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      New Hampshire Voters Like Ramaswamy, but More as a No. 2

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      At campaign stops across the state, the political newcomer has drawn big crowds and praise from voters. But some wonder if he needs more political seasoning.Vivek Ramaswamy, the only top-polling presidential candidate to hit the campaign trail over Labor Day weekend, is enjoying the attention of his newfound status.Across five events in New Hampshire on Saturday, part of an 11-stop swing in the Granite State, Mr. Ramaswamy drew hundreds of attendees, often exceeding the number of seats or the space provided at venues from a state fair in Contoocook to a country store in Hooksett.But the crowds and attention being showered on the 38-year-old political newcomer come with something of a caveat: Many of those showing up at his events and driving his rise in the polls see him as a possible vice president or a great future president — but not necessarily a president yet.“I have socks older than him,” said Pamela Coffey, 69, who came from Peterborough, N.H., to see the candidate in person.Mr. Ramaswamy, who entered the race in February with little name recognition and no political experience, has campaigned at a grueling pace in early states and adopted an everywhere-all-the-time media strategy that in recent weeks has propelled him to third place in the race, just behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.A combative performance in the first Republican presidential debate last month, in which he was attacked more than any other candidate onstage, put a spotlight on him that translated into heightened attendance at his campaign events. But some voters in New Hampshire said they still had reservations about Mr. Ramaswamy’s youth and inexperience.Mr. Ramaswamy has used his status as the first millennial to run as a Republican candidate to lament his generation’s being “hungry for a cause” — primarily to older audiences. One of the most reliable applause lines at his New Hampshire events was his controversial proposal to require that high schoolers pass a civics test before they can vote.Mr. Ramaswamy drew big crowds at his Saturday events, including one at the Hopkinton State Fair in Contoocook, N.H.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy’s “America First” platform and outsider standing are fashioned after former President Donald J. Trump’s, down to his predisposition toward falsehoods. Like Mr. Trump, for example, Mr. Ramaswamy has expressed disdain for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine: He scoffed at “Zelenskyism” and called the president the “pied piper of Hamelin in cargo pants” as cows mooed in the background at an event in Dublin, N.H.Pat Cameron of Goffstown, N.H., said he saw Mr. Ramaswamy as a “great candidate” with “a lot of really good ideas grounded in what this country really believes in.” But he added: “I honestly believe that Trump would be the best. Personally, I would have loved to see President Trump take him as his running mate for vice president.”And Mr. Trump himself complimented Mr. Ramaswamy last week, spurring questions about whether the Republican presidential front-runner would consider Mr. Ramaswamy to run as No. 2 on his ticket if he wins the nomination.On Tuesday, the former president told the conservative commentator Glenn Beck that he thought Mr. Ramaswamy was “a very, very intelligent person.”“He’s got good energy,” Mr. Trump continued. “He could be some form of something.”But Mr. Ramaswamy, who has said repeatedly that he is not running to be second in command, reiterated that stance on Saturday. “I think President Trump and I share this in common: Neither of us would do well in a No. 2 position,” he said at a town hall in Newport, N.H., just after calling Mr. Trump, as he did in the Republican debate, the “best president of the century.”Despite Mr. Ramaswamy’s frequent praise for Mr. Trump — and repeated promises to pardon him, if he wins the presidency — he has sought to differentiate himself in subtle ways. While Mr. Trump has continued to invoke the 2020 election and the indictments he faces, Mr. Ramaswamy calls for a forward-thinking vision of the United States as a “nation in our ascent” with revived patriotism under a drastically altered executive branch.And Mr. Ramaswamy has recently alluded to questions of Mr. Trump’s electability, saying on Saturday that the “America First movement does not belong to one man” and that 2024 “can’t be another 50.1 election.”“I’m the only candidate in this race who can win in a landslide that reunites this country, that brings young people along,” he said in Dublin.Mr. Ramaswamy greeted voters after a house party in Dublin, N.H., on Saturday, one of the day’s five campaign events.Sophie Park for The New York TimesNonetheless, many voters who came to hear him speak in New Hampshire uttered his name with that of Mr. Trump, unprompted.“I like that he’s not like a normal politician,” said Reed Beauchesne, 54, of Concord, N.H. “He reminds me of Trump, in a way. I think he and Trump would be great together, actually.”And for the voters searching for an alternative to Mr. Trump, not being a “normal politician” can be interpreted as a hindrance.“He’s got some points that resonate with everybody, so that’s wonderful, but my biggest concern is his lack of experience,” said David Leak, 63, who added that he preferred Mr. DeSantis. “Every politician talks great on the stump, the speeches are well rehearsed, but what do they do after they get in?” More

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      Pence Clashes With Ramaswamy: ‘We Don’t Need to Bring in a Rookie’

