Inspiring the Millennial Voter

The TV pundits bewail Clinton’s “failure to articulate a clear and compelling message.”  This, they say, is why the millennials are failing to rally to her campaign.

It is true that Clinton hasn’t mounted an effective crusade.  There are various reasons for this, but those reasons should have been overcome by now.  If we look at the reasons, we might be able to come up with strategies that could have worked.

The first reason is the Clinton isn’t trying to change the current system dramatically.  She wants to make adjustments to the system we already have.  She wants to maintain the same general course, but increase speed and momentum.  The candidates who advocated dramatic change — Trump negatively and Sanders positively — were able to appeal to emotion and the fervent dedication of the converted.  Clinton looks at things very differently.  She’s interested in stability and practicality, and those virtues rarely gather enthusiastic support.

The second reason is that Clinton’s view is holistic.  She hasn’t latched onto one issue as the key element in her campaign.  Instead, she’s trying to improve everything.  She can detail the changes she advocates in each aspect of federal activity — modifying the tax code, paying for education, revising the criminal justice system, increasing the effort to halt climate change, providing family leave, establishing a no-fly zone in Syria — the list seems endless — but these are all details, and while each one may seem a positive step in the right direction (though many voters might disagree with some), they remain dry details.  None of them in itself is a reason to rush out and vote.  And when you take them all together, what are they?  It’s hard to see the shape of the future they promise.

The third reason is that no one has been able to direct attention to Clinton’s goals.  Since the post-primary campaign began, there hasn’t been a quiet moment in which to discuss alternative approaches to policy in calm and thoughtful tones, and even when the primaries were underway, the policy disagreements between Sanders and Clinton tended to take second place in the news to the latest outrages committed by the Republican contenders, or the most recent mass shootings, or to forest fires or hurricanes or terrorist incidents.  The media have no patience with policy details, because policy details don’t attract viewers, listeners, or readers.  Even when events are created specifically for the purpose of providing insight into policy differences — the debates — the moderators try with their questions to focus the discussion on those areas where heat will be created, not where clarification can be obtained.

Another reason may be related to Clinton’s practicality itself.  One TV pundit noted that Clinton is trying to attract millennials by proposing tuition-free education for most students, and is failing to recognize that the millennials are NOT practical.  They aren’t looking for money, they’re looking for a cause.  If you look behind Clinton’s plan to offer low-cost education, there is definitely a broader goal there.  She believes low-cost education will allow more students to move through the system, thus developing a more capable work force for the demands of the future.  This effectively educated group will be able to produce more, innovate more effectively, solve more problems, earn more money (and thus provide more tax revenue even if rates remain the same or are lowered), interact with each other more equally, and generally provide for a better-integrated, more effective, more prosperous country.

That’s a goal that millennials can get behind, but it remains rather fuzzy.

In fact, if you look at all of Clinton’s details, you can see that they’re all intended to move the country in the same direction.  Changing the tax code improves the options open to all members of society while reducing the inequalities that restricts those options.  Providing family leave promotes a society with greater physical and mental health.  Reversing Citizens United equalizes the voting power of all citizens by eliminating the added influence that Supreme Court ruling gave the wealthy.  Reforming the criminal justice system leads to more equal treatment of all citizens.

And so on.  Clinton’s team has come up with the slogan “Stronger Together”.  At one point, they talked about “Building Bridges” in contrast to Trump’s advocacy of raising walls.  But perhaps the best term to pull all of Clinton’s policy goals together into one package is “Equality”.  Everything she’s trying to do is aimed at giving everyone equal chances, equal respect, equal power, equal rights.

Sanders’ Revolution had the same intentions.  The primary difference between the two lay in the methodology to be used.  Sanders proposed a movement developing “People Power”, a matter of using broad-based, social-media-fostered public demand to force action by the government.  It was a matter of shifting the power base through modern communications.  This approach depends on building and maintaining a sense of zeal in the public, and that in turn would depend on demonstrating effectiveness after the election was won.

Clinton’s approach, by contrast, does not reject the current system as outmoded and suffering from a kind of political rigor mortis.  Instead, it seeks to use the system, but to be more practical about using it.  We’ve seen how attempting to use the system served Obama.  He made significant progress, but only by swimming upstream energetically through an unending flow of molasses.  A large part of the reason he was resisted so fiercely was because he was black.  Is it likely that Clinton is going to be much more successful, given her gender?  Once again, the White Male Defenses, protected by gerrymandered Congressional districts, are going to be mounted against everything she tries.  She may be more practical and less idealistic than Obama, but her goals (and those of a majority of the American public, despite how they feel about her personally) are just as unlikely to be supported by the federal legislature.

The only hope I see here is for Trump to go down to such defeat that he drags marginal Republican legislators down with him, giving Clinton a first-term voting majority in the Congress.  Unfortunately, it looks like moderate Republicans are capable of dropping Trump without abandoning their Tea Party congressmen.

And that’s why a millennial crusade is necessary.  Clinton should be able to make it into the Presidency as things stand, but with the millennials at her side with a significant cause, she could get the legislative majority she needs for her approach to work.

So how should she approach these last few weeks?  Ignore Trump, and go for Equality.  Demand that the statement “All men are created equal” be realized throughout American political, social, and economic life.  Every detail discussed should be presented in its broader context as part of achieving the American Dream of Equal Opportunity.

Clinton does have a broad goal that should inspire every American, but it isn’t “Stronger Together”.  It has everything to do with Equality, and she needs to start saying so clearly.