Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Should We Just “Right Off” the Millennial Voters?
Are Republicans doomed when it comes to Millennial voters? If so, then the GOP is doomed…period.
Millennials are the largest group of voting-aged Americans, and that numerical superiority will only increase as the Baby Boomers die out. Listen to the Talk-Right and you’ll hear a lot of talk about simply writing these voters off: “Kids don’t vote, anyway!”
Well, they’re not “kids” anymore, and they’re getting older every day. How is “write them off” a winning strategy?
Pessimists like (the brilliant and funny) Kristen Soltis Anderson say the GOP is pretty much screwed no matter what. The Millennials didn’t like the GOP much two years ago, and they really, really hate Donald Trump. The result: The GOP brand is so damaged among Millennials that Republicans will never get enough of their support for a winning coalition in the future.
But in today’s “Michael in the Morning” podcast, John Della Volpe offers a (tiny) glimmer of hope for the Right. Della Volpe oversees polling for Harvard’s Institute of Politics, and they’ve been polling Millennials twice a year for almost 20 years. And while the GOP’s numbers are pretty lousy, he argues that there are actually two groups of Millennials. The older ones really didn’t like George W. Bush and the really loved Obama and they’re pretty much lost to the GOP.
But their younger brothers and sisters came of age during and after the “Great Recession,” watching their families and neighbors suffer. They’re more open to economic arguments that address their fears and concerns, and they’re willing to consider more independent ideas.
Two issues that poll well with Millennials: School choice and “cracking down on countries that engage in illegal or unfair trade practices that hurt American workers.” Can the Right use these issues to make inroads? Or should we “right off” the Millennials and reach out to Generation Y?
But whether it’s Millennials or Gen Y, does anyone see any evidence the Right is even trying to speak to young people? Haven’t we simply abandoned them to the tender mercies of late-night TV hosts?
Which is why the “we’re doomed” argument is so strong, in my opinion. What am I missing?
Published in Culture
I listen to a fair amount of talk radio (Mostly to Wilkow, Rush, Hannity, Levin) and I’ve never heard anyone suggest the Right forget about young people. Of course, I don’t listen to every minute of every broadcast. But in general, I find your criticisms of talk radio to be off base, and strange for someone like yourself in the talk business. Your guest from last week, the radio host from Tennessee, was also bizarrely anti-talk radio. It seems to me that there’s a certain type of conservative that considers himself to be “too good for talk radio.” (Also generally “too good for Fox News.”) Don’t get me wrong, I love your podcast and listen to it every day.
I’m an “older millennial” of sorts (1982). I was liberal in college and in the first few years of “adult” life. Obviously this is only anecdotal about my own experience, but talk radio was instrumental to bringing me to the Right. My wife and I happened across Rush one day in the car in 2005. We were both Democrats, didn’t recognize his voice, and listened for several minutes, both saying, “this guy makes a lot of sense, who is this?” Then he went to commercial break, “Right back with Rush Limbaugh on the E-I-B Network.” And we turned the dial in horror. Except…what he had said made sense. It took another three years to start listening semi-regularly to Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and El Rushbo. It was on the Laura Ingraham show that I heard, in the summer of 2008, an interview with a nurse who had testified before the Illinois state senate about babies that survive late-term abortions and are then left to die. It was then that I learned Barack Obama had been the only state senator to vote against the Illinois Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. That’s literally the moment I became pro-life.
I hope that younger millennials will have the experience I did with talk radio. And our podcasts! I hope Michael in the Morning listeners will share the show with their younger relatives — It’s a great gateway to conservatism. It’s current, funny, and informative.
(So don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review in iTunes!)
The Millennials are actually more conservative then any generation since WWII. Most young people are collectivist. They are young, ignorant and lack self confidence in a threatening world. Once they leave the nest, they try to seek out a new parent to take care of their perceived needs. Yet, once they get out into that scary world, they gain skills and talents that allow them to set their own path. At that point, the collective ceases to be a crutch and becomes a hindrance. The red pill has been swallowed.
Millennials have a far more skeptical view of government as well as corporations, religion and….well…..everything. Yet, they still have the same basic needs and desires. They are fertile ground for understanding when a concept stands the test of time. That is what conservatism is.
During the run-up to the election, my concerns about Trump were exclusively long-term in nature. In other words, I was quite confident that however bad I thought Trump would be in the four to eight year period that the next President would serve, Trump would be better than Hillary.
My sole fear of Trump was the long-term damage he could cause to the Republican Party and, as a result, the country. Since his election, Trump has been slightly better than I expected, but seems determined to validate my concerns about the long-term risks of his Presidency.
