Goodbye Boomers. Millennials and Zoomers have the helm.
The New York Times reports Fed Up With Politics and Struggle, Young Voters Rose Up
In swings of monumental proportion, young men aged 18 to 29 veered toward Democratic candidates by nearly 40 percentage points since 2024, according to preliminary results from Times Voter Trends. Young women, who were already inclined to support Democrats, swung by 27 points. In the Texas Senate race, men aged 18 to 44 swung nearly 50 points toward the Democrat, James Talarico.
“He is my age,” said Tristan Waumsley, 35, of Richmond, Texas, who voted straight Democratic at the state level for the first time in his life. “He sounded like I could have talked to him myself. He’s somebody normal, like me.”
The youth movement swept in or bolstered politicians who looked more like them: Abdul El-Sayed, the senator-elect of Michigan; Rob Sand, the governor-elect of Iowa; Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia; Nithya Raman, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles; and Sam Forstag, an incoming congressman from Montana. The next clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County, Ariz., the Democrat Sebastian Matta, is a 19-year-old Arizona State University sophomore. Another 19-year-old, Daniel Darris-O’Connor, unseated an eight-term Republican incumbent in the Massachusetts House.
The voters swept out the stodgy and rejected wealthy middle-aged men like Rick Jackson, who ran for governor of Georgia, and Ken Paxton, who lost to Mr. Talarico in Texas.
The discontent is global, fostering youth movements from Bangladesh and India to Serbia and France. Government resources have gone to Baby Boom retirees with free health care and subsidized retirements, while education has been stretched, health insurance costs have soared and job security has been hampered by older generations that will not get out of the way. Artificial intelligence and climate change have injected real dread into those coming of voting age.
That is scrambling the political lines that have given shape to American politics since the end of World War II.
“The traditional left-right paradigm has been broken,” said Brandon Kenig, 41, a Kansan who came of age in the College Republicans and worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.
Voters under 30, more so than any other age group, are not tethered to a political party. More than half of Gen Z voters identify as independents, according to Gallup, far greater than the one-third of baby boomers who do not identify with a political party.
Jacob Brillhart, 27, and his wife have not voted in the last several elections.
“You get the same thing, no matter who you vote for, two wings of the same bird,” said Mr. Brillhart, who lives in Akron, Ohio, and works in heating and air conditioning.
But, he said, after this deeply ugly campaign for governor in Ohio, they want to start voting regularly. He said, “We’ll never vote Republican after seeing what the party has done.”
Karrar Al-Sadkhan, 19, a student at Wayne State University in Detroit, said he and his friends had never identified as Democrats. But he was inspired by Mr. El-Sayed, whose message was that “it’s really more of a class war, not blue or red.”
Chase Sardeson, 23, an electrician’s apprentice in Raleigh, N.C., grew up in a conservative household. But he said he became interested in liberal politics while he was working at a car dealership and learned that one of his colleagues, a Hispanic immigrant, was working three jobs to support his family.
Today, Mr. Sardeson and his girlfriend together pay $1,800 a month in rent for a two-bedroom townhouse. When he did the math for the day he could no longer be on his parents’ health insurance, he said his heart sank.
“I look at boomers and older Gen X, and I see people who had the chance to benefit from a great America at the top of the world,” Mr. Sardeson said. “I look at myself, and I see a shadow.”
He voted for one of those baby boomers, Roy Cooper, a Democrat, in the U.S. Senate race, but he would have preferred a candidate with a more forceful economic message, such as Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.
“I feel seen and heard by Mamdani and El-Sayed — even Talarico,” he said.
Meet Sebastian Matta
A 19-year-old will be the Clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County Arizona, the 4th-largest county in the United States. Congratulations!
Broken Promises
MAGA Deathbed
The 2026 Midterm election was one for the ages. Boomers and MAGA both have diminishing voices.
There is no turning back. The only way MAGA could recover is to reach out to young voters and stop divisive politics.
But the cult can’t and won’t do that. MAGA’s entire existence has been racism, name calling led by Trump, and divisive politics.
Core MAGA still wants to “deport them all” a racist, economically stupid idea.
