mission to Latin America to lecture them about instability that we fucking caused.
I’m an elder gen-x. After decades of the bipartisan neoliberal ratchet effect, pulling the country ever-rightward to the benefit of the capitalist class and detriment of everyone else, and much investigation outside of corporate media, I’m a communist.
Very few gen-xers are ever going to escape capitalist realism. I’ve tried, but they’re quite ossified. Younger generations will have to be the mass of the vanguard.
Similar situation for me, though I’m on the mid to lower end. Pre-2000 I was still a liberal who believed we were on track to real progressive change and that if we’d just vote in the right candidates things would improve. It gradually became obvious that the same false hopes that kept being promised were never actually delivered and never could be by our current state or system.
At 54, Schoettle is squarely a member of Generation X — those born between roughly 1965 and 1980. That political memory alone helps explain why they tilt more conservative than members of other generations. Schoettle has voted for a Democrat for president just once: Barack Obama in 2008.
Because Obama campaigned as progressive, and that’s what voters want.
The issue is after Obama, Hillary and Biden tried the same thing. Swore up and down that they were super progressive and they’d fix stuff if we gave them the chance.
Obama got the benefit of the doubt because no one knew him. But it’s harder to trick voters when the candidate has been unapologetically neoliberal for decades.
But the party won’t let an actual progressive make it to the general these days.
They’d rather have trump for four years so they can run a neoliberal as “at least they’re not trump”.
Yes! I would love to vote for anyone from any party, who has done one thing that transfers wealth from the shareholder class to the working class. For my entire life (born in 1980) every law I’ve ever heard of has done the opposite, and I’m sick of it.
Same here b.79. I want AOC or a younger Bernie to appear in the race. At the very least Biden could pick a progressive VP for this term and fucking retire already. Because there’s no way trump can bring us anything good.
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