I’m getting pretty frustrated with the way younger Millennial voters (those born in the '90s, basically) are turning up their dainty little noses at the prospect of voting for Hillary Clinton. I’m usually the last one to go on a “kids today” rant, but if they fuck this up, I am going to be pissed.
The following is transcribed from a recent NPR event recorded at Kent State University:
How *dare *Hillary use the word “minority” (if she even does: this was actually Ashbrook’s usage, after all). Yup, that definitely makes her as bad as Trump. (In all seriousness, I didn’t realize “minority” had joined “Negro” and “colored” on the ash heap of rhetorical history. Which apparently also makes me a bad person, just as bad as Trump and the alt-right.)
And of course: you shouldn’t vote for her unless she makes your exact personal issues the “forefront” of her campaign 24/7. Never mind that she has to be a candidate and president for all the people: unless she is your personal candidate, constantly delivering up your preferred portfolio of issues in a believably sincere way, you may as well just let Trump get elected. :smack:
Sixteen years ago my generation made the mistake of thinking that both candidates were the same and that voting for a third party would somehow make things better.
We’re still dealing with the consequences of that mistake.
I agree with the spirit of the post and ftr, most people of my generation (including myself) will be casting a ballot for Hillary Clinton come November. At the same time, it’s a two-way street-Hillary Clinton needs to do a better job of not just being the Moderate Hero candidate touting her Bush Sr. and Kissinger endorsements but outline a clear vision for America. It was for the same reason Al Gore greatly underperformed in 2000. In short, she needs to talk more about actual issues and not denounce Pepe the Frog.
It’s sad that someone so monumentally ineloquent could become (be elected, presumably?] president of anything of importance.
This really gives me the shits. You see the same attitude with people who say “I’m not going to vote because there are no candidates I like”. There’s always a candidate who is a bit more (and/or a candidate a bit less) like your ideal. So vote for the former or against the latter. If you don’t you are the very definition of a special snowflake, who can only see the world as something that should revolve around you.
Yes. I usually push back against the “special snowflake” characterization, but stuff like this makes it hard. And it’s not like she’s just some rando they found: she is, as you say, presumably the elected head of a group that bills itself as the university’s oldest student organization, predating by two years the infamous National Guard shootings there.
Meh, college kids will be college kids. I look back at when I just turned voting age and I can tell you we didn’t know shit from shampoo either. Sometimes the young vote works to your advantage, and sometimes they don’t. The same can be said of any demographic.
The deeper problem is, what the hell is going on in higher ed these days? What is a college education about? I see higher ed as a thinly-veiled capitalist enterprise dressed up as non-profit ‘enlightenment’.
I was born in the mid eighties and am not American, but I can understand why people of that age would turn up their noses at supporting Mrs Clinton; she is establishment, she seems to say “please tell we what you like, so I’ll support it” and she is too close with big banks and business to be comfortable.
Plus, she is a lousy candidate. She lost in 2008 to a black, half term Senator. Struggled to beat a near octogenarian former Commie. And is behind in the polls to a shaved semi sentient Orangutan.
Its a measure of how batshit insane Trump is that Hilary is even money to win. If the GOP had nominated Nixon’s reanimated Corpse, it would have steamrolled her.
People who believe that Clinton isn’t in serious trouble are in denial. Trump is the most atrocious candidate in perhaps all of American history. The things that he says are things any other candidate couldn’t possibly have gotten away with. I would agree that there is, and probably always has been, a market for a shock jock like Trump and maybe even in times past someone like this gets 10-25 percent of the vote, depending on the year. And I get that we live in unusually partisan and cynical times. But to have Hillary Clinton this close to defeat at the hands of a candidate so utterly flawed is unfortunately a very ominous sign. If she loses the first debate in the eyes of voters, she probably loses the election.
Do you understand that if Trump wins, it’s going to be because of the votes of senior citizens? If there’s any age group you should be ranting about, it’s boomers. You deny a “kids these days” tendency, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.
You could also blame anyone who advocated voting for Trump in the primary, if you wanted to branch out from blaming millennials.
Obama got both white and black (though in the latter case: “no, duh, Obviousman”) youth vote, but then again at the time he was only 47, fresh in the national public attention from '04, speaking to a generation who grew up in the W years, and was viewed as “transformational”. Hillary is 68, has been taking intense flak since before '92 and faces a youth that has had a black man in office for 8 years and are asking “sure, but what ELSE?”. **Qin **has a point in that Clinton maybe put in a but much effort in trying to sell herself as the “safe” alternative for the establishment since the primaries, but that is because she knew exactly that “progressive” voters are &^%$# fickle as Hell and she was trying to fish the center. Meanwhile the establishment has underestimated how many Older Boomers On The Right there are, and how they can smell the chance at getting in one last hit at the culture war.
