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Why Millennials Support Bernie Sanders
Having access to a left-leaning, reasonably articulate Millennial, I was able to ask, “Why are you guys so crazy about this Bernie Sanders fellow?” The answer basically boils down to two things.
1. Millennials perceive the current system to be corrupt and stacked against them. They have completely bought into the line that too few people control too much wealth and that they are disadvantaged as a result. They like Sanders because he is going after “the wealthy.” This is a particularly potent attraction among those who have accumulated lots of college debt and have no prospects for paying it off. The idea of the government mandating paid paternity leave and a living wage sounds great. How could more money and paid time off not be great?
2. They think the free market has failed, and point to examples like the fellow who bought the patent for the AIDS pill and jacked up the price to $750 per pill. (They have no idea that this was enabled by Government regulation and not the free market, because Reddit didn’t tell them that.) They know Sanders is a Socialist and they don’t care. When they think of Socialism, they think of Sweden, not Venezuela. And when they think of Sweden, they think “free college and IKEA,” not 70 percent tax rates and Muslim rape gangs.
Many Millennials have had little or no exposure to the intellectual case against socialism. To them, conservatives are people who don’t want gay people to get married, and that’s about it. When the GOP talks about “tax cuts,” they see no benefit to themselves. The conservative right largely talks among themselves, and are terrible at explaining the benefits of free market capitalism to those who have been indoctrinated by 12-16 years of education in government schools.
In the pre-Reagan Era, the media was just as left-leaning and reluctant to discuss the poverty and oppression that permeated the Soviet Union. But there were enough people willing to talk about it outside the media for the truth to get out. The pervasiveness of social media should make it easier, not harder, for conservatives to get a message out around the media gatekeepers.
Millennials should be told what happened in Venezuela after Sanders’s ideological brother Hugo Chavez took over; they should be told how toilet paper became a black market commodity and supermarket shelves became bare. And they should be made aware that Sweden is not quite the utopia they’ve been taught it is.
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Oh. Well then. Guess that means we should pack it up and call it quits on this whole “conservatism” business, then. After all, anyone who is under 30 and doesn’t think the way you do is a lost cause, right?
Look, as a millennial, I absolutely agree that my peers are embarrassingly cloistered in their political thinking, but what are you going to accomplish by saying that nothing we say or do will convince anyone? The ideological homogeneity of my generation is the result of underexposure to other ideas – the solution, therefore, is to expose people to other ideas. Not to grumpily declare that the future is written and anything bad that happens is the fault of others.
I’m doing my research so I have the rhetorical arsenal necessary to push back against the poorly-thought-through tropes readily regurgitated by people who haven’t really considered what they believe, and I’m doing so in a polite, reasonable way. When I do push back, I’m finding a lot of people stunned into agreement with me because they weren’t expecting good arguments or sensibility.
Let’s actually try fighting back before we declare the war to be lost.
I just read this article about Bernie Sanders and his appeal with blue collar voters in rural states. It’s rude to say, but some of these people are morons. The article quotes one coal miner who voted for Obama but feels betrayed because Obama has anti-coal policies. Barack Obama didn’t trick anyone. When he was running for president he said that he would make it so costly to open a new coal-fired electrical plant that anybody who tried to open one would be bankrupted. This was no secret. This voter apparently thinks Obama is shutting down the coal industry so he can promote nuclear power. While Obama hasn’t been anti-nuclear, he hasn’t been a booster of nuclear power either (except in Iran, of course). His big push is for wind and solar, and I don’t know how someone whose livelihood depends on the energy industry could be so unaware of this.
So who is this coal miner supporting this time around? Bernie Sanders, who believes that fossil fuels are causing runaway global warming and wants to shut down coal. Sanders understands that this will kill a lot of jobs but he would extend unemployment benefits and find former coal workers new jobs.
Some voters project their hopes on politicians and assume they support the same things, rather than finding out what the politician in question actually says. Then when the guy gets elected and does what he says he would do, the voter gets angry about it and feels betrayed.
This can be a bipartisan phenomenon.
Absolutely true.
Great post. It has been pointed out in other places, but bears repeating and acting on: We on the right tend to talk about abstract concepts, using logic and praising rugged individualists. The Left, in particular Comrade Sanders, almost exclusively talk about fairness using emotion and praising hive-like solidarity. Who do you think wins?
