I followed the 2016 Presidential race pretty closely, and I only remember that second one - and only because it was one of many bumper stickers her campaign sold.
(I actually bought one. My wife made me take it off because someone she talked to thought it was a pro-Trump sticker.)
She had a lot less airtime than Trump, though, and her speeches weren’t the most electrifying. I suppose I was spoiled; my first candidate was Obama. I missed being able to vote for him by two weeks in 2008, because I was two weeks away from 18. But I listened to the man’s every speech. I can say I listened to at most a handful of Hillary’s. I knew what her platform was through reading, but none of it struck out to me as anything truly spectacular. After Obama, I was expecting the Democratic Party to give me Franklin Roosevelt 2.0…Not John Kerry 2.0.
Actually, I was a Republican as a teenager, very John Wayne “Love it or Leave it” Reagan-type Republican until Obama. He, combined with the fact that as I grew, I saw how fucked up many Republican policies are, turned me Democrat.
I spent more of my time arguing with my relatives why they shouldn’t vote Trump than anything else, which was for naught - they did anyway. Then again, my parents are the kind of people who believe in Pizagate and think Hillary should be in prison and think Trump is being treated unfairly, and will handwave any time I try to show them how he, or the Republicans in general, will fuck people in their situations over. My parents have always picked the wrong side of history politically though, at least, politically schizophrenic: In 1996, they voted for Clinton; In 2000, my house was an enthusiastic Bush household, to the extent that my mother and sister didn’t speak for a year; I remember staying up late watching the returns and my parents referring to Gore as a “robot”. Come 2004 and my mother was watching “Democracy Now!”, had a crush on John Edwards, and felt Bush should be impeached and that we should’ve left Saddam alone. My mother is very contrarian like that. She thought that ratfaced bastard Chavez was cute and misunderstood -sigh-.
Probably because Millennials can’t be bothered with anything longer than 10 sec. of synthesized news, viewable on Snap. 
(Going with the meme here, work with me 
)
Seriously, Ms. Clinton talked a lot of policy, talked a lot about solutions, talked a lot about what she would try to do. Of course, if one is being honest, her policies, solutions and positions constantly were changing to meet the needs of the moment (as seen in the eyes of her political advisors). She’s insincere, a tag which has stuck with her a long time, and is not just manufactured by the Republican machine.
But I’ve taught the Millennials, and I have four of them as sons. And they have this love/hate thing going with the Democratic Party because the party doesn’t really know what it wants to be. President Obama energized young people because he held out the idea of change from what the mainstream offered. But what exactly that “change” is turns out to be less-well-articulated any more. And if you don’t have a solid vision of where you want to go with your party, it’s hard to convince energetic young people to sign up and die for you (figuratively speaking). Bernie Sanders energizes young people, because they know exactly where he says he wants to go.
Millennials don’t see the game as a zero-sum contest between two alternatives. It’s about time the Democratic Party understood that.
Not true! Some are Trump supporters!
I’m Gen X and vote. My wife votes. My sister, if anything, has gotten more political as she’s gotten older. My Gen X friends vote and are at least basically educated on the news of the day. This doesn’t mean that all Gen X’ers feel that way but rather I think there’s a deal of confirmation bias and what circles you travel in there.
Every campaign shotguns out a dozen themes a day to see what sticks so spending any time being personally insulted by Pokemon or Hot Sauce seems a bit bizarre.
You had two basic options. (The third, voting for neither, whether for somebody else or not voting at all, is feckless and futile. Taking your ball and going home isn’t an adult response.) In the end you only enabled the ‘greater’ evil. Like it or not, that’s the reality.
Feel better now?
I personally want a fiscally Liberal (New Deal 2.0), socially moderate (drop gun control, emphasize birth control over abortion), secular, pro-science, non-SJW Democratic Party.
You know, she addressed your first two points on her website. She was, if nothing else, very policy oriented. But people were already accusing her of being too wonkish, so if she got up on the podium and droned on about her 16-point plan for whatever, then the pundits would tear her to shreds.
It’s not her fault you couldn’t be bothered to go to her freakin website.
HRC can be accurately accused of many, many negative things. Including failure to have a broad, overarching vision shaping her campaign (I get the sense that it was mostly, “I want what you want!”). But a failure of specificities is not one of them.
