Charlotte Alter on the Role of Young Voters in the 2020 Race

CHARLOTTE ALTER, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: In the 2018 midterms, millennial turnout nearly doubled from the previous midterm. And this generation is fired up in a way that I don’t think many people have seen, at least since 2008 with Barack Obama. They are getting out to these big events in the primaries, they’re marching, they’re organizing and they’re really motivated by a sense of desperation about the future they’re inheriting from their parents.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Let’s ask the $100 million question, if I might. You know, why is it then that — well, not why is it then, but so many young people are going for the oldest candidate, Bernie Sanders, you know, on the Democratic side, and not so much for the youngest candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is doing pretty well? He and Bernie Sanders are doing amazingly well and they represent different spectrums of the Democratic Party. I just want to put to you what Buttigieg said about what he thinks is a false narrative about the comparisons.

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MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-SOUTH BEND, IN) PRESIDENT CANDIDATE: It’s just not true that you would have to choose between the status quo or a total revolution, there’s another way. And that other way happens to be what most Democrats and what most Americans want.

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AMANPOUR: OK. So, your take on that, that, you know, as we know, the progressive wing versus the moderate wing, and he says that’s not the comparison that’s at stake there.

ALTER: So, I think the way to look at this is actually no matter which way this goes, this is a generational change election. So, if Pete Buttigieg runs away with the nomination with the support of moderate, mostly older and middle-aged voters, that’s still a generational change election because he would be the first millennial presidential candidate and he is significantly to the left of moderates who are older than him. I mean, he still wants universal health care, he’s still for more student debt relief, he’s still for urgent action on climate change, just not as much as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and some of his progressive opponents are. If Bernie Sanders runs away with this nomination, which seems, you know, very possible, even likely, it will be because of his enormous support from millennial voters. And in fact, it’s something like two in three millennials support either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. So, they’re, you know, very, very tilted towards the progressives in this race. But I also want us to think about why are the Democrats even talking about climate change the way they’re talking about it? Why is student debt suddenly a core issue that every Democratic candidate has to deal with? It’s because millennial organizers and activists have successfully changed the conversation around — you know, towards the issues that, really, they care about and that really affect their lives.