In 2026, Zoomers and Millennials were fed up enough to demand change. And change they will get it.
When Trump Is Gone, MAGA Dies
MAGA is on the death bed. The cult just don’t see it yet.
Trump can still do more damage for two more years. But that’s it. His fate is sealed. Trump will go down as one of the worst, if not the worst, presidents in US history.
Good riddance to Trump and MAGA. But that’s superfluous. MAGA Is Trump.
Related Posts
November 5, 2026: Democrats Take Over 250 House Seats in Huge Power Shift
The counting is still not over. I am eyeing 262 minimum.
November 6, 2026: Trump Doubles Down, Appoints White Supremist Stephen Miller to Chief of Staff
MAGA is indeed dead and good riddance. However, 4 years from now male voting will trend back towards Republicans because the Democrat’s policies favor women over men. Increased abortion rights do nothing for men. DEI policies harm men. Increased immigration displaces men from the labor force. Liberal college admissions policies harm men. The list goes on. The Democrats will likely sweep in 2 years, but in 2030 Republicans will likely start winning back seats, especially at the State level in the red and purple states they just lost.
Of course MAGA will not survive. MAGA is, first and foremost, a cult of personality.
One working definition of a “cult” as opposed to a “religion” is that a cult does not survive its founder.
Another useful heuristic is that a cult is a religion without political power.
MAGA is well on its way to meeting both standards.
“I look at boomers and older Gen X, and I see people who had the chance to benefit from a great America at the top of the world,” Mr. Sardeson said. “I look at myself, and I see a shadow.”
The quote above sums it up perfectly.
Being born in 1978, I fall into the “Xennial” subgroup having one foot in the X’er group and one foot in the Millennial group. I can definitely relate to the above quote. Boomers did have it better than the generations that followed, and it wasn’t because they are smarter or harder worning than their kids and grandkids. The evidence is clear on that.
Humans have a strong tendency to inflate the “struggles” they’ve overcome and completely ignore any tailwinds they encountered in their journey through life. Those tailwinds are often quite numerous. Plenty of studies have been done confirming this finding. I used to think that I made it “on own”….boot straps baby. What a crock of shit that line of thinking is. Nonone is successful 100% “on their own”. Not one person. It takes cooperation from others, a stable society, and a good bit of luck to accomplish anything. Anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t living in reality.
Although Donald Trump is the worst President in the history of the United States trusting a 19 year old kid to run anything other than a paper route is unlikely to have a better result. I don’t care how smart this kid is he will not have the life experiences necessary to do the job.
This is the problem with the US it is a country of extremes. People have the attitude that if some is good, more is better and they keep on until it is crazy. It is okay to like ice cream but maybe don’t fill a swimming pool with it. It is okay to like your football team but maybe don’t shoot people when they lose. It is ill advised to have a an 80 year old President but the solution is not to have a 19 year old one.
off topic. cut and pasted from daily mail, “The Air Force’s E-4B “Nightwatch,” the airborne command post built to run a nuclear war, took off from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska on Thursday and flew east across the Midwest on a mission nobody has explained.”
I’m a boomer. What worries me the most of this election is that the voters appear to ignorant twats. 250 years of US history and direction is turning on a dime and the result will not be pretty for these youngsters and for us.
Then proceeds to tell tens of millions of people that voted they are all wrong and he knows what is best for everyone.
See everyone, right here, case in point in real-time….
David P – you missed the point of the article, no one cares what you (boomers) think anymore.
you are arrogant and a bit ignorant. pro tip, you better start caring what those warmongering old fucks in charge of the MIC and finger on the football. btw as an aside, i was pals in charleston SC, 1900 and nineties, with a really old geezer who carried the football during JFK and LBJ years. used to walk our dogs together and lived next door. he had the best stories ever of what powerful men are really like. suffice it to say, LBJ was the cunt that Robert Caro wrote about.
Why don’t you deconstruct my comment and explicitly identify where I am “arrogant” and “ignorant” you self-adsorbed self-righteous boomer. That seems to be to go to phrase when you get triggered so you owe an explanation to the community here as you share your “wisdom” with us.
