What’s wrong with the economy today? According to Bill Clinton, it’s the people who were in high school when the housing market crashed.
“A lot of young people feel like they’ve played by the rules, went to school, they’re gonna graduate with debt they can’t repay, or they’ve already graduated with debt they can’t repay, and they may not ever get to do what they really wanted to do with their lives,” Clinton said. ...
“We got our jobs back in seven and a half years,” Clinton said, before coming back around to name the slackers in the economic equation.
“If all the young people who claim to be disillusioned now had voted in 2010, we wouldn’t have lost the Congress, and we’d probably have our incomes back,” he said.
The Secretary of Explaining Stuff has turned into the Secretary of Get Off My Lawn and he has young voters in his crosshairs. Where to start?
First, in 2010, six years ago, millions of Millenials who are voting today were not yet eligible.
Second, in 2010, Congressional Democrats writ large decided to run as GOP-Lite centrists, and as far as they could from the Obamacare law they had just all voted on a few short months prior. Millenials, which are the most liberal generation since the reliably-Democratic Greatest, will not be inspired by that. Turnout is a two-way street: the voter needs to show up, yes, but the candidate has to give them a reason to. The DNC/DCCC/DSCC strategy that year was designed to appeal to centrist older voters, and it was an epic fail at that.
Third, the economy Millenials graduated into sucks in large part thanks to, well, you Bill. Specifically, the free trade deals you signed off on -- NAFTA and permanent normal trade relations with China --have cost millions of good paying manufacturing jobs, and the financial market deregulation you signed off on led directly to the 2008 financial crisis that cost millions of people their jobs, homes and pensions. As for “getting incomes back”, wage growth in this country went to shit before any of the Millenials were born.
Boomers had the good fortune of growing up in a time of full employment, strong manufacturing sector, wage growth tied to productivity, free college in some states and a minimum wage of over $10 adjusted for inflation. If that late 1960s minimum wage kept up with productivity, it would be $18 now. The NASDAQ bubble propping up your presidency might fool the blue hairs at your rallies as evidence of the wisdom of business-friendly DLC centrism, but it was a mirage and the informed voter knows it. (Hint: Millenials are more informed than your cohorts.)
Just a thought, Bill. Maybe if Democrats learn that this generation will reward progressives discriminately, our candidates won’t be so quick to jump in bed with corporations and Wall Street. But then your legacy might need to be reexamined.