Like most people who don’t make their living off the fruit of the electoral politics tree, I find the entire political process suffocating and sad. I am tasked, however, with demystifying the so-called millennial perspective, part of which entails an honest assessment of those contending for the 2016 presidential nomination, particularly since, as a monolithic bloc, the outcome of that race could ultimately be decided by us.
The major issues being discussed pertain to when email accounts might be liberated and whether or not some candidates are even serious about running. Some weeks there are new candidates announcing runs or — in a nearly Orwellian phenomenon — announcing their intention to announce a run soon.
It is early in the game when, to pander to more raving elements of respective parties, even institutional candidates of the right are pretending to be unhinged. For example, this week, before advocating for policing thought by way of drone attacks, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham made a joke about kissing cousins. Again, this the season of appealing to the base.
The only one of the so-called major party contenders speaking to issues uniformly applicable to millennials across the bloc is, ironically considering he is just shy of 200 years old, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Bernie is a super guy — I worked in Vermont politics back in 2006 and observed that he always had a swarm of young people working for him, jazzed simply by his existence, energy and honest approach to policy.
He has, in the past, self-identified as a democratic socialist, and in Vermont he has huge cross-party appeal. He is absolutely larger than life. And now he is calling for a mechanism to have Wall Street foot the bill for all college tuition. Simple. Straight forward. Unblemished. Offered without consideration for how big money might react. Beautifully executed on his part. In a piece posted on Policy Mic, Scott Bixby said the move was one that would capture the hearts and minds of millennials. I agree.
The banking system is screwed up. It is built on the broken backs of working people and Washington allows them to get away with it. Sanders says as much and does not cloud his assessment with carefully crafted, inoffensive rhetoric.
In Democrat Hillary Clinton, corporatism has a good friend because she has long been friendly to corporate power, while also posturing herself against it. Yet, she has been received lovingly by many who chose to believe in the myth she constructed for herself. The Democratic Party, meeting the same profile for at least the past 25 years, appeared eager to welcome Clinton’s uncontested run until Sanders entered the fray and began to offer unabashed, un-caveated analysis and policy.
The wrenches that he — and Elizabeth Warren — throw into the mix offer clear and outspoken elements from inside and outside of declared candidacy. Their commentary and influence are forcing the conversation into an honest assessment of the problems nearly all candidates tend to be on the wrong side of.
Should this dynamic keep up, we may be in store for substantial conversations about topics politicians tend otherwise to remain all but silent on, which also happen to be those topics millennials tend to have strong feelings about — civil liberties, privacy, drone warfare, over-policing and race. All are issues that are so absent from political discourse that the can appear as fringe when they come up. Another Republican candidate, Rand Paul, as much as I personally disagree with much of his politics, deserves credit for keeping some of these issues alive.
We’re just at the beginning of this round — I shudder to even articulate that — and much will change between now and the end of 2016. What I am enjoying in the meantime is hearing from those who appear willing to take the conversation where career politicians attempt to never go and, in the process, speak to the issues that strike me as most important.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.