Democrats have
become so frustratingly useless to young people that it’s
inspiring Salon writers to say semi-nice things about
libertarians. Yes, my friends, perhaps the partisan apocalypse
really is nigh.
In a piece at Salon today, Tim Donovan
explores how millennial-voter turnout in the recent midterm
elections was low, and that didn’t bode well for Democrats. He
scoffs at the idea that the dismal showing had much to do with
voter identification laws or other logistical barriers. Rather,
Donovan suggests (as
I, too, did recently) that Democratic candidates have done a
crap job of focusing on issues that actually matter to young
voters:
For those of us who follow “millennial issues,” this
generation’s low turnout hardly came as a surprise. Last April, the
Harvard Institute of Politics found something
surprising while talking with young
voters: considerably more young Republicans expected to
vote than Democrats. Armed with this troubling data, Democratic
candidates had months to adapt their messaging
and court our votes. What happened? Universally, Democratic
candidates didn’t bother to address the (very real, very
serious) problems that are on the minds of many millennials:
the racist and costly drug war, ballooning student loan debt,
long-term unemployment, flat wages at shitty retail and restaurant
jobs, and an imperiled climate. Democratic strategists seemed to
assume that running as the Not-Republican Party would carry
them to victory among young voters.
I don’t know that the issues Donovan mentions are necessarily
those that excite millennials the most, nor that it’s true
Democratic candidates didn’t focus on wages or climate policy this
election season. But he’s certainly right that they focused much
more on scaremongering about Republicans than actually setting
themselves apart from them in substantive ways. Donovan
continues:
Personally, I’d vote for Rand Paul for president faster than you
can say “libertarian wacko” if I thought he would actually end the
drug war, slash corporate welfare and plow the savings into student
loan debt relief or a robust infrastructure bill. If someone like
myself—a pajama-festooned, latte-sipping, liberal
hipster who writes for Salon, fer chrissake–is
willing to ignore party preference in favor of actual
legislative gains, I can only assume that less ideologically
committed millennials are even more willing to vote
Republican for the right candidate or platform.
Woo! Sure, Donovan may still see Paul as a “libertarian wacko”,
but being a bit wacko seems like a comparatively good thing in this
context. The alternative is doctrinaire Democrats and Republicans
who put partisan needs over ever accomplishing anything. And
millennials are less likely than generations past to stand for that
noise, as poll after poll and anecdote after anecdote
show.
If
millennials are a “politically unclaimed” generation, however,
it’s never been so true as right now and won’t be as true for much
longer…. Thanks, Obama! There are still plenty of people
who want to talk about the spell President Obama cast on
millennials, and how anyone who thinks they can get young people to
vote Republican (or libertarian, or any oddball third party) is
deluding themselves. But I think this drastically underestimates
the extent of millennial disillusionment with the president, and
the political potency of this disillusionment.
It’s the first-cut-is-the-deepest phenomenon: Millennials mostly
came into political consciousness during cartoonishly-evil, Karl
Rove-era GOP power. Then came Obama, promising to care about civil
liberties and end the Iraq wars and let gay people getting married.
And for a minute, the narrative of Democrats as a more modern, less
authoritarian party and Republicans as rich old men who want to
bomb everyone while banning sex seemed cemented in the millennial
mind. “Thanks to truly epic Republican awfulness on just about
every possible issue from gay marriage to foreign affairs to
budget-busting, the Dems have indeed been able to take the kids for
granted in recent years,” as
Nick Gillespie writes.
Then Democrats spent the past six years systematically
squandering their millennial advantage. Obama turned out to care
about civil liberties as little as Bush did and like bombing people
about as much. Little changed in a Democrat controlled Congress.
Then little changed in a Republican controlled Congress. And
progress on issues like legalizing marijuana and allowing same-sex
marriages continued with little help from Congress or the White
House. For all but those most inclined to be partisan hacks, the
idea that either side is inherently distinguishable from the other
seems to be quickly dissipating among Gen Y.
But this is likely a strike while the iron’s hot kind of moment.
A gift, really. Here’s a young electorate too let down by
politicians on both sides to feel especially tribal, yet too
optimistic (as of yet) to let this sour them on politics entirely.
A lot could change by 2020. Right now, here’s a group practically
begging to be won over, if only anyone on either team red
or team blue could manage to actually stand for
something.
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