A Basement Dweller Responds
I am a millennial living in my parents’ basement. I listened to all 49 minutes of leaked audio from Hillary Clinton’s closed door fundraiser. Here are 5 parts of the leak I’d like to respond to.
1. The #BasementDweller Line (24:45)
Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement.
Clinton is generalizing millennials down to “living in their parents basement” in the same way Trump refers to all black people as currently unable to “walk down the street without getting shot”. Understandably, many were offended. It’s a gross generalization to refer to 30% of the workforce as basement dwellers. But that part doesn’t bother me, personally, as much as some the rest.
2. No, Hillary. It’s not “a mindset”. It’s reality.
They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future. I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, “You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don’t believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.” So that is a mindset really affecting their politics.
Clinton shares the fact that young people “do not see much of a future” regardless of whether they went to college or not. And despite stereotyping millennials as basement dwellers earlier, it really does seem like she’s trying to empathize. But then Clinton refers to the political discontent of millennial’s to be the result of a “mindset”.
Millennials, like myself (and plenty of older people too), support real progressive politics, not because of a mindset. But because of REALITY. People cannot find jobs because jobs are not available. And when work does become available, it is predominantly low wage part-time work, that doesn’t provide anything close to financial security.
Clinton, with her $100 million net worth, flying private jets around the country, lives in a completely different reality. She’s too far removed to even begin to truly empathize with the rest of us.
3. She calls Bernie Sanders a liar
We got big goals, but we also believe that the path to progress is one that you just have to get up every day and work on you have to make it your life’s work if you do this full time you have to make it part of your civic responsibility for others and just keep making that case. It’s not as glamorous, it’s not as exciting, it doesn’t promise a revolution. [Bernie Sander’s political revolution] is a false promise. But i don’t think you tell idealistic people particularly young people that they bought into a false promise.
Hillary Clinton is lying. Bernie Sanders made no false promise. Bernie also never suggested change would happen effortlessly overnight as Clinton insinuates. On the contrary, Bernie went out of his way to make clear that corporate control of Washington is so powerful, that he himself was powerless to make the changes he proposed without millions of Americans to standing up and fighting back in a longterm struggle.
4. “Scandanavia, what ever that means” (7:47)
There’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means…
Clinton dismisses Scandinavia (“whatever that means”) and insults Bernie supporters, claiming “half of the people don’t know what that means”. Dear Hillary: It means tuition free college and universal healthcare can happen. Because they already have.
In the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, & Iceland) they have both universal healthcare and tuition free college. It’s also worth noting Iceland did not bail out the banks in 2008 and actually jailed their criminal banking executives. So that can happen too!
5. Flint Water Crisis (12:53)
The water was so toxic, so contaminated with lead, that the General Motors plant in Flint stopped using it because it was corroding the engines. [some of the crowd laughs]
Good for Hillary to point this out. I only note this part because of the fact that some in Clinton’s elite fundraising crowd reacted to this by laughing hysterically. That is beyond disturbing.
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