In 2012, President Obama captured a historic majority of millennials, propelling him to a second term in the White House. In fact, if voting had started at age 30, Mitt Romney would be our president today. This means that our generation had the power to reverse the decision that the rest of the electorate made.
Hillary Clinton has been unable to repeat that success starting with the Democratic primaries. In some states that Clinton eventually won, her opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, walked away with more than 80 percent of voters under the age of 30. These problems have continued in the general election as her lead over Republican presidential rival Donald Trump fell from 24 points in late August to just 5 points this month in Quinnipiac surveys.
So if you want to know why all of the sudden Clinton is writing a column on Mic and giving a speech about millennials this week — the proof is in the polling.
Fifty days from the election, Hillary is trying to butter up to millennials, writing about all the “great lessons” she’s learned from our generation.
So, as she attempts to tell us what she’s learned from our generation, I’d like to tell Hillary Clinton what her old way of thinking has taught our generation: that there’s one set of standards for ordinary Americans and another set for the powerful and connected. We know it’s well past time to throw that model out.
Just look at what we’ve seen from Secretary Clinton this campaign.
There’s the Democratic National Committee, stacked with allies and cronies, perfectly positioned to secure your primary victory at whatever cost. And then there’s the grassroots Democratic voters, whose choices were repeatedly undermined and marginalized throughout the process.
There’s powerful foreign contributors to the Clinton Foundation, donating millions for special access to then-Secretary of State Clinton, and then there’s the citizens of those same countries oppressed by homophobic and misogynistic regimes.
There are the elite donors gathered at a high-dollar event in South Carolina to hear Hillary Clinton’s record on criminal justice reform, and then there’s the young activist (a paying attendee), who was forcibly removed from the room for simply asking Clinton to answer for past descriptions of young African American males as “super predators.”
There is $48.5 million in campaign contributions she’s received from hedge funds and $21 million she accepted in speaking fees from firms like Goldman Sachs (the transcripts from which she refuses to release), and then there are the promises made to Americans along the campaign trail in flyover states about getting tough on Wall Street.
There’s the mistreatment of sexual assault victims, who “should be believed” — unless that’s politically inconvenient for Mrs. Clinton.
There’s the insular Clinton staff, who took great pains to set up a private and unsecured email server in her home during her time at the State Department in order to get around the transparency laws we know are needed to hold politicians accountable. The FBI concluded that she recklessly and knowingly mishandled classified information. Contrast her experience with the lower level intelligence officials, who mistakenly downloaded less critical information on personal devices. They’re serving prison sentences because their last name isn’t Clinton.
You know why politicians behave that way? To cover up the ugly truth. Hillary’s truth is this: She has to hide the ball, has to demonize her opponents, has to ask us to believe people who have a different ideology than hers belong in a “basket of deplorables”.
She has to behave this way because if she let us judge her on her proposals, she’d lose in a landslide.
In her op-ed to millennials, Clinton tells us that we are “the most open, diverse and entrepreneurial generation in our country’s history.” That’s true — but her response to it couldn’t be more off base.
She fails to understand the root cause of the barriers that face young voters. Not a single challenge she laments needs to be there. They’re artificial barriers, put in place because people just like Hillary are still trying to govern this new economy, and the new generation that created it, the old way.
We don’t accept the old way of doing things.
We’re not looking for one-size-fits-all solutions, delivered by those at the top, many of whom have a personal stake in the rigged Washington game.
Hillary says she listened to millennials and learned from us. Truth is, millennials have listened to Hillary, too. And we’ve learned all we need to know.
Alex Smith is the national chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
