Can Republicans Get Millennials to Hate Hillary Clinton?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The LA Times reports today on what millennials know about Hillary Clinton. Answer: they know her as a senator and secretary of state, but have no recollection of the Clinton scandals of the 90s:

The youngest eligible voters of 2016 were toddlers when America’s most prominent political power couple left the White House, and what Americans know about Clinton is increasingly defined by what stage of her career she was in when they first tuned in.

….For some who lived through the battles of Clinton’s first years on the national stage, the culture wars and personal controversies of the 1990s are integral to understanding who she is….Young people, though, are more likely to know of then-White House intern Lewinsky as a vague childhood memory and pop-culture fixture — refracted through Beyonce lyrics, “Saturday Night Live” skits and Lewinsky’s Vanity Fair cover last year — rather than a trust-shattering national scandal that originated in the Oval Office.

This strikes me as both a challenge and an opportunity for Republicans. The challenge, obviously, is that young voters have a pretty positive view of Hillary, unburdened by blue dresses and impeachment proceedings. But there’s also an opportunity.

For people my age, all the stuff from the 90s was litigated long ago and our minds made up. Either we think it was all calculated hogwash and continue to support Hillary, or we think it was all God’s own truth and consider her a lying, scheming hustler. Nothing is likely to change our minds at this point. But younger voters? It’s entirely possible that if you run ads about Whitewater or Travelgate or whatnot, it would come as something of a surprise. And it might change some minds.

We’ll probably find out before too much longer. With hundreds of millions of dollars of super PAC money sloshing around out there, someone is bound to give it a try and see if it has any effect. I’m sure we’re all looking forward to this, aren’t we?

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate