How To Lose The Youth Vote-- In England And In America

Eric Pickles has been a Member of Parliament from Brentwood and Ongar since 1992 and once served as Chairman of the Joint Committee Against Racism and later as Chairman of the U.K.'s Conservative Party. After the drubbing the Conservatives took at the polls yesterday, Pickles told right-wing jackass Robert Woollard, who chairs Conservative Grassroots and has been stridently demanding that David Cameron forget about marriage equality for gays, that he should stop moaning and "start recruiting people slightly younger than himself."

It isn't only about social issues, like equality either. Maybe Pickles should suggest that Woollard and other old-line reactionaries in the Conservative Party, not worry so much about the protest votes the UKIP got in local elections and instead read Charlie Cook's piece in the new issue of National Journal, The Young And The Restless-- The Fight For Millennials.

President Obama carried the 18-to-29-year-old voting bloc by 34 points in 2008 and by 23 points last year. But a new national survey of millennial voters conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests this emerging generation might not be as locked into the Democratic camp as conventional wisdom suggests, and that young voters exhibit some of the same stark partisan divides as older Americans... [T]he poll shows that young voters’ trust in their leaders and political institutions is low and dropping.

While millennials aren’t antigovernment per se, they are very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively deal with problems. Quite simply, in their lifetimes, they have not seen government work effectively or responsively. For the most part, they don’t expect to receive the same benefits, such as Social Security, as their parents and grandparents. Their cynicism about leaders is high and getting higher.

Having said all that, I believe there is a freshness to this generation; millennials appear unencumbered by some of the baggage that previous generations carried. People of this age group seem more open to alternative approaches to dealing with policy issues than the standard more-government-is-always-better approach that Democrats are tempted to pursue as well as the government-is-always-evil approach associated with Republicans.

As this millennial cohort becomes more engaged in the political process, gaining power as the World War II and Korean War generations-- and, soon, the Vietnam War generation-- wane, its members seem more up for grabs than many analysts imagine, provided that Republicans deemphasize social and cultural positions that the younger voters clearly do not share.

Cook's a bit of a conservative hack but his point is valid: if progressives-- or conservatives or fascists-- want the youth vote, they need to address them about their issues. Right now, what Republicans and conservative Democrats who vote with them, tell worried millennials about Social Security and Medicare is that, basically, we'll keep it around for your grandparents-- and then kill it off before you and your family can benefit. This is the standard position of the GOP-- from Boehner, McConnell, Cantor and Ryan to all their garden variety anti-Social Security "Law of the Jungle" cohorts. But it's been seeping into certain Democratic circles as well. And that's dangerous-- for Democrats.

Just over a week ago I brought up the case of sleazy opportunist and wealth-oriented Democrat, Ro Khanna, running for Congress against iconic Bay Area progressive Mike Honda. Honda is one of the signers of the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter that opposes, under all circumstances, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Khanna, as well as more than a few right-of-center New Dems, uses "weasel words" right from the GOP messaging shop to describe a position that may make seniors feel less anxious but that can't help but make millennials envision a life more brutish and ugly in the near future.

We often hear Republicans-- particularly Paul Ryan and his cult followers-- saying things like “I don’t think we ought to be cutting benefits that have been promised to current seniors." The word "current" means the speaker wants to phase out Social Security for future generations, a very standard Republican Party position. But that particular quote I just transcribed, wasn't from Paul Ryan, one of his cult followers or even a registered Republican at all. It came from a certain breed of "Democrat" ungrounded in any of the principles or values of the Democratic Party. That quote came from Ro Khanna, the right-of-center Silicon Valley fundraiser/opportunist who has launched a scorched earth campaign against longtime progressive champion Mike Honda.

...When asked where he stood on cutting social security benefits, Khanna danced around the question.

“I don’t think we ought to be cutting benefits that have been promised to current seniors,” Khanna said.

A popular talking point, “keeping promises to current seniors” is what most Democrats say when they don’t want to be held accountable for wanting to cut social insurance benefits.

A majority of the country favors preserving social security and trusts the Democratic Party more with entitlement programs over Republicans, who want to severely privatize them at the expense of society’s most vulnerable.

If you think that the Social Security issue does not affect you because you are far from retirement, think again.  If you are a wage earner, you are paying into the system and basically putting money into a fund that will hopefully be there for you in the future.

As students, we are living in precarious times of uncertain job markets, rising costs of living and inescapable student debt, and we have to ask ourselves if there will be a social safety net should things take a turn for the worse.