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      Vivek Ramaswamy wants voters to know he’s young, vigorous — and did he mention young?“You’re a blank slate — you’re 38 years old,” Mr. Ramaswamy, the first Republican millennial presidential candidate, imagined a viewer as saying about him. And, he added, “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name?” — a reference to the former political wunderkind Barack Obama, which former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey quickly pointed out, adding, “I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same kind of amateur.”But Mr. Ramaswamy made it clear that he wasn’t going to be deferential to the more experienced candidates onstage. He addressed former vice president Mike Pence as “Mike,” familiarly, and didn’t back down when Mr. Pence declared, “We don’t need to bring in a rookie.” Instead, he made his newcomer status a combative rallying cry.“I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in response to a question about climate change policy. Even more pointedly, he referred to his young children and suggested that voters needed to “hand it over to a new generation to actually fix the problem.”This all came after debate preparation that included releasing videos of himself playing tennis shirtless — he has said, in a pointed reminder of his young legs, that he likes to hit with college players around the country while on the trail — and doing burpees to T.I.’s “Bring ’Em Out,” a party hit from 2004, when Mr. Ramaswamy was just an Eminem-impersonating underclassman at Harvard.His emphasis on his youth recalls the candidacy of Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who preceded him by one election cycle and a few years at Harvard.Mr. Ramaswamy’s views are largely out of step with his own generation and the one below him, which skew Democratic. But, said Charlotte Alter, the author of “The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America”: “The only way the G.O.P. is attracting any young voters is on culture war issues like anti-woke posturing and contrarian hot takes. And that’s where Vivek has planted his flag.” More

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      Millennials Are Not an Exception. They’ve Moved to the Right.

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      Over the last decade, almost every cohort of voters under 50 has shifted rightward.Fifteen years ago, a new generation of young voters propelled Barack Obama to a decisive victory that augured a new era of Democratic dominance.Fifteen years later, those once young voters aren’t so young — and aren’t quite so Democratic.Republican Voting Share in Presidential Elections, by Age More

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      Republicans Can’t Decide Whether to Woo or Condemn Young Voters

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      As Democrats keep winning millennials and Gen Z, Republicans are still debating how to get them back.For months before the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats fretted that younger voters might fall into old habits and stay home. The analysis is still a little hazy, but as more data comes in, it looks as if enough young people showed up in many key states to play a decisive role.And now, some Republicans are warning that their party’s poor standing with millennial and Gen-Z voters could become an existential threat. But there’s no consensus about how much, if at all, Republicans’ message needs to change.“We’re going to lose a heck of a lot of elections if we wait until these people become Republicans,” said John Brabender, a G.O.P. consultant who has been sounding the alarm about the party’s deficit with younger voters.By 2024, those two generations combined could make up as much as 40 percent of the voting public, according to some estimates. So far, millennials — some of whom are entering their 40s — are betraying little sign of growing more conservative as they age. If those trends hold, it could make for some daunting electoral math for the right.“This is a multigenerational problem for Republicans,” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who studies the youth vote.Republicans are failing to engage younger voters early enough and on the right platforms, Brabender argued — and when they do, they’re not addressing the issues on their minds. “We need to be much more effective about presenting an alternative side,” he said. “Right now we are just silent.”In private, Republicans can be scathing about the party’s looming demographic challenges; one bluntly said the G.O.P. was relying on a base of older white voters who are dying off, while failing to replace them from among the more racially and ethnically diverse generations coming up behind them. But while some counsel that the party needs to adapt its message accordingly, others argue that it’s more a matter of delivering the same message in new ways.“Republicans have to understand that the issues of that next generation of voters are different,” Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire told me last month.“There are young Republicans out there who really care about the environment,” he added. “It doesn’t mean they want the Green New Deal, but they want to know that leaders are taking good, sensible, responsible, economically smart ways to address transitioning off fossil fuels or clean water and clean air.”Karoline Leavitt, a 20-something former Trump administration aide who lost her bid for a House seat in New Hampshire last year, wrote in a recent Fox News op-ed article that “the most colossal challenge facing the G.O.P. is the inability to resonate with the most influential voting bloc in our electorate — my generation, Generation Z.”Karoline Leavitt, a former Trump administration aide who lost her bid for a House seat in New Hampshire, said that her party was not resonating effectively with her age group, Generation Z.John Tully for The New York TimesBut in a reflection of the same ambivalence that leads Republican politicians like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to mock the use of gender pronouns, Leavitt also argued that members of Generation Z had been “indoctrinated to be faithless, anti-American, self-proclaimed socialists who care about changing their gender more than paying their bills.”Millennials and Gen-Z voters came of age during tumultuous times — the Great Recession and the rise of movements like Occupy Wall Street, then the Trump presidency and the coronavirus pandemic — and share a skepticism of capitalism and a belief in the value of government to solve problems, Della Volpe noted.And on social issues, younger voters are much more in tune with Democrats. They value racial and ethnic diversity and L.G.B.T.Q. rights at higher rates than older voters. Among those aged 18 to 29, three-quarters say that abortion should be legal in most cases. Younger voters may not love the Democratic Party, but they like the Republican Party even less.