And what does you being pals with anyone have anything to do with the article or comment thread? No one here cares about your 30,40,50 year old stories about what you did all those decades ago. NO ONE.
The election was about people’s CURRENT and FUTURE state and how to improve from here not what you, a boomer, did decades ago.
Instead of trying to understand, you demean and dismiss… The refuge of those that don’t have an argument. If “250 years of US history” means “vote for Donald Trump”, you have a very low opinion of US history. Signed, another boomer.
The history where conservatism never works? Most of the people who never learned that history lesson lost huge on Nov. 3rd.
Going on a 3-day 2-night backpacking trip.
I will not be able to approve anything that gets caught up needing approval. Multiple links are one possible snare.
Coyote Gulch
Grand-Staircase Escalante
Need a break from this.
But I have many posts scheduled. Three Saturday and I think Three Sunday too. So keep checking.
Some really cool ones Including “Texas Goes Purple and What It Means”
Someone please post this message on my Saturday and Sunday articles.
Mish
Enjoy yourself, Mish!
Back in 1996, my now ex-wife voted to re-elect Bill Clinton as president. This was out of character for her and I asked her why? She said only three words. “Grand Staircase-Escalante.” As president, Clinton had made Grand Staircase-Escalante a National Monument. She loved the Four Corners area above any other place on earth (and so do I.) For her, that was the best reason in the world to support him.
You know, I think she was right.
👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼
Posted by Mish yesterday.
In 2016 my daughter said, “we just need these old fuckers to hurry up and die.” She wasn’t wrong. When the median age in the Senate (64) is older than retirement, you don’t represent the population, you represent a museum.
(I’m a boomer but I embrace getting out of the way, so I use the term “they”)
They have a perception of America that died out in the 1970s. As an example, go watch some of the films that were made in the 1970s. Super cringey with the misogyny, racism, and exclusion. Nothing aged well. Even the pop music lyrics didn’t age well.
Retirement is hard because you lose that business mogul identity and are left with yourself. Not everyone can survive that, literally. Hanging on in quiet desperation is not a forward looking future but just denial that it’s time to take up gardening or some other hobbies.
Get out of the way but stay present to offer your experience while recognizing not all your boomer experiences are valid today. This is how society operated for eons. It’s not broken but abandoned by people to afraid to face themselves in retirement.
What’s broken is that in a normal world, the old get sick and die but we now have social programs like social security and medicare that keep old fools going longer and longer. Look at what happened to Mitch McConnell, the guy was a zombie being wheeled around when he should be six feet under.
I have a boomer relative at 82 has started to have kidney issues, went to the doc and asked how they could fix it. The doc looked her in the eye and said, “Mam, you are old and this is part of the life process.”
If it were possible for boomers to vampire off young people’s organs I’m sure 80% of them would do it. The most selfish, self-absorbed generation and Trump was a perfect final reflection of that and him getting stomped was exactly how every other generation feels about boomers.
You really embrace the idea of Soylent Green. Really cannot agree with that.
Let the old people retire. But they don’t know how. Instead of taking up a hobby they try and start a new business or go into politics. I don’t think going into politics is all bad but if you’re trying to hold on to a position of power in your 90s you have a mental problem.
Yes, it’s important to recognize that this is a different chapter. I do not wake up thinking what will I conquer today and how many billions will I make day trading. I wake up thinking what hurts and rejoice in what doesn’t.
I never said anyone should be shipped off to a euthanasia factory although Canada and other countries seem to be going that way.
I said the current social program framework is not sustainable as it is currently structured and it’s on its way to collapse in a few years.
There is a question about why medicare provides seemingly endless medical benefit even to people that are no longer functional, seems absurd if you really think about it. I suspect it’s more about milking taxpayers for money than quality of life.
by all means enjoy your retirement, do whatever you want, just don’t tax me to death for it.
