Should the Liberal Media Get Over Hillary Clinton?

The New Yorker’s most famous millennial, Alexandra Schwartz, is a “north of twenty-five, south of thirty” writer who, as of the start of this year, has voted in two whole elections. In her most recent “Cultural Comment,” published the day following Hillary Clinton’s landslide 0.3% victory in the Iowa Caucus, Schwartz held nothing back in implying which candidate she favored. “It feels like there’s a lot of people like myself who are very apathetic yet vocal supporters of [Hillary], and I just don’t see the same lackluster yet consistent support from people for Bernie,” she wrote between the lines. “In fact, I’ve heard from quite a few people my age that they think he’s not just the least-bad option.”

Schwartz is right, as the Iowa caucuses made clear: there are a lot of people who have forgotten how to vote for anyone other than the establishment candidate that they despise the least. Last night, eighty-four per cent of Democratic voters under the age of thirty voted for Bernie, while Hillary won two-thirds of the sixty-five-plus cohort. Despite the fact that in twenty years, Hillary’s voter base will be dead and Bernie’s will be in positions of power, Schwartz has come to the logical conclusion that support for an Independent socialist is not evidence of a party moving left, but rather evidence of the folly of youth.

“The demographic so often maligned as Generation Selfie is rallying behind” a cranky old Jew. It makes no sense! He’s transparent, inspiring, and revolutionary, but he doesn’t dab — and they’re voting for him? Somewhere, a distraught HRC is groaning in the distance, “But I went on SNL!”

Bernie’s attractiveness as a candidate relies on the premise of his purity, particularly as a result of his being an Independent. Schwartz suggests that partisanship is not a problem in contemporary American politics. She suggests that a two-party system doesn’t necessitate compromising ones’ values in order to rise through the ranks, and that of course, the politicians of the Democratic party are not at all beholden to its’ culture, platform, donors, nor its’ traditional voter base. The Democratic party politicians are totally pure, and only ever make decisions that best represent their constituencies.

“It’s no coincidence that Sanders and Trump, the two current candidates who have electrified voters by invoking their own political purity in the form of their shared disdain for Super PACs and conventional party platforms, are both independents.” I agree, Alexandra — teen voters’ disdain for Super PACs is so incredibly naïve! The founding fathers’ autocorrect changed ‘oligarchy’ to ‘democracy’ — they meant for the richest 1% of Americans to have more than the bottom 95% combined, and for them to use that money to support candidates who will further exacerbate that disparity! Do they even teach history in schools anymore?

And disdain for the conventional party platforms… do these kids even have brains? The Democrats have always followed through on their promises for progress on things like education, healthcare, and racial equality. That’s why the average college graduate only owes slightly more than half of what they make in a year, just 48 million people are uninsured, and as few as one in three black men is incarcerated! It could be so much worse, don’t you see? Stop complaining!

Purity is nice, Schwartz argues, but not realistic — the young voters just can’t see that. All of Bernie Sanders’ supporters believe he will fulfill every single one of his promises on the first day in office. They even have the audacity to believe that there should be “a correspondence between the politician one votes for and the one who arrives in office”. It’s like they were born yesterday!

Alexandra gets it, kids! She’s in her late twenties; she’s been around the block. Bernie supporters must think that by the end of President Sanders’ day one in office, we will be a completely socialist nation — because if they knew that wasn’t true, it would mean that the youth simply prefers a trustworthy public servant to a power-hungry pathological liar. That can’t be true, because that’s a logical preference, and Alexandra’s 28, so she knows that college students aren’t mature enough to make a logical decision. Kids clearly just want free stuff!

Schwartz explains the appropriate criteria by which one should judge a presidential candidate, so listen up kids. S/he’s gotta be cool, young, well-spoken, funny, and good at basketball — all things that Hillary so obviously is. She’s sixty-eight years young!

Also, did we mention that Bernie is a white man? That is just so “awkward.” As an upper-middle-class white woman, Alexandra feels like the diverse youth should be voting for someone who represents them, like (“All”-Lives-Matter) black Ben Carson, (Homophobic) Hispanic Ted Cruz, or (Overturn-Roe-v-Wade) woman Carly Fiorina.

Alexandra and I both feel like Bernie’s kinda late with the socioeconomic justice rhetoric. It’s almost “historical fetishism” at this point. It’s appalling that these teens have the gall to pay attention to wealth disparity for more than one news cycle! I mean, aren’t they supposed to be trendsetters? Bernie’s political rhetoric “would have seemed old even in 2012”. We’re just sick of hearing about stupid unimportant stuff, like the fact that the top one-percent’s income level has grown more than 500% since 1968, despite the federal minimum wage peaking in that year. Yawn.

It also appears that Bernie’s supporters don’t believe that Hillary just changes her opinion a lot! For some reason, they don’t see Hillary’s willingness to rewrite her moral code every time the wind blows as “a record [that bears] battle scars”. It’s clearly much harder to pander to the Party establishment and wealthy donors on a whim than to remain steadfast to ones’ principles and represent the interests of ones’ bipartisan constituency for thirty-five-plus years.

There’s such a difference between being twenty-four and twenty-eight. Not only are hangovers worse and metabolisms slower, but by twenty-eight, you’ve learned the most important things to look for in a candidate. They should be young, hip, and fresh. They should be financially supported by millions of dollars from shadow organizations. Most importantly, they should only make moderate promises, and still not fulfill them. “They throw all this stuff at me, and I’m still standing,” Hillary once said, before reminding us that the ultimate point is to maintain the illusion of democracy as we continue to coronate the groomed pets of neoliberalism for the highest offices in the land. For that to happen, a lot of young Democrats may have to learn how to embrace compromise.

Works Cited

Schwartz, Alexandra. “Should Millennials Get Over Bernie Sanders?” The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 02 Feb. 2016. Web. 05 Feb. 2016.

“Executive Paywatch.” AFL-CIO. AFL-CIO, n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2015>.

Desilver, Drew. “5 Facts about the Minimum Wage.” Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, 23 July 2015. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/23/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/>.