I joined several hundred local Democrats at the annual Labor Day Barbecue at Atascadero Lake Park. For almost 50 years, I’ve attended our SLO County Democrats’ BBQ on that holiday dedicated to working Americans and the continuing struggle for economic justice.
We cheered for elected Democrats like Congressman Salud Carbajal, State Sen. John Laird, and two young Central Coast Assembly members in their first terms, Dawn Addis and Gregg Hart. Looking back, each cited their solid records of delivering on their campaign promises. Looking ahead to the 2024 campaign, they were uniformly upbeat about prospects for recapturing the House and retaining the White House and Senate.
The event also featured SLO County Supervisors Jimmy Paulding, Bruce Gibson, and Dawn Ortiz-Legg; and city council members Emily Francis from SLO and Susan Funk from Atascadero. Funk is also a candidate for the 5th District Supervisor seat in Atascadero and SLO.
Among the crowd were dozens of the “usual suspects”: Union leaders, environmentalists, educators, and activists—but what struck me most was seeing lots of young people. There’s a great team of new recruits enlisting to help local Democrats win the next campaign in this county—and if there is one enduring truth about politics, it is this: There is always a “next campaign.”
Coming into the 2024 presidential election cycle, the only dark clouds on the horizon for Democrats are voters’ perceptions that President Biden, now 81, might be “too old” to serve another term in the Oval Office. He’ll be 86 by the end of his second term.
A recent AP-NORC poll revealed that about 77 percent of those polled—including 69 percent of Democrats—think that Biden is “too old to effectively serve another four-year term as president.” (Ironically, only 51 percent felt that way about Trump, only three years younger than Biden!)
For Democrats 45 or older, 62 percent believe that Biden is “too old,” but for younger voters, that figure rises to 77 percent.
It may seem to defy logic, then, that younger voters represent the best hope for Democratic victories in 2024. Biden’s victory in 2020 owes much to the surging engagement of younger voters. Young voters have even more reason to get busy in 2024 despite concerns about his age.
The reality is that young voters are increasingly progressive and far more supportive of Democratic Party positions on the four main issues that consistently top their list of concerns: gun violence, climate change, the rights of LGBTQ-plus Americans, and economic inequality.
Recent data from the Harvard Kennedy School Youth Poll show that among voters 18-29:
• 63 percent of young voters favor stricter gun laws.
• 50 percent believe that government must take action to stem climate change “even at the expense of economic growth.”
• 53 percent reject the notion that same-sex relationships are morally wrong.
• 62 percent want the government to do more to provide basic necessities of food and shelter.
Mass shootings are on the rise; climate catastrophes slam the nation from Maui to Tallahassee; hate crimes and hate-motivated laws increasingly target LGBTQ-plus persons; and persistent homelessness testifies to economic injustice and widening inequality.
What answer do Republican politicians have to address these issues?
• On gun violence, GOP states are drowning in even more firearms including military-style assault weapons; allowing no-permit concealed carry; and continuing to permit criminals to acquire an arsenal at unregulated gun shows.
• On climate change, the Republican Party is still in a state of denial: They want to allow even more drilling of fossil fuels, and they’d strangle the conversion to cleaner energy even as these strategies are just beginning to prove their effectiveness.
• On LGBTQ-plus rights, GOP legislators are restricting gender-affirming health care for trans people, prohibiting drag shows, removing books that dare to discuss sexuality, and requiring public schools to “out” adolescents to their parents at the very time when they’re most vulnerable to parental intolerance and abuse.
• And on economic inequality, Republicans push lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans and threaten to shut down the government entirely unless Democrats capitulate to their demands to shred the “safety net” of health care, food security, housing assistance, etc.
I confess that at times I despair for the mess that my generation is passing on to my daughters and to our grandchildren. As I scanned the Labor Day crowd at Atascadero Lake Park, however, I found hope in the many faces of Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z. Many of these younger activists were people of color, like former chair of the SLO County Democrats Rita Casaverde who took the microphone holding her new baby. I listened as she and other young voters took the stage to talk about their solutions to our deepening national crisis.
Democrats are truly listening to young people like Rita—especially we boomers and the Silent Generation folks. We’re with them, we’re encouraging them, and we’ll campaign for them when they step up to run for office. It’s Democrats who are opening our ears, our hearts, and our wallets to campaign for the issues they care about. We’ll elect candidates who can deliver on their goals. Δ
John Ashbaugh has been ringing doorbells for Democrats since 1964. Write a response for publication by emailing it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sep 7-17, 2023.
Fear mongering by mislabeling shooter violence as gun violence is what you are selling. Climate policy without a feasibility study is your religion where you ignore the collateral effects. Bad policy disguised as good intention is the harm you offer the next generation.
Shooter violence
If your premise is true, then America is the most demented and gratuitously violent nation in the world. No other nation has nearly as much shooter violence as America. What do they do differently? Gee, I wonder.
Whenever I hear a call to let the young people take over, I consider the use of young boys as child soldiers in various Third World insurgencies, and the fact that the lack of empathy at that age, and their susceptibility to manipulation, render them the cruelest and most depraved fighters as they commit atrocities which would give even hardened adults pause.