Both These Vice Presidential Picks Say One Thing: Nobody Gives a Shit About Millennials

It’s hard not to notice how hard both presidential candidates are trying to connect with America’s younger voters. We see Donald Trump posting on Facebook about as often as he breathes. We see Hillary Clinton dabbing on the Ellen Show and holding rallies at Pokestops. And we see both their cringe-worthy Twitter accounts.

But in this myriad of “hip-ness”, both these campaigns fail to accommodate for one fact: millennials actually care about politics! We’re not going to cast our votes based on a meme or a viral video. We’re going to cast them based on policies, track records, and speeches. And it’s important to note that both candidates desperately need our vote.

For the first time, the upcoming presidential election is predicted to have as many millennials voters (those aged 18–35) as baby-boomer voters (those aged 52–70). And with polls placing both candidates neck-in-neck with one another, whichever one can win the millennial vote can be the one that moves into the White House this January.

But if that’s the case, why does it seem like neither Clinton nor Trump are making a more active effort to consider the political rhetoric that millennials want in a candidate?

Compared to other generations alive today, millennials are the least conforming to the two-party system. As many as 50% of millennial voters identify as independent. They, as a whole, tend to doubt establishment politics, and unlike older voters, they don’t vote based solely on political party. Millennials, more than anything, want candidates who place candor over political ambiguity and action over diplomacy.

It’s easy to see that Hillary Clinton does not fit that definition, which has made winning the millennial vote an uphill battle for her. During the primary race, most Democrat millennials backed Bernie Sanders because they found Clinton’s track record corrupt, her foreign policy imperialistic, and her politics ingenuine. Now, even after Sanders has endorsed Clinton, many former Bernie supporters still refuse to cast a vote for Clinton. Social media trends like “Bernie or Bust” and hashtags like #Iwillneverstandwithher show the resistance millennials, even the most liberal ones, show when it comes to supporting the Democratic candidate.

So when it came time for Hillary Clinton to pick her running mate, she had a golden opportunity to win over the former Bernie supporters, to bridge the gap between the older liberals that support her and the younger ones that don’t. A bridge that could win her the election.

All she had to do was find someone with more left-leaning ideas and less involvement in the political establishment, which millennials often associate with political corruption. Easy enough, right?

Enter Tim Kaine, the exact opposite of that definition. Clinton’s new running mate is a public supporter of the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, a defender of looser regulations on banks, and was once an opponent of abortion. Oh yeah, and he was once chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

It’s clear the Kaine’s selection as Clinton’s vice president was not to win over millennial voters, but to appease more moderate Democrats who were initially uncomfortable with voting for her and her political record. Kaine’s reinforces Clinton’s moderate policies while convincing older, more traditional voters that they would rather vote for the corruption of Clinton than for the uncertainty of Trump.