Bernie Sanders got an astounding 85 percent of the vote from 18 to 29 year olds in the New Hampshire primary. By any accounting, that’s an amazing stat. People have bemoaned the apathy of today’s college students, but for some reason, they’re Feeling the Bern, big time. Does it mean we’re at the beginning of a new period of student activism and engagement? Very possibly. Look at the inroads the Black Lives Matter movement is making on college campuses, which is part of a larger surge of minority activism involving gender and sexual issues along with race. But I think there’s something more. I think college students have been dragged into the political fight because of their personal concerns about their economic futures, and Bernie is talking to their concerns far more directly than Hillary.
I was at a University of California campus in the Sixties. The Civil Rights struggle had come to nationwide prominence during my high school years, and it remained a big issue for college students on the left, but it didn’t lead white students like me to direct activism. If a race-based issue came up on campus, we supported the rights of black and other minority students, and we didn’t eat grapes to show our support for the United Farm Workers of America, but only a few white students and young adults were directly involved in either struggle. The issues may have tugged at our hearts, but they didn’t hit us where we lived.
By contrast, the escalation of the Vietnam War created a massive protest movement on campus. People marched, chanted and stopped education as usual for days and weeks at a time. Privileged white college students literally put their bodies in danger in confrontations with police during demonstrations. Why the difference? Part of it was, unlike the other issues, Vietnam put our asses on the line. We could be drafted and sent onto the battlefield. We rightly condemned the killing and environmental devastation our country was raining down on the people of Vietnam, but if we weren’t in danger of being thrown in the middle of the horror, our reactions would have been quieter.
We don’t have a draft today. The decision to invade Iraq was at least as outrageous and damaging as our decision to escalate our involvement in Vietnam, but college students aren’t in danger of being sent to the Middle East. College students are often criticized by older people on the left for not putting themselves in the forefront of protests condemning our involvement in Iraq like we did back in the Vietnam War days. But there’s an existential difference. Their asses aren’t on the line like ours were.
Generally, college students live in academic and social communities at a safe arms distance from society. They’re not children anymore, but they’re not living as adults either, so while issues that don’t affect them directly may be interesting, they’re not vitally important. Most social and political issues of the past decade have elicited mild interest and yawns from college students, which puts them in the company of college students during most of our history. “Yeah, it’s important, but I’ve got other things to do right now.”
But college students see their college bills mounting, and they see recent graduates competing for scarce jobs that pay well while their college loans eat a hole in their salaries. That’s real. That’s scary. They’re not being drafted into the armed forces, but by going to college, many of them have joined the army of graduates who will be struggling to make a living and pay off their college educations for what looks like the rest of their lives.
And then, along comes Bernie, the only presidential candidate to tell them he wants to make public colleges free and reduce the loan burden for current graduates. That’s gotta wake college students up. It makes Bernie’s emphasis on income inequality and his crusade against big campaign contributors who slant legislation toward their own ends personal. Students must be thinking, “A vote for Bernie is a vote for me!” That’s enough to get them working for and voting for the one candidate who has placed their best interests at the center of his campaign.
I looked over Hillary’s statements about college tuition and college loans on her website. They’re not bad, but they’re underwhelming. They’re gradual, and need a buy-in from states. We can argue about how practical or impractical Bernie’s ideas are (When I was at U.C., my tuition was under $50 a quarter, tuition at California state colleges was less, and community colleges were free, so Bernie’s idea isn’t some utopian pipe dream), but there’s no question, Bernie is tapping into the fears and hopes of voters under 30, and many over 30 who are still paying for their college educations and see no end in sight.
When I wrote about Bernie’s rally in Tucson in October, I noted the line that earned him the loudest and longest applause.
[T]he longest sustained applause came when he said, “Every public college and university must be tuition free!”
If Hillary hopes to win over young voters as she says she does, she needs to understand that it’s not Bernie’s white hair, his Brooklyn accent and his eccentric delivery that’s winning their hearts and minds. It’s his focus on their most immediate concern: their economic futures.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2016.
