You listen, you can hear the rumbling of an America on the verge of a tectonic shift. Two decades into the 21st century, U.S. politics is still defined by leaders who are very much of the 20th.
Donald Trump is the oldest first-term President in the country’s history, elected by overwhelmingly older white voters. Of the 23 members of his Cabinet, all but four are white and male, and many are fast approaching retirement age or are well past it. Staffers at the Commerce Department told Politico there is only a small window every day when 82-year-old Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is able to “focus and pay attention and not fall asleep.” Trump’s other allies are just as geriatric: his 75-year-old lawyer Rudy Giuliani is forever accidentally butt-dialing reporters on his cell phone, the 77-year-old Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was already eligible for Social Security when Facebook went mainstream in 2004, and 86-year-old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley was born well before the 1938 invention of the chocolate--chip cookie. It’s not just Republicans, of course: Speaker of the House Nancy -Pelosi (79) and two of the top Democratic presidential -candidates—Joe Biden (77) and Bernie Sanders (78)—were born before the invention of either the polio vaccine or the bikini.
But as Washington fades into shades of white and gray, young people across the country—the most diverse American generations in -history—are beginning to rise. They’re running small cities and college towns. They’re gaining seats in Congress. And one millennial, Pete Buttigieg (37), is in the top tier of the 2020 Democratic primary.
I spent the past three years traveling around the country meeting dozens of millennial politicians who are already in the process of changing how this country is run. I interviewed mayors and city council members, Democrats like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Lauren Underwood and Republicans like Representatives Elise Stefanik and Dan Crenshaw. The result is my upcoming book, The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America. I set out to learn what millennials believe and why, and I ended up with a picture of what America will look like when they eventually—and inevitably—replace the old guard currently in charge.
this much we know: the ascendance of the millennial generation will profoundly shape the future of this country. Born in the years 1981 to 1996, these young people are already the largest living generation and the largest age group in the workforce, and they will soon eclipse their parents as the biggest bloc of eligible voters. Their startups have revolutionized the economy, their tastes have shifted the culture, and their enormous appetite for social media has transformed human interaction. Politics is just the next arena ripe for disruption. And disrupt they will. Millennials’ political attitudes are markedly different from their parents’—and it’s not just because they’re young. Conventional wisdom may have it that the youth are always liberal and turn conservative as they age. But that’s not quite true. While variables like geography and religion, and life events like having kids or buying a home, still influence how people vote, their overall political values are highly determined by the unique political climate of their early adulthood. In several studies, Columbia political scientist Andrew Gelman and data scientist Yair Ghitza found that people’s political experiences from ages 14 to 24 have a significant impact on their lifelong attitudes. “It’s much more about cohort than age,” Gelman says. “One way of understanding these up and down trend lines over the decades is asking: What happened when people were young?”
Other research has found that popular Presidents tend to attract young people to their party, while unpopular Presidents repel them. One 2012 Pew study found that those who turned 18 when the unpopular Richard Nixon was President tended to vote for Barack Obama, while those who turned 18 during the prosperous Ronald Reagan years tended to vote for Mitt Romney. In other words, these voters’ first political experiences shaped how they voted and thought three decades later.
This is not great news for the GOP. Consider most millennials’ experience in adulthood so far: the oldest of this cohort came of age during the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush, bearing witness to his disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bulk of millennials cast their first presidential vote for the youthful and exciting Obama, while the youngest are coming of age under Trump, the least popular and most scandal-ridden Republican President in decades. Those experiences are defining the politics of a generation. By 2018, just 12% of millennials held consistently or mostly conservative views, while 57% expressed consistently or mostly liberal views. In the 2018 midterms, millennials voted 2 to 1 for House Democratic candidates.
age, of course, does not diminish political relevance. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (86) has become an improbable cult figure among young women, Pelosi is overseeing Trump’s impeachment, and the late Republican Senator John McCain was an octogenarian when he cast the decisive vote to protect the Affordable Care Act. And young voters don’t necessarily favor young leaders: Sanders’ popularity among millennials has been the hallmark of his two presidential bids, while Buttigieg is more popular with seniors than with his peers.
But in general, millennials think differently than their parents. Largely because of their profoundly different experiences coming of age in America, they approach 21st century problems with a new perspective. While the stock market today is good and unemployment is down, millennials as a whole don’t feel prosperous. They entered adulthood with less wealth, less stability and less financial security than their baby-boomer parents. A rising S&P index doesn’t resonate with a generation that has nothing to invest.
While baby boomers came of age at a time when college was affordable and homeownership was accessible, most millennials graduated into the financial crisis, burdened by student debt and skyrocketing costs for everything from housing to child care. Despite a recession in the early 1980s, many boomers flourished economically, finding full-time jobs at corporations with generous benefits. Many millennials, in contrast, have struggled to find toeholds in the gig economy, earning erratic pay with unpredictable hours and no benefits. While boomers came of age in a period defined by greed-is-good capitalism, Vietnam and Watergate, millennials came of age in a period defined by unbridled corporate power and a Wall Street that had been allowed to run amok. Many boomers saw government as the problem; many millennials tend to see financial regulations and safety nets as a means of preventing the next catastrophe. Boomers came of age thinking of climate change as an abstract scientific idea; millennials see it as an existential threat. Boomers hear “socialism” and think of the USSR; millennials hear “socialism” and think of universal health care.
The rising class of young leaders were shaped by these forces. Some, like Buttigieg and Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others, like Democratic Representatives Haley Stevens of Michigan and Underwood of Illinois, worked in the Obama Administration. After bearing witness to their generation’s financial struggles, activist-organizers like Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, joined the Sanders coalition to demand progressive reforms on education, health care and climate change.
This new generation is already making itself heard. Millennial representation in Congress increased fourfold in the 2018 midterms, overwhelmingly on the Democratic side. Young progressives have successfully shaped the political debate for Democrats, making student debt relief, Medicare for All and a Green New Deal central issues. If Buttigieg wins the primary, he will be the first millennial nominee; if Sanders or Warren does, it will be because of young voters’ support.
Roughly 16 million young Americans will have turned 18 in the years 2016 to 2020, a cohort big enough to permanently shape electoral politics. Even if Democrats lose in 2020, the trend lines are clear. It may take two years, or five years, or 10, but the boomers who run Washington today won’t be around forever. That rumbling you hear is the youth on the rise.
Alter’s book, The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For, will be published Feb. 18