Trump seems likely to be the Nixon that turns most of a generation against the Republican party just when we were making significant inroads with the younger kids (acknowledging that Sanders was turning a sizable chunk of that generation into full-on socialists.)
Once the SJW menace recedes the democrats will govern for a generation.
Life experience makes a lot of people more conservative.
Young people have always been more liberal, eventually they start to have kids and start to pay taxes.
What does this mean? If we defeat the SJWs we lose?
You see any particular reason it will recede from the Democratic party?
It does look grim, but I always remind myself of the fact that people tend to get more conservative as they get older. So while it’s true that today’s younger generation is overwhelmingly liberal, many of those people will change their views as they get jobs, pay taxes, and learn a bit more about how reality works.
After all, when I was in college I would have said the same thing about the Generation-X cohort I was a part of. We all marched in lockstep to the default anti-Reagan liberalism, myself included. Today I am still in touch with some of my friends from those days, and a lot of them are now quite conservative.
It’s not a guarantee that the same thing will happen with today’s clueless youngsters, but I cling to the hope.
Michael,
Growing up is a process. Some take longer than others and some never grow up. You may be surprised that millennials will vote for Trump. They won’t tell anyone about it but they will vote for Trump.
Regards,
Jim
Yep.
There is a simple way to ensure only conservative millenials vote. Force them to turn off their electronic devices in polling places.
Yup. Having served as an election judge I can confirm that Texas state law requires all devices capable of taking pictures be turned off within the distance marker. Probably true for other states. That bit about taking a photo of your ballot and posting it on Facebook? Illegal. (It should be, too. It is an end run around a secret ballot.)
I’d bet the only millenials willing to unplug from their electronic comfort animals from the time they reach the polling place distance marker to the time they depart the polling place are probably going to be conservatives. Yes, some of them could get around that by voting by mail, but that requires the foresight to go down to your local county building sufficiently before the election and the patience to go through the request process.
At least this would separate the adult from those who are physically adult but mentally infants.
Seawriter
I expect that its going to get played out at some point, and the left will moderate on social antagonism.
Especially since my read of the problem is that its mainly a way for middle class white girls to acquire a heroic internal narrative in a country that has no idea how to deal with ethnic white identities that pre-exist the mass immigration waves of the early 20th century. They will stop aping sexual dysfunction to get attention eventually.
The thing is that it isn’t really the democratic party. Its leftists in the wild battling it out in the culture and terraforming cultural institutions into SJW propaganda outlets. GamerGate is the reason that Trump is president, that was the tipping point. As long as the SJW menace exists, the moderate left will vote for republicans as the only safe port in a storm, and they don’t like it at all.
The democratic party is just trying to ride the tiger.
My impression is that this group (a) does not have much respect for any institution (government, church, corporate); (b) is terrified or marriage and personal commitment and (c) is highly risk averse. On a first pass, they are largely teed up for a (reluctant) dependency mindset favorable to Democrats.
The most effective political approach is to remind them of the horrors of PC run amuck (they appear to be receptive to many libertarian themes) and redesign ALL entitlement programs to support participation in private savings and insurance (medical, social, unemployment etc). In other words, the government will help keep you in the private sector and not shuffle you off to dependency status. So kid, don’t worry, go forth, take a shot. Make babies, be excellent to one another, build, create, trust and hope.
I know a few people who have gone from left to right in the 20’s to 30’s. Event more, people who go from nothing to right.
I’ll have to disagree. I’m in the gaming community and I can barely tell you what gamegate was. The racial identity politics is the Democrat party’s entire platform. They’ll shed more and more whites, and as hispanics and asians intermarry they’ll shed those too.
Look nobody can predict the future. We could see a break up of the union in our lifetime, and if that’s the case say goodbye to the south west.
This mostly.
You can’t make conservatism cool. Doing the correct thing isn’t cool. Patience and prudence isn’t cool. Cold logic isn’t cool. Moral character isn’t cool. Responsibility isn’t cool. Knowing history isn’t cool.
I’ve been following Jordan Peterson pretty closely and he has a big appeal among millennial males. I’ve been sending all the “lost souls” in my life in his direction.
I challenge everyone to engage with the millennials in their life. I’ve converted quite a few; with patience and time I’ve made progress.
I just don’t discuss same-sex marriage. Everything else is fair game.
This is the best post EVER (well, the part at the end about sharing the podcast)
The Talk-Right movement has a distinct “you kids get off my lawn” vibe. Listen to the conversation with the pollster, John Della Volpe. He’s quick to respond to my casual crack about Generation Cupcake. I’m not saying the criticism of Millennials isn’t legit, but it’s not great marketing.
