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The Democrats could also be described as making use of this tactic; prior to Trump, one could describe the two parties as rival coalitions: one made up of different ethnic minorities and college-educated whites, the other a weird mashup of business libertarians, religious fundamentalists, and ethnically-concerned right-wingers.
One could argue, watching from another screen, that Manchin and Sinema were the last stalwarts keeping the Dem party from completely sabotaging itself and going full-lefty.
This is from your other reply, but I'll comment on it here:
Is the idea of "old = conservative" a given? I think a lot of your ideal vision rests a lot on this, among other things.
I think Phosphorus was getting at something when they claimed that you aren't describing reality, because it sounds like how you interpret politics and what you want out of politics are very weird and at odds with how things have tended to play out.
Yes, to some extent-- both parties use a variety of electoral strategies, I'm just describing a tactic the democratic coalition relies on more.
I can and did argue that. I'm a neoliberal, not a leftist. But 2024 proved me wrong-- evidently the democratic base really did want left-populists, and us "return to normalcy" folks were basically wrong.
Yes. Not every old person is a religious conservative-- but old people are intrinsically more resistant to change. Culture isn't just what people think about the gays... it's how people want their cities laid out, how business owners treat their employees, and what segments of the population are given disproportionate amounts of respect. And over the total spectrum of subjects, the old people in my party are basically as bad as the old people outside of it-- they still want to drive cars, destroy the environment, prevent dense construction, and extract transfer payments from the young.
I won't claim that the democratic party will abandon old people. I just think they should.
I don't think I have much more to say, other than I think that your "Eat the Old" idea is more of an aid to the "Eat the Rich" populist types than you might realize.
I don't mind if we eat the rich too, I just think it's infeasible. Slave revolutions basically never work-- you have to have some sort of elite buy-in.
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