“But college students see their college bills mounting, and they see recent graduates competing for scarce jobs that pay well while their college loans eat a hole in their salaries.”
But there is no correlation between the two. Colleges want students to believe that their “investment in education” will guarantee them increased income. But that won’t work when the government is destroying jobs and flooding the market with illegals that drive wages down.
So to cover their lies they now try to offer free college. Their economic futures are more affected by a lifetime of payroll, income, social security, and medicare taxes.
Let’s get real folks. The party is over.
Tuition (out of state) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was $525/semester when I graduated in 1969. My annual cost of attending UW was about $2,500. Today, tuition for out-of state students is $15,000 a semester with total out of state annual costs approaching $45,000. Like UA, Wisconsin was founded as a land grant college promising as close to free tuition as possible.
Bernie Sanders understands, as did the legislators who promoted land grant institutions, the premise that inexpensive or free higher education is critical to the economic well-being of the nation. He offers more than the platitudes and hedges (yes, that is a pun) offered by Clinton. This explains, in part, the revulsion of young voters toward Clinton.
Nobody foresaw college tuition at $45,000. And with a socialist economy wages will have to drop, so how is that good for the well being of the nation? The information society will only last so long as it is funded by the rest of society working hard and making things. If we destroy venture capitalism, we destroy socialism. Think it through children.
Why do you think these idea sare born on college campuses? No real world experience.
Thank God Obama was never a Muslim. Can you imagine how that would have gone?
David, you underestimate the 18 to 29 crowd. They are looking not just selfishly forward to their college bills and employment prospects, they are looking compassionately back to what has happened to their families since 2008. The middle class has undergone a massive theft of its resources and a reduction in its entitlements, and many of the young people who grew up in households damaged by the so-called “Great Recession,” which could more aptly be called “The Great Black Hole in Our Economy for which We Have Irresponsible Wall Street Speculation to Thank” are smart enough to know that what happened was related to the deregulation of our banking system, the irresponsible bundling and offloading of bad debts aka “complex financial instruments,” the bailout at taxpayers’ expense, and our campaign finance system. Hillary getting coy about releasing the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street doesn’t fool these kids, and the majority of them know several families who suffered real consequences from Wall Street’s irresponsibility: the loss of a home, the devaluation of assets that were part of college savings, significant reductions in family income, transferring from one school to another because tuition was no longer affordable, parents’ jobs being outsourced or downsized…
Try reading the comment streams on any recent NYTimes piece on Clinton and Sanders. The comment stream on the Times’ endorsement article on Clinton is a good case in point. The most popular comments, at over 1,000 likes each — and many of them from the 18 to 29 crowd — are all indicting the Times for what readers view as its editorial board’s attempts to disparage Sanders’ message on the financial system and their pandering to Hillary Clinton and her money interest backers. It’s an eye opener, and should make it clear to you that there’s a lot more going on here than whether or not Sanders has free public university tuition as part of his platform.
Wake up. I know you live in a pleasant little bubble where real world concerns don’t hit you very hard. Try taking a walk on the wild side and talking to a few members of the middle class now and then.
Bernie Sanders message is quite different from the dark direction you have taken from this article. The 60s were fertile ground for many of us, and we made some good changes in good directions. Telling thinking people now to “Wake up” is just so much presumption and conceit coming from a dead-sure know-it-all: bloviating poisonous politics, belittling, insisting your own little opinions are superior and without rebuttal. Bernie Sanders is a decent man who, as a candidate, is far above your warped anti-Semitic opinions and hatred for the nation of Israel. (-out-)
This country needs fewer spoiled/coddled college students.
Thanks to government over regulation very few of these self indulgent crybabies have ever worked at a real job and paid taxes as was common when I went to college.
I say if you are feeling the bern go out and get your STD treated and next time use protection.
I am puzzled by people’s belief that Sanders will be able to make college education free. Nobody, including Sanders, has shown how it will be done. Who’s ox will be gored? Who in next year’s Congress will vote such a bill? Political campaigns today are full of absurd promises to please gullible voters without addressing the reality of compromise needed to get anything done.
