During a recent stump speech for Hillary Clinton, former president and Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton made what can only be called an interesting assertion – that the reason “millennials” are so angry during this election is because we didn’t vote in the 2010 election. Specifically, he blames this lack of votes for Congress and the current economic situation saying, “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.”
While, I and other millennials do enjoy being given this large amount of power (we’re quite vain, in case you hadn’t heard) Clinton’s statement is actually not correct. First of all, we need to define who Clinton is referring to in his speech, who exactly constitutes as a millennial is actually a very contested point but the mostly widely used definition is the Strauss and Howe one which defines millennials as those born between 1982 and 2004. But this is not who Clinton is referring to or at least he’s not referring to everyone in that demographic rather, he is referring to the under 30 demographic (18-29 years old) which up to this point has been very vocal about supporting Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.
Now looking at this group what Bill Clinton needs to realize is that in 2010, which was 6 years ago, people who are now between 18 and 29 were between 12 and 23. So the reason that many millennials didn’t vote was because most of us couldn’t. Let’s forget about those of us who couldn’t vote in 2010 and think about the ones who could, they are still not responsible for our current economic problems. The economic problems that we are currently facing have been a long time coming they have been forming from a time when we were either very young or not yet born.
The reason why we are “disillusioned” is not just because of Congress and an election that happened 6 years ago, we’ve had a bad Congress before and probably will again. The real reason is that we feel stuck in a system that has disappointed us time and time again, a system which we had no role in creating but were rather born into. Now, we are trying to change this system which we won’t be able to do if we spend our time just focusing on the past and thinking about what could’ve been.
I agree with Clinton that more people, not just millennials, should vote but blaming people for something they aren’t really responsible for is not a good way to encourage them to vote. It’s also not a good way to get them to vote for the candidate you’re stumping for.
