The 2016 election is a mess, and hipster millennials need to save the country from baby boomers intent on ruining it.
Or, at least, that’s the gist of P.J. O’Rourke’s argument in The Daily Beast.
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“Please, please help put a regular doofus Republican on the ballot,” O’Rourke wrote.
And a regular doofus is all he wants to prevent something even worse.
“America’s old people have gone completely insane. Look who they’re supporting for president,” O’Rourke continued.
The “American mass psychosis,” after all, has infected the elderly, and “crazy old people are to blame for the presidential front-runners.”
Given the low, low voter turnout for presidential primaries, and that millennials outnumber total 2012 primary voters by more than 60 percent, a mass generational movement could force their parents to choose between two millennial candidates.
As the baby boomers didn’t trust anyone over 30, O’Rourke cautions about poll numbers: “Just pick any regular doofus Republican polling below 13 percent.”
That isn’t likely to happen. Young people remain least likely to vote, and the oldest Americans are the most mobilize voters. Millennials might want driverless cars, but electric scooters take voters to the polling booth.
O’Rourke’s sardonic take has its foundation in truth. Millennials could drive the election, if they turned out. Youth voter turnout was highest in 1972, the first time 18-to-20-year-olds could vote, and it has remained much lower compared with those above age 65, even after increasing since 2000.
Candidates rarely discuss issues millennials care about anyway. When they do, those issues tend to fade after a politician gets their votes. Millennials remain politically inactive at the ballot box, and politicians haven’t been inclined to change their campaign strategies of catering to the aged.
