Gen Z is not interested in "messaging." Young voters want real change

Tuesday’s election results have politicians, pundits, and political consultants from both sides of the political establishment scrambling to explain to voters what they mean for next year’s midterm elections. Their collective analyses suggest that time would be much better spent allowing voters to explain it to them.

The Democratic establishment is basking in the hope that the Trump administration’s policies have proven unpopular enough to convince a comfortable majority of Americans that whatever alternative exists, they’ll vote for it. In other words, they seem giddy at the prospect of being able to run on the at least we’re not Trump, so let’s just go back to the status quo platform of 2018 and 2020.

This approach fundamentally misunderstands what gave way to Trump’s rise, which was essentially a broad distrust of institutions and a sound rejection of both the neoconservative and neoliberal policies that drove the decades preceding the MAGA movement. The kind of Americans who do not have investment accounts, vacation properties, and skilled tax attorneys, rightly felt as though they were nothing more than afterthoughts in terms of crafting policy.

This became abundantly clear during the 2016 presidential primaries. The two candidates on the cusp of disarming the traditional party powerbrokers were running not so much against the opposition party as the status quo and a lack of meaningful difference between the two. 

Republicans had a head start from the 2010 Tea Party movement, which Trump essentially co-opted with conservative populism that took aim at immigration, foreign wars, trade imbalances, and an about-face on his abortion stance. But the real secret sauce in his approach was giving voice to a seething anger and rage that had taken root before his arrival. The Republican establishment did everything it could to prevent him from usurping them, and I would argue that it was the Democratic establishment—giddy at the prospect of Republicans actually nominating a guy they did not think could possibly win—that pushed him across the finish line.

The Democrats, of course, had their own firebrand insurgent filling arenas with a populist message in Bernie Sanders. But while Sanders won Iowa and built an incredibly impressive campaign apparatus from a diverse array of volunteers and small-dollar donors, the full-court press from the DNC and corporate-left media outlets proved enough to retain control of the party, in a way the RNC could not. As a result, a not insignificant number of Bernie supporters jumped ship.

The Bernie-to-Trump pipeline has been well documented but often misunderstood. While the personalities, politics, and principles of each man could not be further apart, they were both bringing a message that began with: Yes, you have been getting screwed over for decades, and none of these people in control of either party are going to change that. It is not a good sign for a country when a sizable portion of the electorate is essentially saying, if we have to burn it down and start over, that’s better than where we see things going. 

Heading into Tuesday, two issues were driving people to the polls: the economy and, to a lesser extent, the brutality of ICE raids. When I saw Trump and other Republicans trying to use charts and data to explain to the American people that, actually, the economy is great, you’re just not looking at it correctly—exactly as Biden and Democrats had done in 2024—it was pretty clear Dems were going to have a good day. And it was more than the big three races and the California referendum. Democrats dominated everything from Sheriff's races to school boards. In purple Georgia, Democrats swept two statewide races for the Public Service Commission. In deep red Mississippi, Republicans lost their supermajority after Dems flipped two seats in the legislature. 

We are in the midst of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Trump now owns two shutdowns that, in total, surpass the number of days the government has been shut down under any other two presidents combined. More than 1.6 million government employees are either furloughed or working without pay, after around 300,000 were eliminated by DOGE firings or resignation incentives. That’s a lot of people without a paycheck to spend. 

When you consider that UPS recently cut 48,000 jobs, Amazon is planning to cut up to 30,000, Intel announced it will cut 24,000 jobs, Nestlé is cutting 16,000 jobs, and Ford and Accenture have laid off 11,000 workers each, there isn't much to be excited about. Additionally, the entire U.S. economy has become one giant, far-from-certain bet on AI-related tech firms, many of which are grossly overvalued by any historical comparison. In other words, consumer confidence sounds a bit like an oxymoron these days.

Despite Trump rambling on about the cost of ingredients for a Thanksgiving dinner at Walmart having gone down (it didn't) or saying inflation has been handled, Americans are still seeing what they see at the supermarket, in restaurants, on car lots, in rent prices, and at just about any other place one might spend money. In 2024, the economy was the top issue for most American voters, and Trump won 60% of those voters. On Tuesday, he lost them by an even wider margin.

That should not be a surprise. In November of 2017, 68% of voters across the board thought the economy was doing well. Now, at the same point in his second term, only 28% think so. The tariffs remain deeply unpopular, with a substantial majority of Americans blaming them for the high prices they are facing. Because tariffs are Trump’s signature policy and were vehemently opposed by Democrats, Republicans can't attempt to shift the blame. 

Immigration is also an issue that has flipped for Trump. By April, when most of the focus was on securing the border, it had become his best polling metric, and 54% of Americans approved of his handling of immigration policy. However, the heavy-handed tactics of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have shocked Americans, and a majority now say the administration has gone too far. 

