MILLENNIAL VOTE, BABY BOOMER HISTORY

Who gets the millennial vote?

Election spin twists faster and faster the closer voting day gets.

One minute the official polls change, the next they change back.

The 24 hour news cycles needs drama to keep the pot boiling, so why worry?

Here’s why:

For all the bashing they get, millennials keep surfacing as a group of deciders.

You’d expect it from America’s biggest generation…

If they vote.

Boomerpdx doesn’t issue clarion calls to the Greatest Generation, Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, GenX, or Millennials, but if I did it would read like this:

President Nixon counted on something called the Silent Majority for his success in Presidential elections.

Silent Majority is another name for voters desperate for a candidate they can relate to, but fearful of opinion backlash. Thus, the silence.

Or, Silent Majority is another name for a voting block that didn’t take selfies, promote themselves, and didn’t post food pictures from every restaurant table they ate from.

Call it bedrock values, or a lag in technology, but if the old people who elected Nixon as a Law and Order candidate had smart phones and facebook back then, we’d have a sky covered by storage clouds by now.

And they voted for Nixon. Probably twice.

Nixon moved into the White House as the law and order candidate; he left as an impeached disgrace for breaking that same law and order.

The heartache was audible.

He was the candidate in 1968, a 50’s man in the middle of the Swinging 60’s. He beat Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.

Wallace was the third party candidate back then, like Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party Jill Stein today. Like John Anderson and Ross Perot before them.

Third party campaigns always look good at the start. If the wrong candidate wins, polls show how close the loser would have been with the third party votes.

Al Gore is still pissed.

The millennial vote is the ‘I’m paying attention’ vote.

Today’s law and order barker is Donald Trump. He promises to take ‘strong action’ for America, dealing harshly and quickly with enemies domestic and foreign.

Sometimes he sounds like he’s cribbing from President George W. Bush’s ‘Evil Doers’ speech. And no, don’t ask about a history of borrowing speeches in the Trump household.

However, if the millennial vote isn’t paying attention, then they won’t recall the similarities between Bush and Trump.

Both attended Ivy League business schools.

Both have wealthy dads.

Both missed serving their country as young men.

Both have running mates with their own agenda’s.

Trump’s VP in waiting even says his role model for leadership is Bush’s VP Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney was the man charged with finding a VP for Bush, and found himself.

Cheney was the man President Bush leaned on for direction.

Now Mike Pense sees himself in Cheney and George Bush in Donald Trump?

It didn’t end well for Bush and Cheney.

It didn’t end well for Nixon, either.

President Trump said he would give policy work to his VP while he did the job of making America great again. Like a cheer leading W.

A quick word here:

Dear Millennials,

We know all about your love for experience over things, that you’d rather spend money on travel and zip lines than buying a house and a lawn mower. We get that.

Yours is a sharing generation in a sharing economy.

You don’t want to join the herd of hoarders with garages and crawl spaces full of useless crap, even if most of it’s your baby discards your parents are saving for you.

We, your parents, dreamed of a better life, of freedom, of rock and rolling all night and partying everyday. You don’t have anything on us. We also know the consequences of history, from Vietnam to Syria.

Ask yourselves this: Has Donald Trump said or done anything to prove he can be trusted with your life? In an increasingly militaristic environment, President Trump may invoke special orders for the Armed Forces to act on your behalf.

One of the questions out of the Vietnam draft was, “Who died for you?” It’s not a question you want asked.

Nixon unleashed a river of U.S. blood in Vietnam; Bush deployed our military in places it didn’t need to go, waging a two front war on terror, along with tax cuts, and promises from his administration to fight on the cheap.

When U.S. military steps off the plane in sub-standard body armor, riding into places with sub-standard armored vehicles, that’s taking cheap too far. Americans and fighting on the cheap don’t mix. It didn’t then, it doesn’t now.

Getting the millennial vote out feels like Brexit. Young people in England couldn’t overcome voter apathy and now live in a nation voted out of the EU by older generations.

Like Obama said, if you want to show any appreciation for the work done since 2008, vote. He didn’t say who for, just vote.

The auto industry, burst housing bubble, the world economy, felt like it was all tipping into places no one has been.

If listening to Donald Trump, and watching him campaign, gives you the same feeling, vote.

If a third party candidate, or a write-in for Snoop Dogg, feels like the right call, reconsider.

Pick your President and mark it down. Then make it count. That’s what you do in America.

The Millennial Vote is what will make America great again.

Text the word.