And if the GOP plan to reach the youth vote is Rush and Levin–we’re screwed.
is that the plan? I never got a memo
Has conservatism ever had voices like Greg Gutfeld, Zo Rachel, Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder? We’re not Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley anymore.
Also, the Barack Obama fantasy had a major souring affect on many Millennials. It will be very interesting to see what his legacy ends up being. We already have lots of babies named Barack who are now boys named Barry.
Here’s the deal, Ricocheads: Among Millennials, the GOP is “mostly dead.”
Here’s the data:
Data isn’t a solution, but it does define the problem.
As horrible as all this is, all we can do is continue to attempt to educate them that they are wrong. I have a really hard time believing “republican” millennials have defected to democrats. They most likely weren’t the most ardent supports to begin with, if they were at all.
After two years of hearing that Trump isn’t conservative, I have no idea why you think his approval rating among millennials has any relevance to this discussion.
Edited to add: Millennials simply need to be exposed to conservatism and there are lots of ways to do that via podcasts and brainwashing them when they’re young. The more life experience they have, the easier the lesson.
Then you tell them to vote from the most conservative candidate on the ticket. Not the perfect conservative.
Badabing. Done.
I suspect the tiger has already devoured them, and there will be no going back within my lifetime; the moderate left will slowly partition into the moderate right and the extreme left, depending on whether they consider cultural marxism a greater or lesser ‘evil’ than conservatism.
That said, IF we can manage to defeat the SJWs and can get a conservative Supreme Court majority preceding that hypothetical 20 years of Democrat dominance, I’ll consider it it a relative win. The country has fallen so far that a return to a state of affairs that motivated me (in opposition) to become engaged in politics in the first place would seem like a victory.
Non-marxist statists can slowly realize the errors of their belief system through experience and education, but cultural marxism is at least as much of a secular religion as regular marxism, and would require some equivalent of a religious conversion for its followers to abandon it. With the institutions of cultural transmission firmly under their control already, I’m not optimistic.
Don’t forget, that inn 2020 Gen-Y will be able to vote for the first time.
Millennials are a write off, but Gen-Y looks a lot better.
I don’t think millennials being exposed to a working model or more theories of conservatism is the chasm, it’s the entrenchment of negatives about conservatism in every day life. It’s narrative. It’s the negatives that are out there we’re fighting against rather than a lack of positive examples.
We can get tax cuts, have the economy grow, and they’ll hear from their friends that it was by hurting the poor. The Reagan era was bad because it expanded the wealth gap, etc.
We could get more religious freedom and they’ll hear that we hate gay people. You hear one criticism of the gay community from a local representative in a small district in a state, that becomes “All Republicans hate gays” then if you get a lucid response about the dangers of elevated rights you tie in the “All Republicans hate gays” as your motive
Our problem isn’t extolling the virtues of our philosophy, it’s that there’s a narrative response considered “valid” that anticipates the success, twists it as actually harmful and becomes fact.
Our problem isn’t a lack of exposure, our problem is peer pressure and narrative.
In New Hampshire we have free speech. ;-P
Well, I think they’re more appealing then you do (obviously), but we also have Steven Crowder and Gavin McInness, who are both on Levin’s CRTV.
I have this theory that the politically active youth are mostly democrat because that’s when those ideals are most attractive. But as people grow, pay taxes, deal with the government, the moderates of the youth start to become more and more conservative.
Though I didn’t take very long, I would have described myself as an uninformed political moderate until 24.
And have opened the door to eliminating the secret ballot.
The rules against photos in polling places exist to protect people from being forced (through peer pressure or similar suasion) to reveal how they voted. It is also to prevent third parties from photographing voters.
There is no constitutional requirement for a secret ballot. (The concept of a secret ballot was imported from Australia.) Up until about 1880 most votes were cast publicly with individuals turning in a ballot produced by one party or the other – and the ballots were identifiable at a glance. This led to pressure for people to vote “the correct way” – or consequences would follow.
Thus the secret ballot arose – with laws prohibiting people from being forced to reveal how they voted (including the photography ban). The trend of putting a photo of your ballot on your Facebook page or YouTube or really anywhere, put pressure on everyone to do this. How many people do you think would be willing to buck the SJW harpies, if they had to reveal their vote or be subject to a twit-storm/direct action if they did not? About as many as were willing to vote against the Fascists in Italy when individuals had to use a green-white-red ballot to vote for the Fascists, and a plain white ballot to vote against the Fascist candidates.
Ballot selfies are stupid – unless you like seeing those most willing to impose their will on everyone else win elections.
Seawriter