She is hands down the most broadly qualified and experienced among the candidates. But there remains an intangible quality that eludes her: connectivity. Even many people who admire her simply don’t trust her.
This is the same problem that, to varying degrees, Mitt Romney, Al Gore and Bob Dole had. It’s not fixable. Indeed, attempts to fix it feel even more forced and phony.
Another part of this problem stems from something far more tangible: the taint of scandal that has trailed her and her husband much of their lives.
Millennials are notoriously distrusting of institutions. Sanders is anti-institution. The Clintons are an institution... Do they want to put forth a survivor in chief, of whom many are suspicious and about whom few are truly excited, or a dreamer in chief (in the candidacy of Sanders) who says all the things they want to hear but that they quietly know he’ll never be able to deliver?
The Age of Secular Pharisees
A generation ago, the central question was, “Is there a God?” While the question still fuels the books of popular atheist writers, Duin reported that the issue of God’s existence is not on the mind of most Millennials. Most of them, as the surveys reveal, do not question whether God is real. Instead, they question whether he is good.
.. “Their biggest complaint,” he said,“is that God acts in morally inferior ways compared to us.” In other words, young adults formed by a tolerant, open-minded culture without sexual boundaries or limitations on self-expression, believe they are more moral than God.
Much has been written about the inflated self-esteem of Millennials—a generation coddled by helicopter parents and taught by social media that narcissism is a virtue—but could their self-image really be so high that even God is below them?
.. He calls them “iGens” and believes their self-esteem is a significant barrier to Christianity.
.. The Pharisees, on the other hand, rejected Jesus because they were convinced of their own righteousness; they were perfectly healthy (or so they thought). Today, we increasingly live in a culture of secular Pharisees—non-religious people convinced of their own righteousness who view Jesus as a morally inferior kook followed only by simpletons.
.. Like Paul, today’s secular Pharisees need an encounter with God not to convince them of his existence but to awaken them to his goodness.
The millennial generation: Young, gifted and held back
Around the world, young people gripe that it is too hard to find a job and a place to live, and that the path to adulthood has grown longer and more complicated.
.. Consider employment. In many countries, labour laws require firms to offer copious benefits and make it hard to lay workers off. That suits those with jobs, who tend to be older, but it makes firms reluctant to hire new staff. The losers are the young. In most regions they are at least twice as likely as their elders to be unemployed.
.. Rents and home prices in such places have far outpaced incomes. The youngsters of Kuala Lumpur are known as the “homeless generation”. Young American women are more likely to live with their parents or other relatives than at any time since the second world war.
.. China’shukou system treats rural folk who move to cities as second-class citizens. India makes it hard for those who move from one state to another to obtain public services.
.. All these barriers to free movement especially harm the young, because they most want to move.
.. By one calculation, the net flow of resources (public plus private) is now from young to old in at least five countries, including Germany and Hungary. This is unprecedented and unjust—the old are much richer.
.. In America just over a fifth of 18- to 34-year-olds turned out to vote in the latest general election; three-fifths of over 65s did.
.. The young are an oppressed minority—albeit an unusual one—in the straightforward sense that governments are systematically preventing them from reaching their potential.
.. Today’s under-30s will one day dominate the labour force. If their skills are not developed, they will be less productive than they could be. Countries such as India that are counting on a demographic dividend from their large populations of young adults will find that it fails to materialise.
Millenials: The Self-Reliant Generation
If you look at how millennials actually live, you certainly don’t see a progressive counterculture. In fact, you see what you’d expect from a generation that lived through a financial crisis, family instability and political dysfunction. You see an abstract celebration of creative transformation but a concrete hunger for order, security and stability.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, millennials change jobs less frequently than people in other generations. And a study of 25,000 millennials in 22 countries by Jennifer J. Deal and Alec Levenson found that at least 40 percent expect to stay with their current employer for at least nine years. Forty-four percent said they would be happy to spend the rest of their career at their current organization.
.. Millennials have extremely low social trust. According to Pew Research, just 19 percent say most people can be trusted, compared with 40 percent of boomers.
.. Just 26 percent of millennials are married, compared with 48 percent of boomers at that age. Only 42 percent plan to have kids.