From the beginning of her campaign, Hillary Clinton has been seeking the vote of the millennials, but frankly, she needs to do more if she wants to be the next president.
Here’s Clinton’s issue:
The millennial coalition hates Trump. But we’re not too crazy about Hillary, either.
According an NBC News| SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll released just hours before the debate, 49 percent of those under the age of 30 said they backed Clinton versus 26 percent for Trump. Meanwhile, 16 percent of those 18 to 29 said they backed Johnson and 7 percent for Stein.
Higher numbers of young people are backing third party candidates like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein than ever before. Their reason being that they are sick and tired of the corruption in US politics and the influence “big money” has on our politicians.
Here’s how Clinton has tried to win over the millennials this past year or so:
She’s tried to tweet us:
(Which felt trivializing and earned her some nasty response tweets like the following:)
She’s tried to snapchat us:
(Which was, I think we can all agree, incredibly awkward).
She’s tried to humor us on our favorite youtube channels:
And everything in between. Essentially she’s an old person trying to be cool online which is always painful for us millennials. It’s been entertaining, sure, but we wonder if Clinton doesn’t give us enough credit. We are educated, we are intelligent, and we are powerful. We have issues we care deeply about. If she wants the millennial vote, she needs to assure us that she will fight racial and ethnic inequality, corruption, and student debt.
Here’s what Clinton needs to do differently:
Clinton wrote a blog post on Mic, a media company that targets millennials, and discussed the issues we care most about. She also laid out her specific plans to attack them. “I can promise you this,” she said in her final lines, “I’ll never stop fighting for you.”
We need more of this. More content. We need Clinton to target our issues in the next debate. We need her to discuss police brutality and climate change and mass incarceration way more than she did last week. We need her to show us she cares about us.
I completely agree with your entire blog. I think that Hillary Clinton is generally lacking in her appeal to millennials and when/IF she does try, it comes across as a joke. It is very clear that she is struggling to relate to our generation and her attempts to make Snapchat, Twitter, and Netflix references come across as disingenuous. I love how you incorporated humor into your blog. It was so entertaining to read and really kept me interested the entire time. Your links were also very relevant to your post and enhanced your humor. The Zach Galifiankis video had me laughing harder than I have in a while. I also like how you portrayed our generation as “educated, intelligent, and powerful”. I completely agree that Hillary refers to us like babies and that we deserve more credit. We have worked so hard to be where we are and it would be nice if our future president considered that.
I agree with the fact that she’s attacking millennial voters in an awkward and unsuccessful fashion. Her need to be universally liked is almost cringe-worthy at times, and maybe it confuses her that an old, wiry man in Bernie Sanders can appeal to a younger audience. The issue isn’t her appeals to millennials, it’s her policy. Bernie accumulated such mass admiration because his economic and social planks resonated with young voters. Much to your point, I believe quality over quantity should be her focus from this point forward. Less emojis and humor, more sincerity and discussion of issues that are pertinent to millennial voters. If not. we could see some record high numbers with third party candidates among young voters.