More often than not, most of us make decisions based on emotion, and then justify that decision with “logic”. (Intellectuals are the worst at lying to themselves.) Many like to think of themselves as rugged individuals standing against the tide and seeing the “real” truth: a stampeding herd of independent thinkers. The young are the most susceptical to this (having been one, I speak from experience).
It’s not hard to make an emotional argument against socialism based on facts, but too many in public life on the right side of the divide don’t.
Talk in a language that is relevant to them. It’s an old canard, but comparing grades to money works. More than once this comparison is very effective in getting kids to starting thinking about the fairness issue from the viewpoint of how redistribution will hurt them. It also is a useful attack against that defense of socialism’s perfect record of failure in real life: “well it just hasn’t been done right yet. And this time we’ll do it right, because we’re smarter and more compassionate. And have iPads and stuff.”
He won. That’s the bottom line.
Agreed. However, fighting is only part of the puzzle, in my opinion. Conservatives also need to work on providing more opportunities for millennials to embrace independence. Both through legislative efforts and privately:
Millennials are not a monolith. To treat them as such is to be railroaded into stupid tactics.
Many millennials are not fedora wearing latte drinking graphic artists who live in a semi gentrified neighborhood in a trendy city, despite the media imagery.
Some are blue collar welders and mechanics, loaders and clerks who feel screwed by Obamacare, Social Security and politicians in general.
Strategy number one- the latte millennials are congregating in blue state urban areas, minimizing their electoral impact.
Strategy number two- provide a message of hope for the ones who are not congregating in those cities, indeed wish they could move somewhere with good jobs, housing , schools and freedom.
I had a choice to hire for a key position today, and it comes down to a guy with a high school degree, who is married with a family and did two tours in a war zone with their guard unit, or one the same age who is single, just graduated college with a non STEM degree and has minimal work experience and has no car. Both are millennials.
Which one of the above should the GOP message to?
Which is why — if the GOP should win the Presidency — I want him or her to continually and creatively blame Obama for all the problems they’re dealing with. There’s a way to do it without whining, and constructively. Continually repeating how Obama screwed up this or that, is why I am forced to make this or that correction. This is a game of repetition, executed creatively and continuously it will bear fruit. Why do you think Obama blamed Bush for everything? Sure we laughed at him, but it was effective, Bush was blamed for everything and still is. It will also be a useful defense against the sniping that can be expected from ex-President Obama.
I wish this was true, if so we would stand a chance. Your peers are not “embarrassingly cloistered in their political thinking”. No most of your peers do not think politically at all. They did not arrive at their beliefs via thought and logic but were spoon fed their ideology via 16+ years of indoctrination and given no tools to think about any other ideology at all. Thus they have beliefs of religious fever without the religion. Sure this does not hold for all, maybe not even for many, but in the end it will not be enough. Those that can think for themselves will end up bending back to the collective ideology out of peer pressure or economic pressures. The majority will stay in their comfort zones.
By all means fight the good fight, I know I will continue too but understand that we will lose this battle. Maybe with luck we can set it up so then next guys to come might have a fighting chance to win.
Facebook “likes” don’t count on Election Day.
There’s this guy across the Atlantic named Jeremy Corbyn…
I will believe a politician cares about the incomes of the poor when they advocate for regressive taxation.
If Y’all are worried about the appeal of socialism to Citizens today, just wait four years; after the predocumented aliens are amnestied.
Because conservatives are evil, rich, warmongering white men. You don’t read Salon?
My peers often shudder at the dreaded “c-word.” Call yourself a conservative and you’re immediately labeled a regressive enemy of forward progress, shilling for the evil one percenters, standing up for “racist” policies like Voter ID, and worse—you are “anti-choice.”
I think we have to consider the effect of school indoctrination, which seems to have gotten much worse.
My son just graduated public high school this year (in Canada), and I can tell you that his education was a non-stop indoctrination into multi-culturalism, leftist economics, and pretty much the entire panoply of left-wing ideas. Conservatism is treated almost as if it’s a mental illness. Even math problems seem to be based on global warming, immigration, etc. It’s relentless.
On the good side, a significant number of the smarter kids rebel against that and become cynical or libertarian. But the large majority just eat it all up and come out of school as good little progressives ready to man the ramparts for social justice.
