But I believe the problem is that we need to stop worrying about stepping on toes, maintaining a status quo that has never really worked, and has always favored the rich

That's not a voter problem, that's an elected representative problem...

But it's almost impossible for an incumbent to lose a primary. It was only like a decade ago that the DNC was openly threatening to black ball any organization/business that worked on a primary campaign against a Dem incumbent.

While they no longer (at least openly) make those threats, they still say they're a private party and can pick sides. They can also use PAC donations meant for the general and instead use it to keep Dems like Manchin safe from more progressive primary challengers.

We need a fundamental change to our political system, because an insane amount of control is in the hands of private organizations beholden to absolutely no one with zero oversight.

To circle back to the status quo comment, the richest people at the top of the status quo keep giving a shit ton of money to those private organizations. It's an uphill fight, because "winning" isn't just Dems controlling the government. It's also replacing the vast majority of them, not just in office, but the ones behind the scenes running the party too.

I think they get that, and that's why they fight progressives in primaries harder than Republicans in generals.

Yes, but it's not possible with first past the post. We desperately need proportional voting, it's the only way we'll break the stranglehold that the DNC and GOP have on US politics.

Happened with Bernie. There are just too many middle aged folks who preferred Biden.

A third party will never work.

That's why Bernie spent like half a century telling people that and motivating younger generations to get involved in the entire political process on a grass roots level. Then slowly replacing the people who are currently running the party.

If that works, then maybe someday that new party would have the votes to fundementally overhaul our political system and get rid of the bullshit private parties.

But until that happens, both the major parties will always care about donations more than anything else.

This. I wasn’t blaming anyone.

I really am talking about primaries. There is a huge gap between who votes in primaries and general elections.

I think that even Republican primaries would be different if they had to cater toward a younger group.

And all the people that have responded are right. Boomers are a huge chunk of the voting bloc. But they don’t care about us and they won’t live long enough to see the repercussions. Overwhelming them in the primaries would help us more in the short term. I’m not sure we can make it another twenty plus years.

Of course it’s far more complicated.

The reality is “young people don’t vote” has been a dog whistle for blaming “kids” (gen z haven’t been kids for a while now.) for the way things are.

Lamentation about young kids not voting is just another way boomers have passed the buck on issues that have been a problem since before my parents were alive, and in any case, millennials and gen z have been voting at unprecedentedly high levels when we were “the kids” compared to prior generations when they were.

The reality is that boomers have dominated politics relative to other generations and a lot of the disengagement perceived comes from being outright ignored- nevermind being told that one is ignorant and should just shut up and vote the way they tell me to.

You want young people engaged, then engage them and expend effort on advancing their interests. Corpo dems always act like Bernie was a fluke. It wasn’t. He’s one of the few voices we have in the senate that doesn’t look at us as a means to collecting more bribes from corporations.