I play bluegrass music. I’m at a festival right now. Practice every day. Learn new material. Jam every time I get a chance. Read a lot. Get on ActBlue and beat Trump. Colom and Peltola. Everybody else has won. MAGA was the Confederacy. Maybe now it’s finally on the way out.
i concur with that. these assholes have no self reflection. an old childhood pal died this summer. racing motorcycles at age 66. he was a perpetual baby. horrible father. drug dealer. and all his idiotic pals thought he was too young to die. he would call me up once a month, and i’d tell him what i thought of his idiotic life. i guess it was some sort of lifelong therapy he craved.
the only flaw in your theory. i lived in bay area/silicon valley a long time. flew out there for business for decades. those nihilist cunts, who are ruling amerika, like faceberg and AI twats, are mostly much younger than boomers.
pro tip. Bismark invented SS and medicare. he also is the proponent of dumbing down the people of germany into worker bees with no foundation in classic ancient greek philosophy on life. he truly and wrote about how he’d create an empire of nihilists and workers and soldiers, who would never think about anything again. the USA copied that model turn of 1900. it’s all explained in the greatest amerikan history book, “ominous parallels”. i’m no objectivist like the author, but the man could see what had been done. written in the 1980s. a prof at my university at the time.
as a boomer with countless old family and friends……….in the cohort, this analysis checks out exactly correct. i’d just refine it also. we were all born on 3rd base in post ww2 decades. there was nothing much to think about. just nihilism and narcissism. DEMOCRACY WORKS. ASSHOLES WILL ELECT THEMSELVES TO DO ASSHOLE THINGS. i personally don’t see the younger generations doing much more than nihilist asshole things when they do get power. if they do dismantle the evil imperial warmongering country, i’ll eat my hate, live on youtube.
But the real question is, why do you even care? By the time the world is destroyed with nihilistic asshole things, neither of us will be around.
Let them make their own bed just like we made ours. We had our chance and we had some successes and some failures. I believe it’s time to sit back and watch someone else have the successes and failures.
Will they dismantle the evil imperial warmongering country? I don’t know but it’s much harder when the majority of Congress is still embracing the evil imperial warmongering country as the only option. Not by party affiliation but because that’s what we grew up with and didn’t know better because of the distractions growing up.
A reminder to guests here: Mish is on vacay for a couple days.
in 2024 we told kids like this how weird the Republicans were. They had to FA to FO, much to the detriment of the country and world.
And in 2026, kids learned that Israel first policies are bad for Americans so they voted for Muslims, socialists and other non-traditional candidates across the board. Let’s see how much dems kowtow to Israel over the next two years. There may be a swing back to MAGA as Nazis if that’s what it takes to get Israel out of American politics.
I’m just glad I’m out.
I don’t think they will.
They don’t even understand why we have any loyalties to israel. The reasoning behind creating a Jewish state post world war II is lost to the generations that did not grow up in a post world war II society. They see it as an atrocity, which it certainly has become.
Politicians will have an extremely difficult time convincing the younger generations that it is necessary to pump billions of dollars into a genocidal Nation while denying the voters everything but data centers.
Three words: Demographic Death Spiral (DDS)
These three words will become common speak in about 3 years in 2030 when all 80 million screaming boomers hit 65 and start taxing the social security, medicare and other social programs to the limit. It won’t stop there, Gen X is right behind them.
And we’re already $40 trillion in debt now and still have 3 more years to go.
Excellent post. 2-star Mishelin award granted. Would have been 3-star if it had a musical tribute, “Hit the road Jack!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSiHqxgE2d0&list=RDuSiHqxgE2d0&start_radio=1
You’re right about the death spiral.
It doesn’t have to be so grim but a lot of people simply cannot survive retirement. The identity shift is too great because they have nothing to fall back on.
Gen X retiring won’t make nearly the dent of the Boomers. It’s a much smaller cohort.
Furthermore, there’s something that people seem to forget. When the Boomers retire, we don’t stay on Social Security for all eternity. We die, too. And since Boomers are now 80-65 years old, we’ll start dying off in staggering numbers very soon. That should ameliorate the Social Security/Medicare spending problem a bit.
And right after 2030, in about 2032, social security trust fund will run out of money and only have enough $ to pay 78% of scheduled benefits, triggering automatic cuts unless fed gov goes into the debt market to try and borrow the difference. The bond market is likely to move first. Should be interesting.
Check out the DDS on liberal women’s birth rates versus conservative women’s birth rates.