Much has been reported in the media about Hillary’s enthusiasm challenge with younger voters. One group that turns out to the polls when there are issues on the ballot they care about is millennials. Climate change is always in the top 3 of concerns for this large voting block and yet Hillary barely mentions it.
In a poll conducted this summer at the Democratic convention, millennials were sampled on which candidate they thought would best address climate change, Bernie Sanders came out on top as might be expected, but it was discovered that they saw virtually no difference between the policy positions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on this key issue that is important them. It certainly exists, but it isn’t registering.
Here is an excerpt from a Newsweek article on this topic:
Forty-four percent say there’s no distinction between the two candidates on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 43 percent say there’s no distinction on protecting air and water.
Maybe that’s in part because Sanders hammered Clinton over her positions on fracking and fossil fuel extraction during the primaries. “On the ground, students just don’t know the difference between the candidates,” Heather Hargreaves, NextGen’s vice president, said at a briefing on the poll.
“It’s not just ignorance,” added Andrew Baumann of Global Strategy Group. “They assume she’s more conservative than she is.” He continued, “I think part of the goal is to educate” voters and reintroduce Clinton.
But if her convention speech was any indication, Clinton isn’t interested in focusing much more on this issue, beyond the usual applause lines.
The question is this; why is Hillary not more passionately addressing the most important issue facing humanity at this time? Does she not think it’s something that the general voting public is interested in enough to bring more people to the polls? If so, she is missing an opportunity to boldly differentiate herself from Trump and the Republicans while attracting more of the liberal and youth vote to her side. It also serves as a vehicle for a perception reset on her image as a dispassionate policy wonk.
Authentic concern for the planet, as evidenced by a willingness to elevate this issue in every stump speech she gives, is one way of letting a certain kind of voter know that the candidate sees the big picture and wants to be part of the active solution to a worldwide problem that will affect future generations. Her status as a grandmother gives it weight and a natural stake in the outcome. As president, she could be elevated to most important voice in the world on this topic. That is the kind of legacy that that survives in history.