Though, I understand the position of “I know that other guy is the devil himself, but that’s not enough what’s in it *for *me to vote for you?” But it IS a problem with this electoral system. If this were a PropRep system where coalitions would form, that’s another story.
Meanwhile, **AK84 **is soon to get a letter from the Orangutan Anti Defamation Society demanding a retraction.
This is the same kind of argument Nader and his defenders made. Don’t blame him for Bush, blame Bush’s actual voters. It’s not gonna fly. Sure, those people are to “blame” in a sense, but they are the ones Hillary got excoriated for correctly characterizing as “irredeemable”. I believe in holding people more culpable if they should know better. And similarly, I feel more betrayed if the voters are allegedly within my coalition, my allies.
I do indeed deny having that tendency, and I can back up said denial with two posts I made here just last year:
But that was before the election really got going, and in the interval they have been severely trying my patience, first in the primaries and now in the general.
I definitely would not blame such people. Any other Republican would be in much better shape electorally (and I don’t agree that they would be much better for the country or whatever). It’s only because Trump is the nominee that Hillary has a chance. Which I think is highly unfair to her, but it’s the way it is.
ETA: JRD, I love the way you put it: “she was trying to fish the center”. Which I think may still work–and, again, this is why the GOP nominating someone else than Trump would be disastrous. Gaining Romney voters in swing states is worth twice as much as getting lefty voters to go for Hillary instead of Stein, because it adds one to Hillary’s column while subtracting one from Trump’s. And the young idealists who vote for Stein or Johnson in non-swing states are obviously of no import at all.
No. Most millennials will not vote for Clinton. Most will not vote, period. That makes them my kind of people, not yours.
Millenials are an interesting bunch. They say they are ok with socialism. They also happen to be the generation most spoiled by capitalism in the history of the world. Even the millenials who grew up poor had it pretty damn good. They get what they want when they want it. They throw a fit at even the most mundane of consumer inconveniences.
They do not fit into the martial-civic character of the post-war period. They do not want to sacrifice their material well-being for the greatness of the state. Previous generations have warbled hosannas at the feet of the state and its institutions, particularly its institutions of death and chaos.
This is why democracy just doesn’t jive with them. They see the multitude of options and solutions to problems that the market brings to the table. They have seen this their whole life. Then every few years they look at the grotesque figures politics brings to the table. They don’t understand their confusion and unhappiness, but they know it is not right. My hope is that they are the generation to begin to unravel the state and begin what previous generations were too cowardly to do. I doubt it, but who knows. Ideas can change things rather quickly in a society.
People who are, as I posted on the 2015 thread I linked to, “the most sensitive, least violent, least bullying, least racist, least homophobic, most globally-minded, most compassionate, most environmentally-conscious, least dogmatic, and overall kindest group of young people this country has ever known” should know better than a bunch of old white people who grew up in an era notorious for conservative conformity, as part of the whitest and most native-born generation this country has ever known. How about that?
Hey guys, remember this completely patronizing attitude towards anyone who wasn’t in the bag for Clinton? It’s ok if you don’t remember, it was almost 6 months ago.
Here’s the thing, Hillary Clinton, her supporters, and the DNC that allowed her to basically run unopposed are the ones here who have been divorced from reality. It was clear from the outset that she wasn’t a strong candidate, but millennials were lectured down to, told what a great statesman she was, how bloody electable she was. Guess what? She’s not electable. She’s a terrible candidate, and the reason there was so much excitement about Bernie wasn’t necessarily that Bernie was a great candidate (although I think Nate Silver has argued otherwise on this point) is because at least he was a viable alternative. Millennials saw it a year ago, how terrible her candidacy was going to go. But nope, they were told to let the adults handle this one.
Well guess what? You messed up, you nominated her and now it’s looking like (holy shit!) she might actually lose, just like some millennials were saying months ago. So now you come, not hat-in-hand asking them pretty please to vote for her, but still talking down to them. The fucking balls on this guy, seriously.
Yes, god forbid we ask that people drop their blinkered ideology for five fucking minutes and vote in their own self-interest. God forbid we resent other people for letting the perfect be the enemy of the good in a contest that directly impacts us. It’s not entitlement to point out that voting for Stein or Johnson is throwing your vote away, and that you’d be much, much better served by voting for the candidate that best represents your interests and has anything resembling a snowball’s chance in hell of either winning or passing an agenda*. It’s not entitlement to point out when someone is making an incredibly stupid mistake. Everyone voting this year was alive in 2000. Hopefully some of them were paying attention.
*Because, you know, the democrats are totally likely to all rally behind Jill fucking Stein.