When Hillary Clinton declared “I’m trying to figure out how to get them to have ‘Pokémon Go’ to the polls!” it was cringe inducing, but was also – astonishingly – not the worst “youth vote outreach” attempt seen from Team Clinton this election season.
And while polls continue to suggest Clinton will fare better with young voters than Donald Trump, her attempts at winning over younger voters remain absurdly comical and are missing the thing that matters most: authenticity.
If it hasn’t already invaded your home: “Pokémon Go,” a sort of scavenger hunt game for the younger smartphone set, induces players to wander about their communities in search of fictional cartoon creatures. It quickly approached the number of Daily Active Users (a key metric for mobile apps) seen by services like Twitter, and wise marketers quickly picked up on the potential of the game to promote businesses.
Certainly, the idea of using a game with the reach and appeal of “Pokémon Go” to encourage people to get out and show up at a particular place and time solves a pretty key political issue: Getting people out to rallies, and out to vote. As a tactic, it’s not terrible.
But to watch the clip of Secretary Clinton making her “Pokemon Go to the polls” joke screams of trying too hard. It’s certainly not the only time that Team Clinton has ham-fistedly tried to reach “the kids.
My personal favorite? Last August, during the rise of Bernie Sanders’ serious challenge to her coronation as Democratic nominee, Team Clinton tweeted out “How does your student loan debt make you feel? Tell us in 3 emojis or less.” Do many young voters want more political leaders to discuss the issue of college affordability? Yes. Do they want to be condescended to with absolute sillyhood that reduces a serious issue into “snake poop thumbs-down”? No.
Or take “Chillary Clinton,” a short video posted on Snapchat featuring a few seconds of a beverage in a blue koozie that says “More like Chillary Clinton, amirite?” and then is followed by Clinton herself, looking into the phone saying, “I’m just chillin’ in Cedar Rapids!” Iowa millennials were no doubt wooed in droves.
This penchant for trying too hard to be “cool for the kids” has been great fodder for “Saturday Night Live,” which has featured Kate McKinnon’s incredible Clinton character serenading a table of “stereotypical millennials” with a rendition of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”
To Clinton’s credit: She’s trying. Too hard, and with poor execution, oh yes. But she’s trying. That’s more than can be said for an awful lot of political candidates.
But consider the two political leaders of the last few years who have won over younger voters in their own party’s primaries: Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul. Despite “chillin’ in Cedar Rapids,” Clinton garnered only 14 percent of caucusgoers under age 30, while Sanders won 84 percent. Sanders, like Clinton, is hardly a suave, charismatic figure. Very little about Sanders radiates “young, fresh and cool.” Similarly, Ron Paul won over a sizable portion of the Republican youth vote in 2012 without needing to exude youth or connection with pop culture.
The thing that makes a Sanders or a Paul “cool” isn’t that they listen to Beyoncé (they probably don’t) or play “Pokémon Go” (can you even imagine?): it’s that they are who they say they are.
Consider a seemingly silly recent example from the realm of pop culture: Taylor Swift. I’ve long half-jokingly pointed to Swift when asked who politicians ought to learn from to connect with a new generation; she wins legions of fans by giving the impression of simply “being herself” and “being real.” Of course, this week’s bizarre dust up with Kim Kardashian (I’ll spare you the details) threatens to undercut that by trying to expose Swift as calculating and phony – like, say, a typical politician – and someone who says one thing in private and another in public. Swift losing her authenticity may ultimately be much more of a problem for her career than would releasing a single that bombs.
Authenticity is key. When you have it, you’re Sanders or Paul. When you don’t, you get 14 percent of the youth vote in your primary in Iowa.
Most voters are sick of politicians who say one thing in public and another thing in private. Young voters can sense a phony pandering attempt a mile away. The Republican convention this week in Cleveland is distressingly unlikely to make many overtures to young Americans; it will not require rocket science for the Clinton team to defeat Trump with this group. But every bungled or “trying-too-hard” attempt to lock down the youth vote is more likely to lead to eye rolls than actual votes.
To win with young voters, Clinton should simply stop trying to make “Chillary” happen.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for the Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
