USA Today's Young Voters Aren't Warming up to Biden, They Know it Means Trump Could Win Again
My first problem with this piece is that it comes from USA Today, which is not really a high quality piece of journalistic achievement. Like much of the rest of the mainstream media these days, it doesn't have some of the characteristics good newspaper journalism once had. Like most other sources of news that have become electronic, it's bland, frequently inaccurate and the articles and research appear to be done by students who got through college with a journalism major or minor and a C+ GPA. Nor is USA Today as unbiased and neutral when it comes to politics as they should be as a national news source.
But after reading this, I am genuinely troubled by the content. It almost seems to me that the subjects of the article are not real people, they are made up media images who seem to be incredibly uninformed, for the typical political category they self-describe, and for what has appeared to be typical for their age and educational level. My first question goes to the issue of believability. Are these people really representative of their whole demographic, or are they just a few exceptions the reporter found to fit his narrative?
Where They're Getting The News
I can't believe that anyone who has observed American politics since 2016, and particularly over the course of the last year, does not know the danger Trump poses to American democracy. And yet the members of the younger generation who are the subject of this particular piece do not have a realistic, factual picture of all of the politics involved and are not getting reliable, credible news from accurate sources. And that's one of the reasons they have come up with some of the perceptions they have, and why their answers to questions seem to be so uninformed. What information they have is not from a source following journalistic standards and including all the information, it's short sound bytes from video clips made by people who have become content creators in order to make money. Misinformation by these sources is rampant, because there is literally no one checking the facts, and they are more concerned with the presentation and the number of hits it will get than they are with any actual interest in the subject matter.
This should tell Democrats who are in charge of the 2024 campaigns not only where they should be targeting their narrative, but how they should be doing it. We have a "younger" audience who has reacted strongly to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, who is highly sympathetic to the Palestinians and Gaza and has no idea about the history of that conflict, but knows little about the Ukrainians and their struggle to save their democracy, who realizes they are spending more at the gas pump and grocery store but have no idea why, but think the President somehow has complete control over that.
This younger generation doesn't do a lot of reading. Most of the information they receive comes to them in 60 to 90 second segments via video. They do not have a lot of the background information they need to process an event and determine what it means and how it affects them. And, though I hate to say this, as an educator it is something I have observed over the 35 years of my career, our schools no longer teach critical thinking skills, and our focus on technical skills in mathematics and science has gutted social studies instruction, to the point where students cannot explain the difference between democracy and autocracy, or between a constitutional democracy and a fascist dictatorship.
And there are few sources of information from which they get their information that abide by any kind of journalistic standards. The qualifications for the presenters are that they are good looking, photogenic, entertaining and flashy dressers, not that they value accuracy, integrity or avoiding bias. And whatever they have to say needs to be done in 90 seconds or less, or they lose the attention of the audience.
Tic Toc and Instagram are not the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, or the NBC Evening News. And they're not even close to being MSNBC. But they're the sources of information for a lot of Americans under 35 who always have their phone out looking at the screen. Use them!
Communicating the Important Issues and the Significance of Participating in an Election
The most important issue in this coming election is the preservation of American Constitutional Democracy. President Biden has a long, long list of outstanding achievements and accomplishments during his first term in office, impressive by any political standard, and particularly impressive in the politically polarized atmosphere that now exists.
Rush Limbaugh is dead, but he left a lasting mark on American politics by his insistence that the conservative right should always demand its way and make it impossible for liberals to get anything by simply refusing to negotiate and make deals. It means they must deprive themselves of achieving some of their own agenda, but those things are no longer as important to them as preventing liberals from having freedom. The only way that conservatives can achieve their goal is if moderate to liberal voters decide to stay home on election day.
I agree with those political strategists who are advising the Biden campaign to hit hard on what will happen if Trump is elected. Keep the big issues, the ones that are helping Democrats win elections at all levels, right up there at the top, and let voters, especially younger voters know, that if Trump wins, they lose big on the one or two things on which they have focused their interest. It's not the time to provide a civics lesson to try and help people catch up to what they missed about government and the constitution in school. It is time to point out the disaster they would be facing, when it comes to things that are important to them, if Trump wins.
Everything that black voters have fought for since the civil rights movement began goes away if Trump wins. There is no reason for any Black voter to stay home and not vote, to vote third party, or expecially to vote for Trump. For Trump and his MAGA base, there is no room for Latinos in their vision of America's future. They believe all Latinos, even those who were born and raised in this country, are part of their ridiculous "replacement theory". A Latino voter who votes for Trump, or for a third party candidate, is voting against their own interest and their own freedom. The same goes for Asian voters, as well as any other racial or ethnic minority in America. Voting for Trump is voting against your own freedom.
That also applies to younger voters. Voting third party is voting for Trump and voting for Trump is voting against all of those interests that they put at the top of their list, particularly the anti-war, anti-violence stand that most of them take. It is voting against a woman's right to control her own health care and her own body. It is voting against every known higher educational opportunity and career advancement ladder available. It is voting against protecting free and fair elections.
If conservatives want to play on the field with a "winner take all" attitude, then Democrats have to be the winners, and we have to be committed to take it all when we win. This election has to send a clear message, which means that Biden needs a second term and the Democrats need a big enough majority in Congress to put things in place that eliminate the possibility of our rights being taken away by a right wing, conservative, Christian nationalist dictatorship. And if that's not what the younger voters in this country want, then they need to be told, in no uncertain terms, that's what they're going to get if they don't show up in November, and support President Biden.
Failing to vote, voting third party, or voting for Trump is voting against America and the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
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