Different Generations, Different Experiences

Young people experienced a different world.

A repeated theme of this blog is that the most important things happening in the world of politics relating to the 2016 election are sometimes laughably obvious, right in plain sight.  That makes them harder to recognize.

Example, right here.   The reader is looking at a computer screen.   What is now so obvious as to be unnoticed is that the screen is flat, not convex, the way that Cathode Ray Tube screens were for 60 years.  It was too obvious to notice.  More significant is that the reader is looking at the screen surrounded by transparent gas, a mixture of Nitrogen and Oxygen mostly, and the reader's diaphragm is cycling in and out forcing some of that into his or her lungs, keeping the reader alive.   We didn't give the air a second's thought until I mentioned it, but without it we would die in agony in two minutes.  It was of vital importance and utterly obvious, but ignored. 

There are some lessons here for this election for understanding the Sanders vote.   The first is that other people--intelligent, honorable, reasonable people--disagree with each other in large part because of their age.  A meme is bouncing around the internet and I have seen a flurry of emails and blog posts about it involving "Lifecourse" and "The Four Turning.  Here's their website http://www.fourthturning.com   The essential idea is that generations encounter events in very different ways depending on where they are in their own life cycle: youth, young adulthood, maturity, senior.  It attempts to explain attitude toward family, work, politics, consumption, everything.  Including voting.

Young people like Bernie Sanders.  Whats up?    They experienced different things than a boomer experienced.

  

The insight about generations has value and it helps to explain this election.  What is different about young people?    Why are young people not connecting with Hillary?   The final segment of Jessica Winters on The Daily Show was a long interview with Sanders voters on this very subject.  Click here for the funny 5 minute segment

Young people in America discovered Sanders.  Sanders was new and cool.  Sanders wore rumpled clothes and had shaggy hair--heck with old-school convention.  Sanders is, to young people the age of my younger generation--20s and 30s--what Levis and long hair were to me: a mark of independence from my parents.   

Young Crowd in New Hampshire

Young people experienced Hillary as old-hat.   Young people in America did not have my generation's experience of Bill and Hillary Clinton earn their progressive bone fides by being criticized from the intransigent right or doing progressive things.  Young people witnessed with their own eyes the frustration of political gridlock and disfunction in the congress  in the past decade.  Politics did not work.  By contrast,  in my youth I witnessed the power of a transformational election in 1964 and again in post-Watergate 1974 where big majorities in the congress allowed progressive change to happen.   It makes sense that voters my age would think that incremental change can happen and it makes sense that young voters would believe that only breaking up the system can make change.   We witnessed different things.

You say you want a revolution

Timing matters.  Hillary's is terrible.  I watched Bill and Hillary Clinton get rich in the world of political celebrity.   A lot of voters consider it unattractive at best and corrupt at worst, and it's a problem for Hillary.   Hillary's timing was terrible.   After the financial crisis of 2007-09 there was a "turn in the market" which Hillary missed.   Up until 2008 it was acceptable to have cashed in.  Reagan did it.  Sports celebrities do it.  Media starts do it.  People get paid to show up and speak.  Gerald Ford, the sweet dottering 90 year old, was on the board of Citibank and showed up at a conference for Financial Advisors to shake hands and congratulate me back in about 2003. ("Congratulations on your success, Peter."  "Thank you, sir.")  

Hillary needed to have recognized that Wall Street was toxic, but did not.

Wrong side of history

The financial crisis changed the meaning of Wall Street wealth. It was no longer a marker of ability and success; those rich experts were risky fools, not wise men.  Worse, they survived because of privilege, not talent, privilege they paid for by corrupting the political system and getting political favors. They took America hostage and held us up for ransom.  Save the banks or we will crash the economy.  

Hillary missed the cue that the world had changed.  Trump presents himself as a former participant in the corrupt game he now condemns, so he caught the turn.   Sanders has been saying this same message of Wall Street corruption for years and now the wave has caught up with him.    Young people who have come to political consciousness only in the past 8 years have only seen Hillary on the wrong side of history.