Why Are Millennials So Damn Far to the Left?

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Karl Stomberg
Jul 21, 2017 · 5 min read

In a functional justice system, the guilty are reprimanded and the innocent are protected. But you wouldn’t be able to tell that was the case if you’ve looked at the news for the past ten years.


People were shocked last year when a poll was released showing that . They wondered how such an enormous portion of the population could reject something that is seen as one of the foundational characteristics of American democracy. To really understand how this happened, you have to start in 2007–8.

After decades of unsustainable and questionable economic growth punctuated by brief recessions, the global economy faced a crisis with the collapse of the sub-primate mortgage market. To put it simply, mortgage companies had been selling mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and then sold investments in these mortgages to people all throughout the world of finance. When these investments inevitably collapsed, so did a good portion of the global economy.

In 2007, when this collapse started to take place, someone who is 29 today was just 19, starting in college or in their career. This is an important period in one’s life, as it shapes how one views the ‘adult world’ as compared do the ‘kid world’ which was their reality beforehand. So in 2007, a whole new generation was growing up into a world that had just been turned upside down by the economic status quo.


Perhaps things could’ve gone differently if Wall Street was handled more harshly, but it wasn’t. Not a single banker went to jail for destroying the global financial system, and the only thing that came out of it were the modest reforms of the Dodd-Frank bill. It’s hard to be too angry with Barack Obama and the others who brought this action; they believed if they punished the financial industry, then there would be no recovery whatsoever. However, what they did in this process was show a generation that if you have enough money, the justice system doesn’t apply to you.

Over the next eight years, millennials were growing older and building their worldviews. Throughout this entire time, it never seemed like there was anything that was working as it should. The economy moved forward at a sluggish pace, leaving jobs rare and wages low for many who were just starting out. Social unrest swept across the country in response to police shootings, starting with Trayvon Martin and expanding with Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless others.

The most striking thing about all of this was how little anyone seemed to be doing to fix it. Obama had only been able to do a limited amount in his first term, and when Republicans came in to power in the House and Senate, they did little else to try to fix things. Therefore, if you only became politically and worldly aware past 2008, with your childhood in the Bush administration, you have lived your entire life in a world where the political and economic systems of America are completely defunct.

This is an extremely bleak situation to be growing up and maturing in. Throughout your life, you read the news and numbers which say that the days of America are in the past, and it’s all downhill from here. You struggle to find a job that pays well while student loans lock you in debt for decades. You see a government that does nothing to fix any of this, despite constant pleas and promises. Meanwhile, older people constantly write about your generation as entitled and bratty, wanting it all while giving nothing in return. When one grows up in a situation like this, it is hard to not look for alternatives.


In past generations, when someone turned towards socialism in the United States, they were shut down immediately. From 1945 to 1991, the Soviet Union was our biggest adversary by far, and therefore anything associated with the Soviet Union, especially socialism, was bad and un-American. With the USSR gone, that taboo no longer exists to nearly the extent that it did for most of the 20th century. This allowed millennials to look back throughout history to find a solution to a problem similar to their own.

What they found was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. In response to the greatest economic downturn in all of American history, FDR implemented the largest series of left-wing reforms in American history. He invented the modern welfare state, and implemented a variety of programs which directly addressed problems with strong government action. Between this and World War II, the United States went from the bottom of the barrel to the top of the world in a matter of 13 years. In a reality where we once again seem to be at the bottom of the barrel, the idea of the New Deal programs appeal to a generation which went through the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

However, neither party offers anything of that magnitude in modern day politics. The Republican Party has tacked ever rightwards, and the rise of the Clinton administration left the Democratic Party afraid to outright support government programs at the risk of seeming too hard on tax-payers. Therefore, without any existing political way to solve their problems, people began to create their own. Occupy Wall Street was one of the largest economic protests in recent history, though it eventually faded into obscurity due to poor leadership. Bernie Sanders’ candidacy didn’t make any sense on paper, but his ability to offer a real alternative to the two-party consensus on basic capitalism and to hearken back to the days of the New Deal excited many young people, of whom he won 70%.


Millennials are now the largest registered voting bloc in America, though they they still lack a good deal of political power due to the pattern of low voter turnout among young people. However, this is by no means a permanent situation, even in the short term. In the snap general election in Britain back in June, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn surprised everyone by driving up youth turnout and forcing a deal between the Conservative party and the far-right DUP in order to form a governing coalition. This was shortly after pundits had predicted Labour’s death.

These turnarounds can happen quickly when people tap into the anxiety of a generation. FDR did it with the left in 1932, Nixon did it with the right in 1968, and it’s up to another politician to do it again in 2020. The longer change is held up, the more dramatic it will be when it comes.

Your Morning Peanuts

Taking a trip down the political rabbit hole

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Karl Stomberg

Written by

Somehow idealistic and cynical at the same time

Your Morning Peanuts

Taking a trip down the political rabbit hole

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