MoJo’s editor-in-chief is in trouble over this tweet:
i have never hated millennials more https://t.co/q042TC2Lul pic.twitter.com/zHoqYJ2UwO
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) September 15, 2016
Now, you’d think that because Clara is my boss, I’m going to defend her over this. But I’m not! Not totally, anyway. Let’s break down what’s actually going on here.
First, Atrios is upset because he doesn’t like criticism of young people. Why? Beats me. As near as I can tell, millennials don’t actually attract any more abuse than any other age cohort. I’m not sure why they should be any more immune to criticism than anyone else.
Second, and more important, this poll result seems like a bit of an outlier. On average, other polls seem to show Johnson and Stein getting about a quarter of the millennial vote, not 36 percent. What’s more, a lot of that is coming from Trump voters. Defecting millennials seem to be split nearly evenly between lefty Clinton defectors and center-right Trump defectors.
That said, Clinton is clearly doing worse among millennials than Obama did four years ago. But it’s a very restricted group of millennials. Over at 538, Harry Enten lays out some survey data which suggests that virtually all of the defection is in the 18-24 age group. Older millennials are supporting Clinton at about the rate you’d expect.
So what’s the deal with this very young age group? Here’s where I part from Clara: I reserve most of my frustration for Bernie Sanders. He’s the one who convinced these folks that Clinton was in the pocket of Wall Street. She gave a speech to Goldman Sachs! He’s the one who convinced them she was a tool of wealthy elites. She’s raising money from rich people! He’s the one who convinced them she was a corporate shill. She supported the TPP! He’s the one who, when he finally endorsed her, did it so grudgingly that he sounded like a guy being held hostage. He’s the one who did next to nothing to get his supporters to stop booing her from the convention floor. He’s the one who promised he’d campaign his heart out to defeat Donald Trump, but has done hardly anything since—despite finding plenty of time to campaign against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and set up an anti-TPP movement.
There’s a reason that very young millennials are strongly anti-Clinton even though the same age group supported Obama energetically during his elections—and it’s not because their policy views are very different. A small part of it is probably just that Clinton is 68 years old (though Sanders was older). Part of it is probably that she isn’t the inspirational speaker Obama was. But most of it can be laid at the feet of Bernie Sanders. He convinced young voters that Hillary Clinton was a shifty, corrupt, lying shill who cared nothing for real progressive values—despite a literal lifetime of fighting for them. Sadly, that stuck.