“You’re not going to be able to engage them on policy specifics unless you meet them on their values,” Della Volpe said. “Young people aren’t even going to consider voting for you if deny that climate change exists.”A ‘shortsighted’ focusThe Republican Party has sporadically tried to address this problem, Brabender said, but has made “no effort to do anything about it on an organized basis.”Which is not to say that nobody has tried. The Republican National Committee’s post-2012 autopsy concluded that the party was seen as “old and detached from pop culture” and urged Republicans to “fundamentally change the tone we use to talk about issues and the way we are communicating with voters.” Then the party nominated Donald Trump, who did the opposite.When Representative Elise Stefanik of New York entered Congress in 2015 at just 30 years old, she convened experts to brief Republicans on the views of millennial voters. In 2017, a task force she helped lead produced a report, “Millennials and the G.O.P.: Rebuilding Trust With an Untapped Electorate,” that made modest recommendations for addressing the cost of college education, but sidestepped more thorny cultural issues.In the years since, as Stefanik has climbed the ranks of Republican leadership, she has rebranded herself from a forward-thinking change agent in the party to a devoted acolyte of Trump, whose approval ratings among younger voters are abysmal.There are upstart groups on the far right like Turning Point USA, which has positioned itself as the youth wing of the Trump coalition. Representative Dan Crenshaw, a 38-year-old Republican from Texas, has begun holding annual youth summit meetings, which tend to draw a more moderate crowd. And there are venerable organizations like the Young America’s Foundation, whose roots date to the days of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review.The foundation is now led by Scott Walker, the former governor of Wisconsin, who has oriented the group toward a longer-term approach of waging a battle of ideas from college campuses all the way down to middle schools.“The immediate reaction from the consultant class is going to be, ‘We need slicker digital ads or new youth coalitions,’” Walker said.“I think that’s really shortsighted,” he added, arguing that “years and years of liberal indoctrination” in the education system had led to a monoculture that silenced conservative ideas. “These are young people who have heard nothing but the left’s point of view.”A crowd at an event in Tampa, Fla., hosted by Turning Point USA, which has positioned itself as the youth wing of the Trump coalition.Todd Anderson for The New York TimesWhat the numbers showThere’s a robust debate among analysts about the depth of Republicans’ problems, as my colleagues have reported. Pew Research has found that while Biden won voters under 30 by a 24-point margin in 2020, that was actually a retreat from 2016 and 2018.Last year, according to one set of exit polls — Edison Research’s data, as analyzed by researchers at Tufts University — voters under 30 overwhelmingly chose Democrats. In Senate races, Democrats captured 76 percent of the under-30 vote in Arizona, 70 percent in Pennsylvania and 64 percent in Nevada. Nationwide, voters under 30 preferred Democrats in House races by 28 percentage points.Republicans find comfort in Associated Press/VoteCast data, where the nationwide gap was far smaller among voters aged 18 to 29: 53 percent for Democrats versus 41 percent for Republicans. In a postelection analysis, The A.P. concluded that young people’s enthusiasm for Democrats “may be waning,” noting that younger voters tend to be much less tethered to party identities than older generations.Young people are notoriously difficult to survey. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, a researcher at Tufts, said her team used the Edison data because it tracked census numbers more closely and dated further back in time, though she acknowledged that it was an “imperfect” barometer.What about turnout? According to an analysis of voter-file data from TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, voters under 30 made up a larger percentage of the electorate in 2022 than they did in 2014 across seven battleground states. In Michigan, for instance, their share grew from just 6.9 percent in 2014 to 12.2 percent in 2022. In Nevada, it grew from 5.9 percent in 2014 to 13.2 percent last year. And while those numbers represent a slight retreat from 2018, that was a huge year for turnout, fueled on the Democratic side by a nationwide backlash to Trump’s presidency.Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, also pointed to signs that registration among young people had surged at two distinct points in 2022: after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and after President Biden passed an executive order wiping out some student debt.Before the election, the Harvard Youth Poll found that 59 percent of young Americans believed that their rights were under attack — reflecting their reaction to the abortion decision and their worries about election deniers linked to Trump.Overall, Bonier said, “The lesson we learned writ large in the election is that the stain of Trump on the party had an impact even without him even on the ballot.”What to read tonightKevin McCarthy has gained steam in his bid to become speaker and is trying to muster enough support before 10 p.m. Eastern, when the House will resume voting. Follow live updates.South Carolina’s First Congressional District is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and its boundaries must be redrawn for elections to be held, a panel of federal judges ruled. Michael Wines explains.The Biden administration proposed to tighten limits on fine particulate matter, a deadly air pollutant also known as soot that is responsible for thousands of premature deaths every year, Coral Davenport reports.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      What’s on the Minds of 12 Young Voters

