The issues up for grabs aren\u2019t ideological abstractions for them. They\u2019re causes in which Millennials have direct personal stakes.(Photo:\u00a0Light Brigading<\/a>\/flickr\/cc)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Millennials (and their younger siblings, generation Z\u2019s) are the largest, most diverse and progressive group of potential voters in American history, comprising fully 30 percent of the voting age population.<\/p>\n
On November 6th, they\u2019ll have the power to alter the course of American politics \u2013 flipping Congress, changing the leadership of states and cities, making lawmakers act and look more like the people who are literally the nation\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
But will they vote?<\/p>\n
In the last midterm election, in 2014, only 16 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 29 bothered.<\/p>\n
In midterms over the last two decades, turnout by young people has averaged about\u00a0 38 points below<\/a>\u00a0the turnout rate of people 60 and older. Which has given older voters a huge say over where the nation is likely to be by the time those younger people reach middle age and the older voters have passed on.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not criticizing younger non-voters. They have a lot on their minds \u2013 starting jobs, careers, families. Voting isn\u2019t likely to be high on their list of priorities.<\/p>\n
Also, unlike their grand parents \u2013 boomers who were involved in civil rights, voting rights, women\u2019s rights, the anti-Vietnam War movement \u2013 most young people today don\u2019t remember a time when political action changed America for the better.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re more likely to remember political failures and scandals \u2013 George W. Bush lying about Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction; Bill Clinton lying about Monica; both parties bailing out Wall Street without so much as a single executive going to jail.<\/p>\n
Most don\u2019t even recall when American democracy worked well. They don\u2019t recall the Cold War, when democracy as an ideal worth fighting for. The Berlin Wall came down before they were born.<\/p>\n
Instead, during their lives they\u2019ve watched big money take over Washington and state capitals. Which may explain why only about 30 percent of Americans born in the 1980s\u00a0 think it \u201cessential\u201d to live in a democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Many young people have wondered if their votes count anyway, because so many of them live in congressional districts and states that are predictably red or blue.<\/p>\n
Given all this, is there any reason to hope that this huge, diverse, progressive cohort of Americans will vote in the upcoming midterms?<\/p>\n
My answer is, yes.<\/p>\n
First, the issues up for grabs aren\u2019t ideological abstractions for them. They\u2019re causes in which Millennials have direct personal stakes.<\/p>\n
Take, for example, gun violence \u2013 which some of these young people have experienced first-hand and have taken active roles trying to stop.<\/p>\n
Or immigrant\u2019s rights. Over 20 percent of Millennials are Latino, and a growing percent are from families that emigrated from Asia. Many have directly experienced the consequences of Trump\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
A woman\u2019s right to choose whether to have a baby, and gay\u2019s or lesbian\u2019s rights to choose marriage \u2013 issues Millennials are also deeply committed to \u2013 will be front and center if the Supreme Court puts them back into the hands of Congress and state legislatures.<\/p>\n
Millennials are also concerned about student debt, access to college, and opportunities to get ahead unimpeded by racial bigotry or sexual harassment.<\/p>\n
And they\u2019re worried about the environment. They know climate change will hit them hardest since they\u2019ll be on the planet longer than older voters.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve also learned that their votes count. They saw Hillary lose by a relative handful of votes in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve been witnessing razor-thin special elections, such as Conor Lamb\u2019s win by a few hundred votes in the heart of Pennsylvania Trump country, and Hiral Tipirneni\u2019s single-digit loss in an Arizona district Trump won by 21 points in 2016.<\/p>\n
They know the importance of taking back governorships in what are expected to be nail-bitingly close races \u2013 in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kansas. They\u2019re aware\u00a0of the slim but increasingly real possibility of taking back the Senate. (Who knew Ted Cruz would be so vulnerable? Who even knew the name Beto O\u2019Rourke?)<\/p>\n
As doubtful as they these young people are about politics, or the differences between the two parties, they also know that Trump and his Republican enablers want to take the nation backwards to an old, white, privileged, isolated America.\u00a0Most of them don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
In my thirty-five years of teaching college students, I\u2019ve not encountered a generation as dedicated to making the nation better as this one.<\/p>\n
So my betting is on them, this November 6th.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 24, 2018\u00a0by RobertReich.org In my thirty-five years of teaching college students, I\u2019ve not encountered a generation as dedicated to making the nation better as this one by\u00a0Robert Reich The issues up for grabs aren\u2019t ideological abstractions for them. They\u2019re causes in which Millennials have direct personal stakes.(Photo:\u00a0Light Brigading\/flickr\/cc) … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}