Per the comments on changes in the cost to students within public university systems, these remarks in the 2/10/16 NYTimes article about Berkeley’s budget problems (“Deficit Threatens Stability of University of California, Berkeley, Official Says”) are relevant:
“…Berkeley had become increasingly dependent on tuition and fees, now accounting for nearly 30 percent of total campus revenues, while state funding had dropped to about 13 percent of the budget. It was roughly half in the 1980s, Berkeley officials said.
The chancellor compared Berkeley’s problems to those faced by many public universities that had lost state funding since the 2008 recession, though Berkeley’s position appears to be more secure than those of some other flagship state universities.
‘What we are engaged in here is a fundamental defense of the concept of the public university, a concept that we must reinvent in order to preserve,’ Mr. Dirks said.”
As for where Sanders will get the money to re-invest in American public universities and to ensure that they are once again serving the role they are supposed to fill in our society, the answers are clearly stated in a number of places, including on his website:
“The cost of this $75 billion a year plan is fully paid for by imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy seven years ago. More than 1,000 economists have endorsed a tax on Wall Street speculation and today some 40 countries throughout the world have imposed a similar tax including Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and China. If the taxpayers of this country could bailout Wall Street in 2008, we can make public colleges and universities tuition free and debt free throughout the country.”
Can we all at least agree that 8 years of Obama did not bring good hope and change? They praised the youth for voting for him, and now they support Sanders. maybe they should delay their decision on voting until they have a job, pay taxes, and understand the issues. If all you are doing is voting freebies for you, how are you any different than crony capitalism? Greed and laziness are greed and laziness.
We are in an economic crisis that will harm the elderly more than the youth. Yet they vote more government handouts while the original social programs fall apart.
Sorry boys and girls but Trump may be the only candidate with financial solutions. he knows money. You kids certainly don’t.
Famous quote by economist Thomas Sowell:
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
——————————————————————————————————
While they celebrate the ACA or Obamacare think about this:
“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
Government has a pitiful track record. Yet they want more???
We might be able to agree that Obama, though his ability to implement the policies he campaigned on was limited by an obstructive congress and the ongoing influence of the 1% on our government, did a much, much better job than his predecessor in the office.
What this country “can’t afford” is continuing to allow Wall Street speculators, corporate executives and tech industry billionaires to live like demigods while the middle class is turned into a class of entitlement-poor, economically vulnerable indentured servants.
It’s depressing to read the commentary of those who swallow the propaganda being fed to them through media entities like Fox News and then repeat it in the comment streams in liberal publications, thinking they’re disseminating “information” that will persuade readers. Even more depressing: we must face, in the number of people voting for Trump, clear evidence that our society has large and increasingly influential pockets of moral bankruptcy that worship vulgar acquisitiveness as “success,” reward incivility and egotistical lack of self-control and lack of professionalism with votes in presidential primaries, and deal with their own reductions in status by relishing the prospect of people unlike them in color or national origin being denied opportunity.
We’ve heard your arguments before. The only thing you’re accomplishing by repeating them to us is identifying yourselves as yet more depressing victims of some of the most disturbing trends that have evidenced themselves in the last 100 years of our collective history as a nation.
Educating our population and providing people with health care are not “freebies” and “government handouts” that encourage “greed and laziness.” They should be regarded as part of a social contract that supports the common good and acts as an enabling pre-condition for our citizens’ lifetimes of meaningful, secure, constructive labor. This vision is quite different from the notions being promoted on the other side of the political fence: that self-serving entrepreneurs, executives, and speculators should “have it all” while the majority of the country’s population labors in ignorance, insecurity and poor health in whatever jobs (not careers) those who won the entrepreneurial / speculative jackpot happen to want to create for them, which will always be offered on terms that reinforce or increase income inequality and the further consolidation of wealth at the top.
Which America do we want? Think hard before casting your vote. We’ve already gone further towards the latter option than the people who framed our constitution may have thought possible. Shall we go further? Keep in mind that at some point it will become impossible to go back. Let’s hope that point won’t be post-November 2016.
Yours is simply a progressive utopian view. Utopian views have been downgraded to whatever can be had for free by blaming somebody else. Americans will not buy it.
Wall ST corruption is too broad a generalization as many hard working people have spent their lives their promoting our economic model.
We have spent the last three years trying to change to things that SOUND good, rather than work good.
Why not bolster the social programs we already have that are failing?
You also confuse people that have lived the experience with some unknown Fox News viewer. Can you not accept the fact that real life experiences create our opinions?
what should, I have two words for you:
” Even more depressing: we must face, in the number of people voting for Trump, clear evidence that our society has large and increasingly influential pockets of moral bankruptcy that worship vulgar acquisitiveness as “success,” reward incivility and egotistical lack of self-control and lack of professionalism with votes in presidential primaries, and deal with their own reductions in status by relishing the prospect of people unlike them in color or national origin being denied opportunity.”
BIL CLINTON
Hillary Clinton
✔
@HillaryClinton
Let’s dispel with this fiction that @POTUS doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. http://hrc.io/1PPFU6s
11:38 AM – 11 Feb 2016
(This is from her personal server,…we are led to believe.)
Moral bankruptcy?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/10/hillary-clinton-asks-black-pastors-for-salvation.html
Looks like the Clintons are headed down south, to do a little race baiting. Never mind they are STILL unemployed. She feels their pain and is working hard every day for them.
And remember…
Don’t be losers.
You know, like OPV is proving to be.
Please, please stop it with your misinformation and borderline racism. Many of us are VERY tired of it.
Wow. Quite a comment stream: barely refers to the article at all! Personally I think Safier is on to something–the closer something is to our real, lived experiences, the more we will be passionate about it. The Democratic Party (Establishment wing AND progressive wing) has, since 4 years ago at least, talked about the “New American Voter”–that is, the group that needs to turn out at the polls in order to insure a win. This group includes the young, Hispanics/Latinos, and single women. And yet when we actually get a candidate that galvanizes the young, the “Establishment” wing of the party tells us that his proposals can’t be done. There are plenty of countries that already do what Sanders is proposing for college education, and they are not all wealthy European nations. The only question is how to get there from here, not whether or not the model can be succesful.
AZ/DC. Why not just call me a racist and leave the borderline out, I really don’t care anymore, and that word has not power over me.
Nothing I say is misinformation, it is just info you choose to ignore that does not fit into your manufactured reality.
The NEW AMERICAN VOTER is sick of young ignorant millennials who are plugged into the media machine and brainwashed, illegals and die-hard partisan fools.
LEGAL Hispanics are voting for Trump. American blacks would be suicidal not to vote for Trump, he is the only one who does not have to constantly pander to them, he will ensure they can be employed by stopping illegal immigration.
Whenever the government gives colleges money, they ALWAYS raise tuition. That is a fact.
So keep being “tired” of my borderline racism aka “wrong-think”, and I will continue to be energized by future president Trump.
OPV, your latest post reveals it all. Chock full of the misinformation you are becoming famous for.
If you really want me to call you a racist, well, that reveals something also. I will not do that though, all I will do is point out that you type a lot of things that come across as racist. Believe me when I say these statements are not swaying anyone towards your cause.
LEGAL Hispanics are voting for Chump? Really? Are those numbers in the .001 percent range? I imagine when you read that on your teabagger newsfeed of choice that they printed that number backwards and removed the decimal point, which wouldn’t shock me considering the other flat out bullshit I’ve read on these sites.
Much like the NYC Hillbilly, I see that logic will not work on you. Chump will not be prez because of his lack of political experience and because of the dumb shit that comes out of his mouth; but I understand that I will not convince you or your fringe group which supports him of that so I’m done with you. Keep posting your “Build Wall” and “Make America Great Again” quotes and I will not be there to try and inject common sense into your vision of the Great American Dream (Nightmare). 😯 DC
Just another example of the government taxing business out of our country while they import workers from another company. How long before we have been destroyed? Even if you are on SSI this puts future payments to you at risk.
Carrier Air Conditioner is moving production to Monterrey, Mexico putting 1,400 Indianapolis Jobs south of the border in 2017. Carrier Air Conditioner is moving production to Monterrey, Mexico putting 1,400 Indianapolis Jobs south of the border in 2017.
http://www.courant.com/business/hc-carrier-jobs-mexico-utc-20160212-story.html
Sorry Bernie but all the college in the world will not fix this. Nor will it finance it.
If David Safier were serious about not letting his comment streams be hijacked by off-topic screeds, there is much in this stream he would have deleted.
The topic was why the 18-29 cohort is voting for Sanders; Sanders’ religious / ethnic identity, how he feels about Zionism and the legitimacy of the State of Israel should not enter into it, unless these topics are somehow related to the voting behavior of the 18-29 cohort. I see no data presented in these comments that suggests that there is any relationship between Sanders’ Jewish background or his opinions on Israel and his appeal to young voters.
David Safier: please do a better job of weeding out distracting and tangential comments. Your comment streams should not become a forum for various readers to engage in back-and-forth exchanges with Francis Saitta about topics that should never have been introduced in the first place. I count more than 10 comments in this stream, some of them very long, that are primarily dealing with Saitta, not the topic of this post. And many of them resort to name calling and incivility.
Looks like someone needs a safe space in real life, and wants others to engage in censorship.
Just because other opinions do not fall into line with your programming, and are ancillary and tangent to the article, does not mean they cannot be addressed. Back and forth debate between people is how ideas are introduced.
If seeing opinions contrary to yours is too “triggering”, just ignore the comment section and return to your hugbox or echo chamber, por favor.
Great Post “Old Pueblo Veteran!!. Especially your comment “…… Back and forth debate between people is how ideas are introduced….”. We have differing Opinions and Perspectives for sure…and.. in a discussion of the Candidacy of an Individual for the Presidency of the United States, NO information is “…distracting and tangential…” if it helps us understand the Political/Social Position of the Candidate (s).
David Safier posted this comment in August of 2015:
“A NOTE TO COMMENTERS: I love the comments section on my posts. The pro and con arguments, and those in between, can be thoughtful and informative. But I dislike seeing the posts being hijacked, taken in a direction that has nothing to do with the topic I wrote about.
From this point forward, if I think it’s warranted, I’m planning to delete comments that move too far off topic. I think since I’ve been writing on The Range, I’ve deleted two or three posts total, and never because I disagreed with the ideas expressed. But if you see something you’ve written appear in the comments section then disappear a while later, you’ll know why.”
Safier has made reference to this policy several times since then, and has deleted comments and threatened to delete comments. So why have comments like many in this stream, including the one that begins, “Senator Sanders supports the continues [sic] existence of a Jewish Theocracy in Palestine” been allowed to stand?
Evidently it’s not being off topic (or even name calling and incivility) that’s the problem. So what exactly is it, with the comments he chooses to delete? Perhaps he can clarify his policies.
Commenters: I have asked the Weekly to delete a number of comments that are far off topic, specifically those related to Jews and Israel. I don’t always read the comments carefully or in a timely fashion, and this was one of those cases. I can’t guarantee I’ll always catch this kind of thing, so I appreciate commenters pointing it out. Anyone who wants to communicate with me about problematic comments or other issues via email can write to tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com, and the Weekly will forward your email to me. Also, in the bottom left corner of each comment you’ll see a “report” link which allows you to tell the Weekly’s web folks that you think a comment is inappropriate. If they agree, the comment will most probably be removed.
One final thought. When someone makes an off-topic comment or an especially vile comment, it’s hard not to respond, but your response is exactly what the commenter wants, because it allows that person to dominate the comments and repeat his/her views again and again. It’s far less enjoyable for provocateurs when they are ignored. I recommend that you simply skip over those comments and return to the original topic.
This comments section is closed.