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      Whether they are marching against gun violence, advocating stronger action against climate change or pushing for or against abortion rights, young Americans of all political stripes have been engaged in some of the prominent social movements of the 21st century.Electorally, however, they have often struggled to make their voices heard, despite turning out in increasing numbers in 2018 and 2020.A New York Times/Siena College poll found that likely voters younger than 30 planned to support a Democrat for Congress by a 12-point margin in next month’s elections, compared with a narrow advantage for Republicans among likely voters at large. But, compared with older generations, they were less likely to say they would vote at all.Twelve voters in their 20s, living in states with competitive Senate or governor’s races, spoke with photographers for The New York Times about the issues they considered most important. Though President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan had been in the news, none said it was a top issue. Instead, they discussed their views on abortion, climate, the economy and immigration — or a search for, as one 24-year-old Wisconsin woman put it, “what’s best for the collective versus the singular.” — Maggie AstorGeorgiaSeeking ‘the Least Worst Options’Nicole Craine for The New York TimesJayda Priester, 25, lives in Atlanta and sells life insurance. She said she had no political affiliation and had not decided whom she wanted for governor.“There is no one who made me feel I have to vote for them yet. I am looking at the least worst options.” “The most important issue for me is defunding the police. I am hugely for defunding the police and putting other resources available for crisis management, de-escalation.”—WisconsinFixing Tractors, Worried About FuelJamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesKyle Moore, 28, lives in Poynette. He is a tractor technician who identifies as a Republican and who wants “to see the fuel prices go back down” to ease the strain on farmers and ranchers.“I feel like the 20s generation does not express or voice their opinion as strongly as they should, like the older generations. They hold back more and don’t come out and voice or vote clearly enough to see the country succeeding.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With elections next month, a Times/Siena poll shows that independents, especially women, are swinging toward the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights as voters worry about the economy.Georgia Governor’s Race: A debate between Gov. Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams produced a substantive hour of policy discussion. Here are five takeaways.Aggressive Tactics: Right-wing leaders are calling on election activists to monitor voting in the midterm elections in search of evidence to confirm unfounded theories of election fraud.Jill Biden: The first lady, who has become a lifeline for Democratic candidates trying to draw attention and money in the midterms, is the most popular surrogate in the Biden administration.—PennsylvaniaA Nurse With Dreams of Health Care EquityHannah Beier for The New York TimesKadie Mercier, 29, of Philadelphia is a registered nurse in the emergency department of a hospital in her city. She is a registered Democrat.“As an emergency-department nurse, we see people come in all the time that are in very poor health because they’re unable to afford their medications or find a primary care provider. And so it’s something that I’m really passionate about, making sure these people can avoid coming to the emergency department.”—WisconsinBipartisan and Hoping for Change on ImmigrationJamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesChris Ahmann, 18, of Madison is a first-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Wisconsin and a first-generation Filipino American.“I like something that’s a little more bipartisan. Maybe more independent. Because there’s more variety than limiting yourself, because it’s more of a spectrum than just binary.”“Immigration is really close to me. I’m one of the only people in my family who is in the U.S. right now. I was born here, but they want to come here to the U.S. I’d like to see it easier for people.”—PennsylvaniaAgainst Abortion, Concerned About JobsHannah Beier for The New York TimesEmily McDermott, 27, of Lansdowne works from home as a seamstress. She has a daughter and is pregnant. She is a registered Democrat but plans to vote for Doug Mastriano, a hard-right Republican, for governor.“Life begins in the womb, and I think that that is an inalienable right. And I don’t think it’s up to us to decide who lives and dies.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Regarding Mr. Mastriano: “It was during the shutdown, and I lost my job because of the pandemic. And so, he was the only one kind of fighting to get everybody to reopen back jobs.”—New HampshireVoting to Slow Climate Change, a ‘Time Bomb’John Tully for The New York TimesGriffin Brunette, 24, lives in Hampton and works in marketing. He is a registered Democrat.On climate change: “It’s a ticking time bomb. We do have the power to make a form of change and make our voices heard, and it all starts with voting.”“I think a huge issue in getting people on board with what is going on is that it’s become a political thing, and I think that people on both sides should realize the future is in our hands. And we can do something about that by setting these Democrat/Republican things aside.”—MichiganKeeping It Personal and Not Ruling Out TrumpEmily Elconin for The New York TimesJared Tate, 28, left, and Derrick Whitehead, 29, of Ypsilanti are high school friends who produce a podcast. Mr. Tate is a registered Democrat and works at Target while studying communications at Eastern Michigan University.