milkpiss
Was expecting this to be standard GOP garbage, but after reading… I’m actually kind of mixed on it?
- The first three bills don’t seem bad, but I don’t think they’ll have any significant impact.
- The fifth bill sounds like it may have an impact, but I’m curious if experts think uncapped graduate loans are really drivers of the problem.
- The fourth bill sounds the worst to me, feels like GOP trying to cut enrollment in liberal arts, disregarding that those programs are important even if the pay is not as good.
I’m not opposed to Biden’s loan forgiveness, but I’ve always felt like it’s like putting a bandaid on a chainsaw wound and won’t fix the underlying problem of college being too expensive. I like to see proposals addressing that instead, and this sort of does. Wonder if there’s any chance of any of these passing, though.
I like The Verge and Wired. They occasionally post dumb Top 10 product articles, but I like the quality and quantity of their other articles enough to let it slide
Some interesting points from the article:
Podhorzer’s analysis of the Catalist data, shared exclusively with The Atlantic, found that over the past four elections, Gen Z voters have broken heavily for Democrats in blue states, and provided the party solid margins in closely contested swing states. But in red states, with a few prominent exceptions, Podhorzer surprisingly found that even Gen Z voters are mostly supporting Republicans.
Podhorzer told me this regional variation is “only surprising to the extent you believe that age explains almost everything about voters’ partisanship. But if you understand that the neighborhood you grew up in, the parents you have, the schools you went to, and the general politics that you are introduced into is a big factor, it shouldn’t be surprising at all. Because if you grow up in Brooklyn, no matter how old you are, you are swimming in blue water … and the same goes for those growing up in red America.”
To Podhorzer, the clear lesson of these trends is that Democrats are more likely to win the battleground states by investing in turning out these new voters than by trying to lure back the mostly blue-collar whites who have abandoned the party to support Donald Trump.
But the Democratic advantage with Gen Z is like an investment whose value compounds over time—in this case, as their share of the electorate expands. If Republicans can’t regain at least some ground with younger voters, especially in the battleground states, the party will need to squeeze bigger margins out of shrinking groups. In any given election, as Trump demonstrated in 2016, Republicans might meet that test. But making that math add up will only get tougher for the GOP as the generational transition inexorably rolls on.
