Just End It Already
“Giant Meteor 2016: Just End It Already.” It’s the slogan for a generation.
Earlier in June, a Public Policy Polling survey of 853 actual, real-life, registered voters, found that “Giant Meteor” was pulling in about 13% of the vote and almost 30% of voters who identified as independents. Giant Meteor also has bumper stickers and multiple twitter accounts that, with a grim smile, support a candidate “ready to make an impact.” Other alternative candidates include Megatron and “Everybody Sucks 2016.” With the way things are going, the next dark horse candidate may be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
All in good fun, right? A cataclysmic tinge shades our election; where to turn but dark humor? The Cold War had Dr. Strangelove. We have Giant Meteor 2016.
This feeling resonates especially with millennials who, if they were born after 1986, have never voted in a presidential election that did not offer Barack Obama as the candidate of hope and change. Instead, they are faced with what many view as a less savory field that features Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
To be clear, millennials are still polling for Clinton, well over Trump. A recent poll by The Morning Consult shows that she leads him, 47 to 30, in registered voters between 18–29. Less white, more educated, more averse to race-baiting, and more progressive, most millennials have turned away from Trump.
But especially in light of the Democratic National Committee email leaks, and allegations of favoritism against Bernie Sanders during the primary process, these voters are torn.
They are torn between anti-establishment sentiment and distaste for the GOP’s values, especially as they are espoused by Trump. For voters my age, who weren’t around to experience the backlash of the Democratic establishment against the Clintons — who were viewed as outsiders from the South in the 90s — it is difficult to imagine Hillary Clinton as anything but the epitome of the Democratic establishment.
Where does this push millennials? Apathy and third parties. It’s often not a matter of issues. Many who disagree strongly with Gary Johnson’s and Jill Stein’s policies would rather vote third party than for someone they feel is corrupt, or even just part of the establishment. “Better to burn it all down,” some say. And who better a candidate than Giant Meteor 2016? (Some might say Donald Trump.)
It’s important to understand that this apathy isn’t just the customary apathy of uninterested young voters, but an apathy created by an election season full of ominous prospects. Trump has seen to that, by making his claims of a society on the verge of apocalypse front and center of his campaign:
“Our Convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.”
For Hillary Clinton and her surrogates, it seems impossible to avoid this fatalistic arena. To contend with Trump, to expose his hateful rhetoric, one must not only gaze into, but enter the abyss. To criticize his proposed ban on Muslims is not simply to have a discussion of policy, but to expose intolerance. Remaining positive while wading through Trump’s poisonous rhetoric is difficult to say the least.
It is a Catch-22 of the highest consequence. Trump must be called out on his un-American, hateful stances; to do so means furthering the bleakness of the 2016 election, playing right into the claim that our nation is in crisis.
The last time the nation was this imperiled, it was plunging headfirst into a recession that would define the 2008 election. Perhaps 2008 can be of some guidance. Then, Obama won by almost 10 million votes on the back of a campaign defined by a vague, hopeful mantra: “Yes we can.” Recalcitrant Republicans may not have seen that as a mandate, but the country and the rest of the world surely did. It was a rebuke of Bush-era swaggering, a return to a more thoughtful, inclusive dialogue. For many, young voters, it was a return to hope.
This election cycle, Donald Trump’s slogan has been “Make America Great Again” — a small bit of appropriation from Ronald Reagan’s not entirely dissimilar “Let’s Make America Great Again” slogan in 1980. During the Republican National Convention, Melania Trump helped herself to a few words from Michelle Obama.
Bridge-building rhetoric isn’t enough. Perhaps the time has come for Hillary Clinton to do some borrowing of her own. When she takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, she could take a leaf from the Trumps’ book:
“Yes we can, again!”
(Sí se puede volver)