If Demographics Is Destiny, 80 Million Millennials Will Decide America’s Future
It wasn’t James Comey that torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. It wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn who upset Teresa May. It wasn’t fed-up workers who gave the National Front their best-ever showing in recent French elections. It was the children, or, more respectfully, Millennials and Gen Z. Young people who are suddenly deciding elections around the world, and upsetting the applecart.
Millions of Millennials became Bernie’s “army” and turned their backs on the “inevitable” Hillary Clinton, viewing her as the voice of the establishment.
.. They are easy prey for those making big and undeliverable promises, like free college or free health care, or free windmills that can save the planet. Having not learned the lessons of history, they (and we) are doomed to repeat them. They must learn all over again how left-wing policies fail to spur growth and incomes, undermine the economy and leave working people behind.
.. They don’t remember the UK as a nation crippled by exorbitant taxes and militant unions, finally revived by the conservative policies of Margaret Thatcher. Where would they have heard that? Popular culture in the UK derides Thatcher as an Iron Lady who stepped on the poor and devolved into dementia. Professors teach more of the same.
.. Pew Research determined that Millennials and Boomers were tied, each claiming 31 percent of the electorate. Up until now, that evolving parity has not meant much, because turnout among young people was consistently low. That is changing.
.. Millennials are fickle. They can show up to vote in one election and then ignore the next. That’s what happened in France, where young voters, frustrated by 22 percent unemployment and fed up with establishment parties, gave LePen a surprising lift in the presidential voting on May 7, only to boycott the more recent parliamentary contests.
.. Millennials are fickle. They can show up to vote in one election and then ignore the next. That’s what happened in France, where young voters, frustrated by 22 percent unemployment and fed up with establishment parties, gave LePen a surprising lift in the presidential voting on May 7, only to boycott the more recent parliamentary contests.
.. Young people in the UK were not a big factor in the 2016 Brexit vote
.. They subsequently flocked to the voting booth to register their anxieties about leaving the EU. Turnout among young people (age 18 to 24) rose 12 percentage points compared to the 2015 general election.
.. Trump’s approval ratings with 18 to 34-year-olds at only 26 percent.
.. In college, they never heard the counter-arguments, about the cost of renewable energy or the deflating effect of immigration on wages. Our colleges discourage right-wing commentary or even open discourse.
.. An astounding number of young people, especially minorities living in urban areas, have little knowledge of how to access a middle-class life, and what it might mean for them.
Republicans can also promote making government more efficient and effective, in part through the greater use of technology