Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
The Democrats need you to understand: You must vote. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, made a particularly noxious video haranguing young people on the topic. Young voters feel they are uninformed. “You can’t use Google?” Obama shot back. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, sat down with a reporter from The New York Times at the University of Maryland to berate the audience (people who care enough about politics to wait in line for hours to hear from an elderly senator) about the importance of voting. “The times are too dangerous for you to sit out,” he said.
Why don’t young people vote? One reason is voter suppression, which is real, and not to be dismissed. But there is another reason: The candidates Democrats run are bloodless vampires whom nobody could get excited about. I’m not saying this makes them worse than Republicans, or even as bad. I’m saying it makes it extraordinarily difficult to care.
Ben Jealous, for example, is so desperate for people to care about his election that he dragged Sen. Cory Booker to Cornerstone right before rails, where Booker compared voting in the midterms to fighting at Normandy. (The difference is that at Normandy there were Nazis with guns and tanks shooting at you, whereas when you vote, there are not.) I’d like to think I would give my life to stop the Nazis. But in an age when the most popular politician in the country calls himself a “democratic socialist,” who would give their life for someone who brags that he’s a venture capitalist? What is the appeal? “If you like the financial crisis, you’ll love Ben Jealous!”
What’s true of Jealous is also true of Democrats in general. They have little positive to say about themselves, instead opting for (accurate) criticism of the GOP. When young people conclude that all the options are bad and it’s not worth caring, Democrats, incapable of reflection, simply yell in increasingly outraged tones about the importance of voting even if you think it doesn’t matter.
It’s not unlike the way religious families react to children who stop attending church. This makes sense, for as law professor Adrian Vermeule argues, “liberalism is a religion.” (To be clear, liberalism here is “classical liberalism,” the philosophy both parties typically use to make arguments in public and which underlies the entire American system.) Liberalism has sacred texts (the Constitution) and infallible authorities trusted to interpret them in secret and with great fanfare (the Supreme Court). There are priests of various kinds (legislators, governors, the president). There are temples (the Lincoln Memorial).
And of course, there are liturgies. Foremost among these is the liturgy of voting, in which the people symbolically affirm that they will continue to be ruled by the wealthy and horrifying ruling class that governs our country. Arguments about the efficacy of religious ritual are commonplace, and sure enough, Democrats spend much of their time trying to convince young people that their votes do matter. Just as some religious groups have turned to modern music to bring young people back to church, the Democrats think Taylor Swift is going to get young people to vote.
The funny part is, it’s not that hard. What attracts young people, and everyone else, is sincerity and goodness. The cynicism young people are accused of is, in reality, cynicism about cynicism. We’re sick of being told that nothing good is achievable — that we can’t have health care, feed the poor, or stop selling weapons to evil regimes.
If you want young people to vote, or for that matter to go to church, it’s really quite simple: Offer us something to believe in beyond self-interest. The overwhelming importance of the self will never get someone to participate in collective activity, be it worship or governance. Until Democrats learn that, young people aren’t going to vote.
John-Paul Teti is a senior computer science major. He can be reached at jp@jpteti.com.