“If Trump runs again, I will consider voting for him, mainly because of the financial aspect of it. Trump did a lot for small-business owners that a lot of people don’t know about. I voted for Biden last time and wanted to give him a chance.”Mr. Whitehead is not affiliated with a party and voted to re-elect President Donald J. Trump in 2020.“I honestly don’t know if I am going to vote or not.”“I look at it more as personal. If it doesn’t have anything to do with me and my inner circle or family, it doesn’t concern me.”—Wisconsin‘What’s Best for the Collective Versus the Singular’Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesEmily Matzke, 24, lives in Prairie du Sac. She does not identify with a political party and works in agricultural marketing.“I just wish people just had more of an ability to compromise and know that not everything will be perfect for everyone, but if it could be better for the majority, then it’s at least what is best for all.”“I feel we can only move forward as kind people and a country if we can figure out a way to be kind. What’s best for the collective versus the singular.”—ArizonaSeeing a Future in an ‘Immigrant-Friendly’ PastRebecca Noble for The New York TimesAngel Martinez, 20, of Tempe is studying political science with a minor in Spanish at Arizona State University and works as a night desk attendant at his apartment complex. He is a Democrat, with immigration, climate and voting rights his biggest issues.“We just need to get back to our roots of being immigrant-friendly in this country. A lot of people have a really bad sentiment towards immigrants, especially immigrants from Latin American countries. Especially Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, all those countries, just because there’s this notion that jobs are being stolen or welfare is being stolen.”—PennsylvaniaBelieving in Abortion Rights: ‘How I Was Raised’Hannah Beier for The New York TimesJake Heller, 26, of Philadelphia is a registered Democrat who works as a cheesemonger at Reading Terminal Market.“What issues are most important to me? Probably the classics: abortion, you know, bodily autonomy, the environment and I’d say gun regulation.”On abortion rights: “I think it’s important to kind of be on the forefront of voting for that and just having a strong opinion on that. And that’s just kind of how I was raised.”—WisconsinProviding for a Son and His EducationTaylor Glascock for The New York TimesKelly Ocotl, 28, of Milwaukee is an executive assistant who attended a rally where Senator Ron Johnson appeared with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.“We have a son, so education is a big one. But the economy as well, you know, just trying to provide for our family is really important and how it’s kind of tanking right now.”—PennsylvaniaHuman Rights, and Food for a City’s HomelessHannah Beier for The New York TimesKish Williams, 25, of Philadelphia works as a dog handler and supervisor, is not affiliated with a party.“I know everyone’s, you know, talking about L.G.B.T. politics, trans rights, trans issues, trans protection and medication, and, being a trans individual myself, that’s a concern for me. And also, for Philadelphia specifically, I’m really interested in seeing what people are doing with the food and homelessness crisis we’re having right now.” More

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      Meet Mandela Barnes, the 35-Year-Old Candidate Working to Oust Ron Johnson

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      MILWAUKEE — Millennials came of age at a time of crisis. They are the first generation in American history positioned to be worse off than their parents, their economic trajectory forever altered by the economic meltdown of the late 2000s, as the ladders to the middle class were pulled up or broken by the crushing burden of student debt, the decline of unions and skyrocketing health care and housing costs, and as rapid technological changes proved more calamitous than democratizing.Mandela Barnes — who won the Democratic Senate primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday night — understands the challenges this era has thrust upon millennials better than most in his position. Serving under Tony Evers as the lieutenant governor of the state, Mr. Barnes is just 35 years old, and if elected could be only the second senator born in the 1980s.In many respects, he embodies both the flaws and the promise of his generation. Running to be the first Black man to represent a Rust Belt state in the Senate since Roland Burris, he is talented, charismatic and passionate, a fresh face entering the national scene in a party still dominated by an aging political establishment. But like many other millennial politicians now considering higher office, his path was a more progressive one. Mr. Barnes came up as a young State Assembly representative on Milwaukee’s liberal North Side. This fall, he will face challenging questions about his record, like his position on bail reform and the Evers administration’s response to the unrest in Kenosha.But he has the tools he needs to overcome them — he can win this race in part because he has endeared himself to mainstream Democrats as a member of the Evers administration, and because he may be able to tap into a new pool of Wisconsin voters.The fault lines in American politics are sometimes generational as well as ideological, and that is certainly part of the story unfolding in the midterm elections in Wisconsin, where Senator Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican — a vulnerable one — faces a Democrat roughly half his age.Mr. Barnes is more than a decade younger than any of the other swing state Democrats running for Senate this year. If elected, he and Jon Ossoff of Georgia would be the only millennials in the upper chamber.This generation is not especially well represented in Washington. Just 31 people born between 1981 and 1996 are currently serving in the House. And the Senate is the oldest it has ever been. One-third of its members are over the age of 70, and there are roughly as many members of the Senate in their 80s (seven) as