Youth in Revolt

Can the Democrats Be the Youth Party Again? If They Follow the Youth Far Enough.

I honestly can’t think of a better time to be an amateur media analyst than right now. What was once a “vibe shift” has become a split in the Earth’s crust. So many think pieces have been written about three topics: a) the Republicans’ grip on young white males; b) a whole layer of the Internet that coastal liberals have been frightfully out of touch with; c) how trans issues may have cost them the election.

Now I do not disagree that a large part of Trump’s victory was a referendum on progressive social stances. But the million dollar question is why do the liberals and the liberal media care about the three topics listed above? They all point to an issue I have seen nowhere near as many think pieces on: have the Democrats lost the youth vote for good?

Sound like a silly question? This is like saying it’s dumb for Christians to care about crucifixes: youth and the cross are central to both respective mythologies. Although the media became overwhelmingly liberal in 1968, my God it sure did lean a little more leftward when John F. Kennedy won his debate against RIchard Nixon in 1960. By the time the youngest President ever was elected, the Democratic Party by proxy would be associated with youth, glamour, idealism, hope and progress.

Until he died. Lyndon Baines Johnson was always going to be a less popular President (just like, a full four years after Obama left office, Biden was never going to keep that spirit going). Vietnam became a massive wedge issue, driving the idealistic youth away from the Democrats, especially when Robert F. Kennedy got assassinated in ‘68. So for decades, the association of “Democrats” with “youth” would be less of an actionable given. The idea of a youth vote itself was not much of a big deal.

Until the ‘90s. The ‘90s was a good decade for liberals in general and the Democrats in particular. The culture wars were theirs to lose. MTV’s Choose or Lose campaign convinced youthful Gen X voters to carry Clinton to the White House. His appearances on MTV and “Arsenio” were the stuff of legend. Bush Sr. meanwhile was crabby with MTV VJ Tabitha Soren. This was the Republican version of Harris snubbing Rogan.

If Clinton helped cement the association of the Democratic Party with the youth, Barack Obama burnished it. From ‘08 on, it was a fact of life: young people vote Democrat and care about liberal causes. End of story. Twitter only solidified this further.

Wait, I’m talking like the youth are not liberal anymore…that they don’t vote Democrat. Is this true? Yes and no. Yes, the Republicans attracted more white male youths. But in general youth turnout was poor. So it makes sense to look at what the Demorats can do to appeal to white boys. But this is a non-starter. It would make more sense to make a clear distance from hatred of white males than to actually try to speak their language or whatever. This is not the path.

OK, well..the Internet ecosystem. So many liberals are humiliated that they just now found out about the Costco Guys. Too little too late on that front. More importantly, endorsements are overrated. The Costco Guys still are not more famous with the youth than Taylor Swift or Megan Thee Stallion, both who endorsed Harris.

The trans stuff — that must be it, yes? Again, the holier-than-thou tut-tutting over pronouns may have hurt, but with the youth?

The answer is so obvious, writing it feels like an insult: it was the gaslighting about Biden, the economy and Gaza. Trend forecaster Sean Monahan noticed the Platform McCarthyism around the Hunter Biden story in 2020. The FBI and Mark Zuckerberg stopped all stories about Hunter in their tracks. But the true rift between the youth and the media/Democrats began around October 7 of 2023. Then, like now, TikTok, not Twitter (which moved to the right of Trump) or MSNBC (which moved to the right of the youth) became the primary source of leftist youth messaging. There have also been podcasts, Substacks, etc. But TikTok has been the center.

What about Brat Summer? Kamala Harris had a chance. The youth did seem to like the Kamala HQ TikToks just fine. So what happened? A ball can only maintain momentum if it has no obstacles. Gaza was a major one for her. The media pooh-poohing inflation as a “vibecession” absolutely did not help. The media lying about Biden, whom the youth had grown to hate from October on, all but guaranteed he would step down like LBJ did in ‘68.

The thrill had gone away.

And look, it’s not like the trans issue didn’t work with the youth, or they don’t care enough about it. But the pinkwashing of Gaza…yeah, the youth saw right through that. Quite simply, I am writing this at 1:01 am, when I should be in bed for work, because, no matter how you slice it, the left has the Democratic Party and the media establishments by the balls. They have nowhere to go but left. There are so many youth votes ripe for the plucking. And it’s not necessarily true that liberals and Democrats are child groomers, but they do love the youth.

More than the blacks, the Latinos, the Muslims, the Democrats feel most betrayed and most hurt by their distance from the spirit and passion of the young. How can the next Democratic candidate excite youths worried about the economy without something bold, like Medicare For All? If they can’t move that way, they certainly can’t throw LGBT votes away. That community did show up. They do not need less votes. Now some have said that supporting Gaza is going too far left, which is why Harris lost. It can be said that the election was a response to the Democrats’ excessive pandering to certain communities, but Biden and Harris were not too left. Again, just like Republicans have built bridges with the far right. the Democrats need to build bridges with the far left.

Why? Because the youth only understand radical action. Radical passion. Trump uses radical messaging. Obama’s centrist messaging worked because the idea of a Black President felt radical enough. Some say Harris was also radical enough being a Black woman. Unlike Obama, Harris supported not one, but two unpopular military campaigns.

So to recap: the Democrats don’t need to improve their messaging to young white bros, as long as they do not particularly alienate them; they don’t need to pretend to care about the Rizzler; they don’t need to act transphobic — no one will be convinced. What they need to do is understand two things: 1) the symbiotic relationship between liberal legacy media and the youth in general online…now yes, that has been severed; 2) not only are the youth too young to remember when the Democrats were associated with the youth, they (rightly) do not revere Obama the way previous generations revered Kennedy. Right now, the Democratic Party/liberal media establishment is like an aging Hollywood cougar preying on hot-blooded youths and wondering what it needs to do to stay sexy and relevant. One good start: wipe the blood off your fingertips.