Make no mistake, it’s the economy, stupid. However, seeing American citizens getting brutally beaten for peacefully protesting, knowing nearly two hundred citizens have been illegally detained and several have even been shot (with agents bragging about it), is even harder to swallow when one is preparing for a Hunger Games-like scenario economically. There has to be something to look forward to, and unless you’re the kind of person who likes to rage-watch YouTube videos of brown people and peaceful protestors being brutalized by masked agents, 2025 isn’t offering much. Throw in the fact that Trump had thrown a lavish Great Gatsby-themed party that weekend, just as SNAP benefits were expiring, and hungry people were confronted with the fact that even food pantries are suffering after he cut half a billion dollars in funding to them in April, and suffice it to say, many of Tuesday's voters were less than enthused about Republican policies.

And now, the elephant in the conversation: Zohran Mamdani. The 34-year-old Social Democrat won a resounding victory Tuesday to become Mayor of New York City, despite everyone from Trump to his billionaire buddy Bill Ackman and the Democratic establishment itself doing everything they could to stop him. And in large part, he did it by activating Gen Z voters. Mamdani built a grassroots campaign that spoke only after it listened.

Rather than taking a closer look at why that happened, Republicans are gleeful at the prospect of making Mamdani the face of Democratic politics as we head into the midterms. Meanwhile, the Democratic establishment is trying to distance itself from him, even while issuing polite congratulations. Both Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries live in New York City, and their absence at Mamdani’s victory party was notable. Both parties, however, have talked endlessly about copying his successful "messaging" on the "affordability issue."

The reason is simple and speaks to what the vast majority of Americans think about both parties. At their core, they serve the interests of a small, uber-wealthy elite. The Republican Party has done so since Nixon. It has been studiously chipping away at campaign finance since his presidency to address the fact that their natural constituency (business owners and the wealthy) would always be outnumbered in a democracy. Don’t believe me? Read the infamous Powell memo or invest the time in listening to the podcast series Master Plan by The Lever. 

Spooked by their financial disadvantage, Democrats, formerly the party of the working class, got into bed with Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Banking, Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and a host of other special interests and began courting moderate suburbanites who still wanted low taxes and the luxury of extracting the wealth of future generations for themselves but weren't onboard with conservative social issues. 

How to market oneself in that environment is a bit of a trick, however, which is where identity politics comes in. Identity politics are perfect in that they can make white collar people feel better without actually costing them anything, unlike providing affordable health care, closing the wealth gap, or addressing the debt crisis. Republicans have an ideology based on individualism, so those issues are baked in with terms like personal responsibility, even if the irony of how much upward redistribution of wealth results from their policies seems forever beyond their grasp.

Is it any wonder at all that Gen Z is skeptical of capitalism, given their experience with it? For the vast majority of Americans coming of age in 2025, the prospect of simply buying a house and having the means to start a family—the original American dream—seems like a fairytale. Why? Because the generations before them put everything on a credit card and are trying to stick them with the bill. 

The idea of “capitalism vs. socialism or communism,” as it was framed after World War II, is utterly ridiculous today. The United States has always had a mixed economy in which some things are a function of the public sector while others are left to private investment. The struggle has always been in balancing them. Fire departments, public education, law enforcement, the military, the courts, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the postal service are essentially socialist programs in which the government performs functions that markets cannot effectively manage. These things actually make capitalism work better by providing societal stability that creates investor confidence.

We have also always had guardrails for the private sector to prevent unfettered capitalism (which does not have any better of a record than communism) from devolving into fiefdoms of monopoly and corruption. For more than half a century, we have been consistently removing guardrails while imposing lower and lower tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, allowing them to hoard more and more wealth. As a result, we are now 39 trillion dollars in debt, while the number of billionaires in the U.S. has risen from four to nearly 900 during the same period. 

We were sold a promise that low taxes on the wealthiest Americans would lead to so much economic growth that the treasury would take in much more money through increased economic activity than it would lose through tax cuts. That $39 trillion debt Gen Z has inherited is proof that we were sold a lie. Tax policies that allow for such conspicuous hoarding of wealth render governments ineffective at tackling important social problems. We are now spending more money servicing that debt than we are on the military!

One of the primary reasons is that the government continues to spend money into the economy without ever taxing a similar amount out of it. That’s a big part of the function of income taxes. Contrary to state and local taxes, your federal income tax doesn’t really pay for the budget. When Congress approves federal spending, funds are appropriated, and then money is taxed out of the economy, primarily to prevent inflation. But if you are taxing out far less than you are spending in, you will not only get inflation (too many dollars chasing too few goods), you’ll also mint more billionaires. 

Is it any wonder that Gen Z is asking not for “socialism” so much as a return to a different formula of capitalism in which taxes were genuinely progressive, allowing the government to provide adequate services without exploding the debt? You know, like Eisenhower’s America? All week, I’ve heard pundits lament: "Yeah, everyone wants free buses and free childcare, but they don’t realize someone has to pay for that stuff." 

Yes, genius. The same way as when the stock market class was bailed out during COVID, the banks were rescued in 2008, we spent trillions on illegal wars, all while keeping taxes far lower than expenditures, with the vast majority of the cuts going to the richest among us. Boomers expect Gen Z to pay the bill for the meal they themselves have enjoyed. Is it any wonder that they would rather reboot the system?

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection available here.