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Hillary Clinton is a well organized, experienced politician, however, her appeal to the millennial vote is substantially lacking. After reading an article by Mother Jones, I considered more potential reasons why Clinton is not easily obtaining these votes. This article made an argument that the partial reason why millennials are still voting for third party candidates is because Clinton is doing nothing to differentiate her pitch to the younger generation. According to this article her only reasoning is “Elect me because President Donald Trump is too terrifying to fathom.” Honestly, one of the very few direct appeals to our generation was her debt-free college plan. This is obviously a concern for everyone who is currently in or about to enter college, however, you can’t gain the support of an entire generation with just one universally liked idea.
I believe that Clinton is struggling so much to gain these votes because her opponents are trying much harder to appeal to millennials than she is. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are stealing 21% of these votes because they have revolved their campaigns around the values and goals held by our generation. The votes going to these third party candidates are dangerous for Clinton because they could ultimately help Trump. According to the National Review, “If Hillary Clinton loses in November, two reasons will be Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green-party nominee Jill Stein.” Clinton needs to make more direct appeals, specifically to the younger generation, and show them how electing her will positively affect their futures.
Do you think that she will be able to capture the first time voters who turned out to support Obama? He was able to get younger voters to register and turn out. In this election, from what I’ve read, a lot of first time voters are very disappointed that for their first election cycle that they are able to participate in the candidates are so unfavorable. Do you think that this may yield younger primary candidates gearing for 2020?