Not just a generational problem

THE success of the US

Democratic

Party in avoiding what had been predicted to be a shellacking at the hands of the Republicans is largely attributable to the support it received from young voters. It is not that Generation Z and younger millennial voters had a heavier turnout.

In fact, there was no significant difference in the number of younger voters who cast their votes in the November midterm elections. What made the difference is that they voted heavily Democratic, more than the level they used to in previous elections.

The younger voters were particularly animated by the clear ideological differences between the Democrats, who anchored their campaign on reproductive freedom and the protection of US democracy, and the Republicans who allowed Donald Trump to insert “make America great again” (MAGA) sloganeering and his attempt to litigate his loss in the 2020 presidential elections by bannering the big lie that he was cheated, and hijack the party narrative.

The Pew Research Center has characterized the millennial generation, or those born between 1981 and 1996, as a cohort which values motivation, challenges hierarchical status quo, places importance on relationships with superiors, possesses intuitive knowledge on technology, is open and adaptive to change, places importance on tasks instead of time, has a passion for learning, is receptive to feedback and recognition, is free-thinking and creative, and values teamwork and social interactions in the workplace. On the other hand, the Gen Z generation, or those born between 1997 and 2012, are those who value diversity, are digital natives, are pragmatic and financially minded and are shrewd consumers. They are generally politically progressive but are prone to mental health challenges. Millennials and the Gen Z would definitely have problems with and would abhor demanding, dictatorial, imperious and unfeeling superiors, employers and politicians, and the feeling would be mutual.

Thus, these two generations would naturally frown upon any kind of politics whose ideological backbone would restrict their choices and freedom, particularly those that would pertain to their individual sexual orientation. The culture wars which MAGA Trump Republicans actively bore in this election cycle, particularly made vivid in the threats to curtail reproductive and voting rights, simply became threats to those personal choices. It is this disposition toward freedom and rights that drove these cohorts to vote heavily Democratic.

It therefore behooves us to ask if this trend also manifested in the recent presidential elections in the Philippines last May. What is puzzling is that preelection surveys saw President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who many progressive liberals painted as the heir apparent of the Marcosian brand of politics associated with repression and the closure of political spaces, dominated all age groups, including the Gen Z and millennial generations. And this was reflected in actual election results. There was, therefore, no youth vote that distinctly trended differently from the national pattern, and favored other candidates.

One possible explanation is that this whole business of dividing us into generations, with each having distinct attributes, may be culturally and historically nuanced. Thus, they are more applicable in Western contexts and less in those like the Philippines whose historical and cultural experiences may be different. But another plausible explanation is that the political choices available to us, in terms of the candidates running, are not defined in the context of contrasting ideological platforms, and end up as a contest of personalities. A perusal of the attributes of both the millennials and the Gen Z would reveal that while they seem to be politically progressive, they also value personal likability and social relationships. In the absence of clear ideological differences, and in an electoral exercise where ideological platforms do not figure significantly, then what is left would be the social likability not only of their candidates but of their campaigns.

The problem of the Filipino youth voters is not only manifested as internal limitations that are borne from the generalizable behavioral trends among millennials and the Gen Zs. It is also attributable to the failure of political parties and candidates to nurture and harness the youth vote in a way that would translate them into a potential electoral base. The result of the recently concluded US midterm elections would suggest that ideological platforms can only be effective if these are translated into concrete threats to youth voters. The reason why Democrats were successful in harnessing the youth vote to their advantage is that they were able to translate their liberal slogans to highlight actual assaults on the rights of individuals on issues that matter most to them.

Unfortunately, sloganeering among youth activists in the Philippines, as enabled by their adult counterparts, continues to be dominated by reference to traditional, and for all intents and purposes, jaded left-wing narratives. The posters and memes that are being bannered remain fixed in the 1970 tropes of anti-US imperialism and the threats of bureaucratic capitalism. While there is still value in locating the problem in the context of larger theoretical constructs, the liberal-progressive plank should begin to evolve out of the traditional Marxist-socialist model, and begin addressing the politics of identity in which the younger generations find themselves as inhabitants.

This is a generation that see threats to their existence less in the context of capitalist exploitation. This is a generation that lives and breathes consumerism. They see their threats not as coming from dictatorial regimes, but from a policy infrastructure that would undermine their choices, mobility and individual spaces. They are less concerned about the oppression that happened in the past, but about their oppression in the present. They would not be mobilized by painting any politician as a threat to democracy writ large. One has to personalize those threats in terms of their impacts on the safety of their spaces and their mental health.

The US Democrats were able to harness the youth vote because they turned the election not into a referendum against inflation and a failing economy, but an opportunity to protect their young voters’ individual choices in terms of their personal reproductive and political rights.