Delaney Vandergrift, social impact strategist at Southern Vision Alliance details the failings of the Democratic Party and it’s failure to show up for young people.
This article is a part of Left Out: The Missing Election narratives, a collection of unreported histories by publications inside of the Movement Media Alliance.
On May 6, 2008, my mom and I walked hand in hand into Reynolds Coliseum to see Sen. Barack Obama speak at his campaign rally in Raleigh, N.C. Just two months shy of my 11th birthday, I didn’t recognize the magnitude of that night. He had just won the North Carolina primary and would go on to win the 2008 presidential election with a record 66% of the youth vote, winning again with 60% of the youth vote in 2012.
Obama offered this to the crowd at that 2008 rally: “The man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job but can’t even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one—he can’t afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that’s not only keeping gas at record prices but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet in the process. … He needs us to take a permanent holiday from our oil addiction by making the automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future. That’s the change we need. And that’s why I’m running for President.”
Young people believed in Obama and, more importantly, young people believed the Democratic Party was going to be the vehicle to usher in a transformation of the political status quo.
Since then, the Democratic Party has had a stranglehold on the youth vote despite its political failures and broken promises—until 2024, when the Democratic Party had the worst performance with the youth vote since then Senator John Kerry ran for president in 2004. Many young voters are starting to realize that not only is the Democratic Party squarely in the political center (and even right of center, in some cases), but it is beholden to the same donor class as the Republican Party and uninterested in the fundamental changes young voters believe in.
In a poll conducted by the Environmental Voter Project, 40% of young voters said they will only support candidates who prioritize climate change—a “deal-breaker” issue. The Democratic Party has taken the lead on this issue, and the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 was a giant win for the Democratic Party and for climate advocates across the country. Still, the policy had glaring racial justice gaps, as Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of the architects of the Green New Deal, noted in an article in Hammer & Hope: “The IRA required the federal government to reopen public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas lease sales, [which] will almost certainly increase pollution in neighboring Black communities. … The IRA tax credits also prioritize homeowners, a class that is 75% white, and exclude renters, who are much more likely to be young, Black or Latino, or poor.”
And even after passing historic climate legislation, the Democratic Party has been a partner in exacerbating climate catastrophe. Average annual crude oil production hit a record high of 12.9 million barrels a day under Biden in 2023, breaking a record set in 2019 under Trump, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. So, while it is clear to Gen Z that the Republican Party is more interested in climate denialism than preserving a habitable planet for generations to come, the inaction of the Democratic Party is also clear. While the party is seemingly spearheading climate action, it refuses to declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act, despite President Joe Biden’s ability to do so. The absence of that political will is the death of the Democratic Party.
Thankfully for the Democrats, one of the leading issues that was the focus of the youth vote this year was, instead, abortion. The Democratic Party has been the party of “the right to choose” since Gen Z can remember—which, admittedly, isn’t too far back. Gen Z—the generation that’s been told to “Google it” for our entire lives—clearly took that advice and began to ask questions about how and why it was so easy for the majority conservative Supreme Court to strip away rights to reproductive healthcare, specifically abortion, so quickly.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton had the opportunity to codify Roe v. Wade through the Freedom of Choice Act. In 2009, President Barack Obama had the same opportunity but decided it was not a political priority. Years later, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade through the historic Dobbs case. While the outrage regarding abortion access under the next Trump presidency makes sense, we have to be honest about the opportunities the Democratic Party has had to secure a nationwide right to abortion. The Democratic Party cannot be the beacon of progressive politics if reproductive healthcare is a matter of political convenience.
Gen Z has grown up poor. In 2011 and 2012, when Gen Z-ers were 0 to 15 years old, 46% lived in families whose income was “less than 200% of the federal poverty level,” according to the Anne E. Casey Foundation. For the most part, we are still living a poverty nightmare. Reports praising Gen Z for “becoming richer than boomers and millennials” forget that, while some of us are making more money than older generations, we are still often unable to pay rent, buy groceries, or save up any emergency funds because of inflation.
To make matters worse, Gen Z is saddled with debt and is increasingly unable to pay it off, much like millennials. Despite being on track to become the most educated generation, Gen Z is unable to find economic relief after following the societal rules that promised us a good life: Go to college and get a good job. Gen Z represents 9% of the U.S. population but 28% of student loan borrowers, and for many, debt has precluded major investments like buying a home or starting a business, according to the Education Data Initiative.
One major campaign promise Biden made that cemented support from many Gen Z and millennial voters in 2020 was the cancelation of student debt. “I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000, with appropriate phase-outs to avoid a cliff,” he wrote in a 2020 Medium post. So far, he has failed, despite his initial efforts.