We need more educators on the right. We need better messages, and more innovative ways to deliver them. We need to smash the education monopoly. Until that happens, we’re going to keep churning out good little leftists.
Another problem is the global nature of social media. Americans used to have political discussions with other Americans. Now they have them on message boards that have a global audience – and the rest of the world is generally farther to the left. That means conservatives are becoming seriously outnumbered online.
I have been thinking about this too. Here is my question: If kids and especially teenagers are so rebellious and schools are becoming so liberal, why isn’t there vastly more rebellion against liberalism in the young?
You certainly have some rebellion, but the dynamic seems like it has to be more complicated.
I don’t think modern kids are as rebellious as previous generations. They’ve been too coddled and complimented. Their helicopter parents keep them from just hanging out with groups of their peers, where rebellious ideas are born.
When everything is supervised, scheduled, and controlled, it’s hard for the kids to develop minds of their own. And it’s hard to rebel against the nice teacher willing to give you a passing mark just because your heart was in the right place, or against the parents who tell you constantly that you are a special snowflake and they are your best friends and champions.
Today’s ‘rebellion’ is more likely to be an Occupy Wall Street rally, and you’re likely to go back to school afterwards and be patted on your head for your keen sense of social justice. Some rebellion.
This reminds me of a documentary I watched on someone who was born and grew up in a North Korean prison camp. I think it was called Camp 14: Total Control Zone. Eventually he escaped and made it into South Korea. At the end he said that the beatings and near-starvation were bad, but in many other ways prison life was preferable to being free. In South Korea he’s expected to earn a living and make decisions about his life. He grew up in an environment where people of authority made every decision for him, and he was not happy having to think and be responsible for himself.
So what we need is a Conservative who will lie his way into office by campaigning as a Progressive. The Conservative Obama.
<not holding breath>
Don’t think I haven’t thought of that! :)
And in my next life, I’m coming back as an unaccountable rich Democrat. :)
So they’re not supporting him for his hair style and sense of fashion?
We already have a Donald Trump……
We on the right can’t understand why people aren’t appalled by an open socialist. Here’s why: when people say socialism, they don’t mean socialism. When they socialism, they don’t mean “an economic system in which the means of production are owned by the state.” They mean “an economic system in which the means of the production are regulated by the state.” And often they don’t even mean that. They mean “an economic system in which the rich people pay their fair share.”
So…yeah…(in the parlance of the young people)
Does anyone actually know a millennial that they consider informed? Does that species exist in nature? This is, despite appearances to the contrary, a serious question.
These kids today. I can’t even…
In some ways it’s just the same as it was before. I came of age at a time when every college-age kid I knew was going to vote for McGovern. Hell, I voted for McGovern. He would have been about as bad for the country as Bernie Sanders would be. Most of the kids were anti-war, hated Nixon, demonstrated against the war at every opportunity, went to the moratorium in DC, which was the 1969 version of Occupy.
Of course, those were the kids at elite eastern universities. The kids in the heartland might have been getting married, going to work, and enlisting in the army. I didn’t know any such kids.
But in other ways it’s different. I agree with those who say that today’s kids seem more indoctrinated, less thoughtful, less willing to consider the other side of any issue. Not only do they not understand conservative arguments, they think that such arguments should not be allowed to be uttered. These kids love Bernie Sanders. They will not vote except in already very blue states.
I love arguing with them, because it is so easy to make their heads spin. But they are like the T1000 terminator, the one made of liquid metal. You can convince them of some conservative truth while they are in your presence, but as soon as you are gone they shift back into the form they were in before.
Yes, I know some very well educated, articulate, and strikingly conservative 20 somethings that think moderate republicans are bigger traitors than I do. One of them even has a radio show and lead a group of young Tea Partiers.
A slim majority of millennials I know fit at least a portion of the stereotype, but to blanket all of them as self absorbed, ill informed, slackers, who want the gov’t to care for them is woefully incorrect.
Because of the limited career prospects they tend to be uniquely entrepreneurial and many think the entire federal gov’t is a big scam.
We can do good work with these folks, but they are hard core limited government fiscal conservatives and not amenable to moderate BS. Hence my close association with them.
There is a coming divide with this group over generational welfare and we can get in front of it or run over by it. As of this writing we are standing in the road with deer eyes as the truck races downhill toward us.
Sounds like a plan. :)
Be careful what you vote for, you may just get it.