The problem stems from the fact that the Democratic Party is the party of diversity, with many diverse viewpoints. Coming up with a unifying strategy/message is more difficult than for the Republicans, who have several advantages there: faith-over-facts, a tendency toward authoritarianism, and a total lack of scruples.
I was insulted by Clinton.
I’m a baby boomer (the very tail end of the boom) and I thought Clinton would make a fine president in a policy-wonkish way. But I despaired of her winning from the start, mostly because she was horrible as a campaigner. (Also because she had baggage. Mostly misogynistic baggage, but decades of Pistole hating her. That’s pretty hard to overcome. Especially if you suck at campaigning.)
So I was moderately enthusiastic to vote for her, but I hated her slogans. “I’m with her”. Well, yeah, but you know, as a feminist, I’d rather vote for the better candidate of either sex than for the woman because she’s a woman. And that’s what I felt she was saying. “You should vote for me because I’m female”. I didn’t catch the Pokemon stuff, but I’m not at all surprised if it was as off key as the feminist stuff.
I’ve made fun of her “hello, fellow kids” routine before, but it’s not that important. Obama tells dad jokes and tried to make dumb internet memes too. None of that was as silly as Bush the Younger putting on a drawl and pretending to be a cowboy instead of a blueblooded aristocrat.
I’m a millennial (voted for Obama twice, Bernie in the primary, & HRC with no great excitement last November)… I feel weird defending Hillary Clinton, but the “Pokemon Go-to-the-Polls” comment was an off-the-cuff joke at a time the app was exploding in popularity. It was a silly grandma joke that humanized her. There was another joke she made during a podcast interview about being a a robot built in a Palo Alto garage; it was a rare moment of genuine humor. I actually think we should’ve seen more of this version of HRC, because people tend to vote for the more likable candidate.
I guess you can call stuff like that pandering. All politicians do it, but as HRC is a very cautious, socially guarded person it came off as cringy. Obama did this stuff too, but he had a knack for it. For example, any other politician besides maybe Al Franken would’ve been a disaster on Between Two Ferns, but he was genuinely hilarious. I think people need to stop comparing presidential candidates to Obama, he is the exception not the rule. Our generation is spoiled because we have mostly never had to vote for a presidential candidate that we didn’t like; most other generations have always had to decide between two flawed candidates & so shall we until the exceedingly rare event that a likeable, trustworthy politician like Obama comes around in 30 years or so.
And next time, perhaps if the Democrats run a candidate who is in favor of things like marijuana legalization & a healthcare public option, they wouldn’t have to worry about convincing Millennials to vote. Why HRC didn’t support the former especially, I’ll never know. It’s a low-effort position to hold that nets a politician more votes than it loses these days.
Also nominating a young PoC as VP wouldn’t have hurt either. Democrats present themselves as the party of young people & minorities, so I think it’s shameful that they’d run two old white straight Christians together like that. Put your money where your mouth is; if diversity is our strength (I certainly believe that) then have your party leaders reflect that. There should be an unspoken rule from now on that every Democratic presidential ticket should include a minority. No, “woman” is not a minority, as the Clinton campaign seemed to think, but gender balance wouldn’t be a bad idea going forward either.
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Few things in the world make LESS sense, than putting everyone through a horrible go of things (such as the current insane administration), simply because you feel miffed.
Next on the list, would be admiring someone (such as Republicans) for voting for someone or something that’s going to destroy the country, simply because they want to be “loyal to the party.”
Anyone who admits to thinking either of those things is logical or rational, has their head so far up their own nether regions, they should be reclassified as pretzels, and accordingly have their voting privileges revoked.
I’m Gen X (46), my sisters (56, 54). We have always voted on everything. Politics is a hot topic in our family. My classmates from high school all voted. Even those expecting children. Every FB post from everyone had something political tied to it. The only complaints I heard about voting were computers over paper.
I grew up 55 miles west of Atlantic City and knew since I was 13 that Donnie Two-Scoops was a fraud. Knowing that only about 12 people from my HS graduating class voted for him still shocked the hell out of me.