Without jumping through congressional hoops, Biden could cancel student debt today. With the simple stroke of a pen, he could relieve the financial burden so many young people are carrying. Biden and his party have had the opportunity to show young voters, and the Democratic Party base more broadly, that they have the political will to change the material conditions of people’s lives.
The answer to this crisis is not only canceling student debt but working toward a society where higher education is a public good. Free college for all would cost less than 1% of the $5.3 trillion annual federal budget, reported the Education Data Initiative. It’s fair to assume that the political establishment, both Democratic and Republican, is gaining more from our suffering under the crushing weight of student loan debt than what they believe they’d gain if it were relieved.
Throughout the past eight years, the word “fascism” has been thrust into the American political vocabulary, directly pointed at the MAGA-Republican party, and rightly so. In the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic Party positioned Vice President Kamala Harris as the “anti-fascist candidate” who could defeat fascist president-elect Donald Trump. But it’s clear that the Democratic Party only claims to be an anti-fascist party while holding and upholding fascistic doctrines.
One of the key characteristics of fascism is the violent repression of dissent using the military and law enforcement. In 2024, the Democratic Party supported university administrations calling in the National Guard and militarized police forces to arrest, brutalize and terrorize college students on campuses across the country for protesting the U.S.-funded genocide Israel is inflicting on Palestinians. Additionally, Democrats across the country have worked to silence students through legislation, effectively criminalizing students and their right to protest.
The majority of young voters on both sides of the political spectrum support a weapons embargo on Israel. Sadly, young voters’ antiwar sentiments are meaningless in the face of the bipartisan-funded war machine. Not only has Congress poured money into war and violence, but it has also starved healthcare, education and policies that would greatly benefit the general public. The war machine is a lucrative business for both parties, given politicians’ personal stocks and investments in companies that manufacture climate-destroying weapons. During her keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, candidate Harris declared, “As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” further cementing her commitment to war, climate catastrophe and, once again, no fundamental changes to where our country invests its resources.
Only 42–44% of young people turned out to vote in the 2024 general election, a decrease from 2020, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Young voters favored Harris by a slim margin of 6 percentage points. Pundits now insist that young people are “becoming more conservative” despite our progressive polling on issues like abortion, healthcare, war and climate change.
I would argue that young people are not “becoming more conservative” but are instead becoming more disillusioned with our political parties and their combined failure to meet the needs of the people in this country. Influencers, memes and celebrities are no longer moving young voters to the Democratic Party because we know we can’t pay our bills with vibes and memes. Why would youth loyalty to the Democratic Party be guaranteed when the party has been hell-bent on avoiding fundamental change while in power? Forty-seven percent of young voters surveyed by Pew said they wished there were more political parties with viable candidates in the United States (compared with 23% of those 65 and older).
Young people need a political party that is invested in the future of this country and the world.
Obama is recognized as one of the best the Democratic Party has offered the American people, despite his complicated legacy as the first Black president of the United States: granting healthcare to 20 million people but also leaving 28 million more without it; ending the war in Iraq, but ordering 506 drone strikes and killing 391 civilians; protecting children of undocumented immigrants from deportation, but deporting more immigrants than any previous president.
Young people have decided that the Democratic Party’s “best”—one step forward, 20 steps toward the corporate elite—is just not good enough.
During Obama’s 2016 farewell address, he stated: “Let me tell you, this generation coming up—unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic, I’ve seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair, and just, and inclusive America. You know that constant change has been America’s hallmark; that it’s not something to fear but something to embrace. You are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You’ll soon outnumber all of us, and I believe as a result the future is in good hands.”
He was right. By 2036, millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha will constitute 60% of the electorate. Young people have said “no” to the two-party system and their vision for our future. But what future will we say yes to? What will be built to take its place?
In Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton write: “Modernization is a time of dynamism when it is absolutely necessary to call for and push for new forms, new institutions to solve old problems. This call, this push requires a bold readiness to be ‘out of order.’ ”
This political moment calls for us to see beyond what generations before us have deemed possible and escape the hamster wheel of political viability. More importantly, it will require young people to become architects of the society we deserve and continue to defy the status quo, which includes saying goodbye to the broken political system that forces us to choose the “lesser evil” of aiding and abetting the genocide of our friends and families. To the disappointment of the Democratic Party, young people did not, in fact, just fall out of a coconut tree, and we are done waiting patiently to be unburdened by what has been.
This story was adapted with permission from Scalawag Magazine.