there are under the age of 50 (eight).As Jamelle Bouie wrote recently, the older guard lacks “any sense of urgency and crisis — any sense that our system is on the brink.” Democrats have been delivering legislative wins as of late, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the Senate’s sweeping health and climate bill, but it’s been an arduous process to get there, stalled by filibusters and parliamentarians and everyday D.C. gridlock.Mr. Barnes, for his part, seems to grasp what the old guard does not. He has put eliminating the filibuster front and center in his campaign and has, throughout his career, talked about the need for Democrats to be more bold, both in their messaging and on “bread and butter issues” like health care, environmental issues and racial injustice.As a young Black millennial from a tough part of a large Midwestern city, he can give voice to issues many in the Senate cannot relate to, and he can do it through lived experience. He’s the son of a United Auto Workers father and a public-school teacher mother, who was born in a troubled, high-poverty area of Milwaukee.Of course, Mr. Barnes has his flaws as a candidate. He has encountered several mini controversies. He was once photographed holding an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt and has worked alongside Representative Ilhan Omar from neighboring Minnesota and called her “brilliant” — the type of thing that could irk centrist swing voters.But some of Mr. Barnes’s controversies are actually reasons that he may understand where younger voters are coming from. He was delinquent on a property tax payment and had an incomplete college degree (both since rectified). He also drew negative headlines for being on BadgerCare (Wisconsin’s Medicaid program) while he was running for lieutenant governor in 2018. But encountering financial challenges and making some early career mistakes sounds like a typical millennial experience. Perhaps if more of our elected officials faced similar challenges, they’d have a better idea of how to help others find solutions to them.Of course, one does not need to be a millennial to understand their problems, and age alone does not guarantee support from younger voters. Many in the demographic gravitated to Bernie Sanders over other, younger candidates in the last two presidential primaries. But Mr. Sanders’s popularity was rooted in the fact that the country he described mirrored the one that millennials had experienced — one in which economic precarity and wealth inequality had transformed the American dream into pure fantasy.To be fair, plenty of other Democratic candidates are harnessing this kind of rhetoric. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania is one example. But because of his relative youth, Mr. Barnes is uniquely well positioned to give voice to the anxieties and problems of his generation: We millennials were introduced to the horrors of school shootings through the massacre at Columbine in our adolescence; now our children go through active shooter drills in pre-K. Our country is not doing enough to address climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, rapidly eroding reproductive rights, diminishing voting rights or the skyrocketing costs of health care, child care and housing. The list goes on.Wisconsin is more politically complex than it can sometimes appear. The idea that the state can’t stomach a politician as progressive as Mr. Barnes is pure fiction. Liberal candidates have won 10 of the last 11 statewide elections. Like Mr. Barnes, Senator Tammy Baldwin was also accused of being too far left for Wisconsin when she first ran for statewide office a decade ago, and in 2018, she was re-elected by an almost 11-point margin. And while slogans like “Abolish ICE” and “Defund the Police” have become unpopular, the Black Lives Matter movement — which Mr. Barnes is a vocal supporter of — is still quite popular in Wisconsin, with a higher favorability rating than almost any state or national politician, according to the most recent Marquette University Law School poll.What’s more, Mr. Barnes has chosen his moment wisely: The state Republican Party is in disarray, riven with bickering over their nominee for governor, mired in an endless battle over the results of the 2020 election and saddled with Mr. Johnson, whose chaotic and conspiratorial comments are already alienating swing voters, tanking his favorability rating to just 21 percent among moderates.If Mr. Barnes can deliver a new kind of message that both speaks to the anxieties of younger generations and harnesses their hope, he has a fighting chance. Wisconsin is one of the nation’s most closely contested swing states, where elections are often decided by tenths of a point.If Mr. Barnes can turn out just a few thousand voters with promises to enact big, bold changes in Washington, he may be able to pull off an upset, beating Mr. Johnson in November. Colleges will be seeing their most normal returns to campus since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and students could be more directly engaged in these midterms than they were in other pandemic elections, especially with heightened activism around abortion. And in Milwaukee, turnout has never reached the levels it did during Mr. Obama’s second presidential election. If Mr. Barnes can reach a sliver of young Black voters and turn them out to the polls, it could be enough to tilt the race in his favor.Wisconsin can often be a bellwether of political change. The Tea Party wave of 2010 made the state a Republican testing ground for hard-right conservative policies that would soon go national. The 2018 election of Tony Evers was in many ways predictive of President Biden’s win two years later. A victory for a young Black millennial politician in this of all states could be a sign that a generational shift in American politics is well on its way.Dan Shafer (@DanRShafer) is a reporter based in Milwaukee. He writes a newsletter about Wisconsin politics, The Recombobulation Area.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Young Americans Are Stressed. They Are Angry. And They Can Swing Congress.

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      Millions of newly minted college graduates are about to enter a scorching job market, but many are still held back by feelings of hopelessness and depression. Less than one in 10 Americans between 18- and 29-years-old describe ours as a “healthy democracy.” Most are convinced that both political parties cater to elites over people like them and that our politics cannot meet the challenges of the times. More than anything, “happiness and stability” are what youth seek, but even that appears out of reach at a time when they’re readying to launch.These headwinds, identified by our Harvard Youth Poll, combined with untamed inflation and declining approval of President Biden, should be of significant concern to Democrats who relied on young millennials’ and Generation Z’s historic participation to win the House in 2018, the White House in 2020, and the Senate in Georgia’s 2021 special election. Without both record-breaking turnout and the 20-point margins that teenage and 20-somethings put up for Mr. Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would be a two-term president.Yet there’s a reason to believe that Democrats can run their own once-in-a-century, Rich Strike-style derby and maintain control of Congress in November’s elections. A trifecta of events and likely developments create a narrow window for Mr. Biden and Democrats to regain their footing and shock the world.The growing presence of Mr. Trump’s voice back on the national stage; the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on abortion and the likely fall of Roe v. Wade; and the opportunity for Mr. Biden to make good on a campaign commitment to address the student debt crisis have formed ideal conditions for Democratic renewal. While older voters will prioritize each party’s pledges to reduce inflation this fall, younger voters will additionally weigh the broad set of values and vision for the future held by Democrats and Republicans.Young Americans are more likely to vote when they see a tangible difference between the parties and feel the consequences of election outcomes. As Generation Z and young millennials were tuning into politics more closely, millions watched Mr. Trump roll back climate policy, undermine the Affordable Care Act, deliver tax breaks for the wealthy and pave the way for white nationalist theorists to enter the public square — all moves that were antithetical to the values of reducing inequality and standing up for those without a voice. These are values that we’ve found in young Americans across most points on the ideological spectrum. As Mr. Trump’s regressive MAGA message gains newfound traction through Republican primaries and in Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter, the fear of Trumpism on the march can be weaponized by Democrats to motivate young voters, as it was in the last midterms.Not long after Mr., Trump’s inauguration in 2017, young Americans from Boston to Bakersfield began describing to me how fear was a unifying force of their generation. “Fear of death. Fear of our rights being infringed upon. Fear of the future for our kids. Fear for our family. Fear for our health” is how a college student summarized it for me in an Ohio focus group. Polling that I conducted earlier this year for Snapchat underscored these views and their relevance once again to midterm elections. “Preserving individual rights and freedoms,” “ensuring that health care is a right,” and “safeguarding the rights of vulnerable populations” are viewed by at least two-thirds of likely Democratic-leaning and undecided young voters as “very” important issues in the coming congressional contests.The Alito draft opinion will only heighten these concerns. Three-quarters of adults under 35 disagree with the likely court ruling and believe Roe v. Wade should stand. Nearly half describe their reaction as “angry” in a recent CNN poll, and abortion policy was rated the most important midterm issue among this cohort by 10 points in a recent Monmouth University Poll.Criminalizing abortion with a new precedent that could jeopardize other constitutional rights is a clarifying political issue that — if harnessed effectively by Democratic candidates — will inspire a new class of values-first voters centered on protecting the rights of women and the vulnerable. I heard these views first hand, and raw, in Gen Z focus groups I conducted in Houston, Atlanta and Columbus, Ohio last week — especially among young women of color. These are issues of both morality and practicality for this generation. The urgency reflected in the conversations I am having with young voters today is reminiscent of what I heard after the Parkland shooting in 2018 and George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Both events helped fuel record-setting youth participation at the polls.Later this month, when President Biden delivers the commencement address at his alma mater in Delaware, he can do something that will boost the financial standard of two generations while also giving another reason for young people to vote. Already relieving nearly $20 billion of federal student loans and pausing repayment until August, Mr. Biden can honor his commitment to Gen Z and millennials and immediately cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for every American. Accordingly, this executive action will help millions of Gen Z and millennials commit to their careers, family, and communities like their parents and grandparents did at a similar life stage. Beyond the essential economic bottom line, this action will begin to materially rebuild the fractured relationship between the leader of the Democrats and a voting bloc that was integral to his party’s most recent successes.With Gen Xers in their 40s and 50s turning more conservative, and Hispanic Americans more aptly described today as a swing vote than a reliable Democratic-voting bloc, maintaining historic levels of participation and securing a 60 percent youth vote threshold is no longer a “nice to have” but an indispensable component of Democratic competitiveness in this moment.Younger Americans are a notoriously tricky population for anyone to reach; the challenge for government and politicians is even more significant as a growing number choose to turn away from the daily news for their mental wellness. Instead, they prefer to “check in” at specific points throughout the year. The State of the Union was one such moment when youth viewership increased; commencement season is another such opportunity.Building on the substantial youth participation from the last midterm election is no easy feat. When baby boomers, Gen Xers, and older millennials were under 30, they often voted at roughly half the level that Gen Zers did in 2018. By understanding the drivers of Gen Z’s and young millennials’ hopelessness, and the circumstances that have shaped their worldview, Democrats will empower young voters and continue to reshape the electorate.The best chance for Democrats’ success in the Senate starts with three states where younger Americans already have higher-than-average voter registration rates:Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor who was once dubbed “America’s coolest mayor” in an earlier role, is the favorite to win the party’s nomination for Senate in Tuesday’s primary;North Carolina, where Cheri Beasley, who was the first Black woman to serve as the state’s Supreme Court chief justice, is the front-runner in her Senate primary, also being held Tuesday;and Wisconsin, where Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican and an increasingly unpopular misinformation peddler, is seeking his third term.In Arizona and Georgia, young African Americans and other voters of color played critical roles in 2020 and 2021 and can do so again — but the challenge for Democrats is steeper. The Phoenix and Atlanta regions are suffering the highest rates of inflation in the country, putting even more pressure on the incumbent Democratic senators up for re-election, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, to prioritize young voters and speak to their values.Capturing three tossup House seats in California, including one once held by Devin Nunes, as well as winning or holding youth-friendly seats in Washington State, Iowa, Maine and Colorado, are among the best shots for Democrats to mobilize young voters in hopes of hanging on to the House in November.Gen Z and young millennials hold the fate of Congress in their hands. Their message to all of us is clear: the systems we have built cannot meet the challenges of our times and guarantee even basic rights to many of its people. Young voters are stressed. They are angry. In 2018 and 2020, they elected Democrats but in 2022 they need to see more before they commit with similar zeal again.The pathway is narrow, but the race is far from over.John Della Volpe (@dellavolpe) is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and has overseen its Youth Poll since 2000, and the author of “Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America.” He was a pollster for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Older Americans Fight to Make America Better

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      Neil Young and Joni Mitchell did more than go after Spotify for spreading Covid disinformation last week. They also, inadvertently, signaled what could turn out to be an extraordinarily important revival: of an older generation fully rejoining the fight for a working future.You could call it (with a wink!) codger power.We’ve seen this close up: over the last few months we’ve worked with others of our generation to start the group Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for progressive change. That’s no easy task. The baby boomers and the Silent Generation before them make up a huge share of the population — more nearly 75 million people, a larger population than France. And conventional wisdom (and a certain amount of data) holds that people become more conservative as they age, perhaps because they have more to protect.But as those musicians reminded us, these are no “normal” generations. We’re both in our 60s; in the 1960s and ’70s, our generation either bore witness to or participated in truly profound cultural, social and political transformations. Think of Neil Young singing “four dead in O-hi-o” in the weeks after Kent State, or Joni Mitchell singing “they paved paradise” after the first Earth Day. Perhaps we thought we’d won those fights. But now we emerge into older age with skills, resources, grandchildren — and a growing fear that we’re about to leave the world a worse place than we found it. So some of us are more than ready to turn things around.It’s not that there aren’t plenty of older Americans involved in the business of politics: We’ve perhaps never had more aged people in positions of power, with most of the highest offices in the nation occupied by septuagenarians and up, yet even with all their skills they can’t get anything done because of the country’s political divisions.But the daily business of politics — the inside game — is very different from the sort of political movements that helped change the world in the ’60s. Those we traditionally leave to the young, and indeed at the moment it’s young people who are making most of the difference, from the new civil rights movement exemplified by Black Lives Matter to the teenage ranks of the climate strikers. But we can’t assign tasks this large to high school students as extra homework; that’s neither fair nor practical.Instead, we need older people returning to the movement politics they helped invent. It’s true that the effort to embarrass Spotify over its contributions to the stupidification of our body politic hasn’t managed yet to make it change its policies yet. But the users of that streaming service skew young: slightly more than half are below the age of 35, and just under a fifth are 55 or older.Other important pressure points may play out differently. One of Third Act’s first campaigns, for instance, aims to take on the biggest banks in America for their continued funding of the fossil fuel industry even as the global temperature keeps climbing. Chase, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo might want to take note, because (fairly or not) 70 percent of the country’s financial assets are in the hands of boomers and the Silent Generation, compared with just about 5 percent for millennials. More