Now I live out west and I had to coax every freaking millennial within site how to register, how long voting takes, when’s the best time to go, etc. The one question I kept getting was, “Why can’t we just vote online?” :smack:
The lack of attention span is definitely a thing. Even I can’t watch a debate without checking polls and comments simultaneously. But there’s also experience. My suggestion to all younger generations is to study previous generations and their thoughts about the world around them. NatGeo and CNN had series on '80s and '90s. We thought “War Games” was quite a possible outcome to the Cold War. 
The hurdles you have to jump through to vote are valid issues. A lot of Millennials are working AND going to school, & they are often moving a lot in their young adulthood, which complicates things like figuring out where to vote & registering. I remember it was a nightmare for me to vote in 08 & 12, as I had moved about 5 times in that period. In 08 I had to drive 2 hours to my old address’ polling place after showing up at a closer one & being denied, which almost soured me on the whole thing.
Maybe online voting isn’t the answer, but the current voting system that we are trapped in is outdated & rightfully feels like a relic to the average Millennial. I mean, Tuesday voting? WTF is even that, is there a worse possible day for working people or students to go to the polls?
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I’m shocked at you (well, not that shocked).
One, you’re barking up the wrong damn tree. I didn’t just vote, I badgered and berrated quite a few stubborn peers into registering and voting. Two, I also live in California, where HRC won so onesidedly if I didn’t vote at all it couldn’t possibly have enabled a “greater evil.” Three, I put my time and money where my mouth was, did the leg work and made campaign contributions. Four, good on you personalizing a political discussion and using terribad assumptions because… you think I’m younger than you.
So let me ask, do you feel better after blowing smoke based on erroneous assumptions and kneejerk reactions?
In '08, there were problems with finding the polling place too, for me. Soon after, we could just update our new address online with the state’s voting site. Now it’s almost instantaneous. Instead of driving two hours, you can always vote by proxy. Just mail 'er in.
I never heard complaints about elections on Tuesdays from the Milens I talked to. It’s the best day to have a vote occur. Some people take long weekends, have delays in traveling, and employers can’t deny you from voting. Even if you can’t take a longer lunch, they’re open at 7:00 am and close at 8:00. If you’re a student, there’s plenty of time to get there in between classes and teachers aren’t going to dock you for voting.
As far as online voting goes, it would only ever be possible if we could prove there’s absolutely NO WAY anyone could hack someone else. Like, 100 years of no hacking incidents, THEN we could consider it.
These days I vote early by mail. It’s practically effortless, yeah, but not every state allows it. My friends in Texas were refused mail-in ballots, for example.
If democrats were smart, they’d work to expand Washington’s & Oregon’s all-mail-in voting to as many states as possible.
Election day should be a national holiday, & if not that, it should be held on a Saturday or Sunday. Tuesday voting is just yet another holdover from rural days when hayseeds had to travel by wagon over the weekend to their polling place. I am honestly tired of how seemingly every system in this country is dictated by what long-dead, pre-industrial white dudes who shat in chamber pots considered to be the best way to do things.
I share your concerns about online voting though. It’s probably not feasible, especially in a country as big as the US, with 50 different sets of voting norms.
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Oh, PLEASE. :rolleyes:
You move, the first thing you do is you update your voter registration record. It’s not hard, these days to do that; many places you can do it, you know, ONLINE. 
What you’re complaining about is that, when it comes time to vote, you’ve not done your homework, and then, just like so many in your generation, you expect everything to be ok without having done the preparation. There’s NOTHING complicated about figuring out where to vote, if you plan doing that in advance. Then, you wouldn’t be denied for showing up at the wrong spot. <smh>
The people who have valid complaints are people who have no mobility, who lack proper identification and the ability to obtain it, who are legitimately put in danger of disenfranchisement by the system.
You’re right, I didn’t do my homework about voting as a dumb 19-year-old in 2008. I wouldn’t have been the first. My parents are immigrants who had never voted, & I didn’t have older siblings or aunts or uncles in the US to explain any of that stuff to me. But I still ended up voting, after a day-long ordeal. Voting should be easier; if believing that makes me a spoiled Millennial, so be it.
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It’s great that you vote. It’s great that you voted. Keep voting.
I’m guessing that a lot of people, generations aside, won’t be voting in 2018, especially due to the outcome of this past one. Vote then and vote whenever the opportunity.