The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Young voters starting to realize their power
“Across this year’s most hotly contested battlegrounds — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — Biden’s lead among young voters never dips below 18 percentage points.”
Intellegencer, Oct. 22, 2020 I cannot resist the temptation to say, “I told you so.” Earlier this year in this column, I wrote about the power of young voters in this coming election.
Quoting myself, “In the 16 years between 1987 and 2002, there were over 64 million Americans born. Those born between 1987 and 1991 were first eligible to vote in 2008, President Obama’s first election. Those born between 1999 and 2002 will be voting in 2020 in their first election. While Obama has been out of office since 2017, his influence and modeling of how a president should act and govern are firmly established.”
This coming week could surprise us. Most of the polls show President Donald Trump trailing or statistically tied with former Vice President Joe Biden in the key battleground states. Some have described President Trump’s 2016 victory in poker terms — he pulled an inside straight. For those not familiar with poker, an inside straight is a hand where a player could have a seven, an eight a 10 and a jack. The player needs a nine to complete this straight, which is often a winning hand. But getting that nine is not a very likely scenario. Trump’s 2016 inside straight had him winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all states won by Obama in 2012.
The polls indicate that young voters are supporting Biden by at least 18 points in the three states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, that Trump needed to pull off his improbable inside straight in 2016. Anything can happen in poker or in politics, but getting the exact same hand is even more unlikely a second time around than the first time. Some of my quantitative professional friends might disagree. They would argue 2016 and 2020 are independent events and therefore, one has nothing to do with the other. And if they are independent events, knowing what happened in 2016 has zero impact on 2020.
However, I predict the growth in the youth vote will determine the outcome on Nov. 3. Given that I am baby boomer, for some it might sound strange for me to say that I welcome the changing of the guard.
This campaign is between two septuagenarians, who while experienced in the ways of the world, are not familiar with the challenges facing young Americans. Young Americans are struggling with the important problems that they did not create, but they will inherit.
The environment and global warming are an existential threat to their future and their children’s future long after we have left the stage. The fires in California, the melting of the polar ice caps, and incredible amount of plastic waste in the oceans are realities that keep young Americans awake at night.
The wealth gap is something that ossifies class and race distinctions and make the American dream of intergenerational economic growth a nightmare. It is no longer a given that our children will experience a higher standard of living than we do.
It was recently reported that the three wealthiest Americans had more wealth than the 165 million least wealthy Americans. Let that sink in for a minute. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have more wealth than a population 50 times the size of Connecticut’s population.
The notion of the nation state is increasingly being perceived as an outdated relic of a time when it took weeks or months to travel to Europe or Asia. Today, young Americans communicate with other young “citizens of the world” as easily as they communicate with their neighbors and classmates. As a result, young Americans share a culture that is familiar with other young people all over the world. Young Americans are inspired to address issues of social justice that is reminiscent of the Vietnam generation.
Young American voters have experienced the Great Recession and the housing crisis of 20082009. And now, they are experiencing the Great Pandemic and its associated even greater recession. Economic turmoil of this magnitude has had tremendous economic and entrepreneurial impact. Since the Great Recession, entrepreneurial start-ups by young Americans has steadily declined. Who in the right mind would start a business given the history of the past 12 years?
And young Americans have experienced almost 20 years of foreign wars. A 24-year-old voter today has lived with war for over 80 percent of their life.
Young Americans have grown up in an era where LGBTQ Americans are more accepted than ever. Despite the social unrest this summer, it was young white Americans who were in the streets protesting the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The concerns young Americans have are driving them to Biden, not so much because he represents all of their interests and goals, but he is closer to their vision of the America they will soon be responsible for. As a university professor, I have heard these young Americans correctly say that my generation has made a mess of things, although they have a much more colorful way of expressing this sentiment. I don’t know what is going to happen on Tuesday, but I hope that we see young Americans step up and assume their historical role to lead. In many respects, my generation has created the problems that we have demonstrated we cannot solve.
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and fattened calf together; and the little child shall lead them.”
Isaiah 11:6