The audio-only version of this episode is here and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Today’s podcast is about the youth. And when I say youth, I am being generous. What I really mean is millennials, a group that today stretches from the sprightly age of 30 to the ripe old age of 45. (We also talk about Gen Z, but that’s a group that still hasn’t come into its own politically and economically. The youngest Gen Zers are still five years away from the voting booth.)
But millennials are here. They run the largest AI companies in the world, sit in seats of power from Congress to the vice presidency, and are increasingly reshaping American politics in their image.
If you’ve followed Democrats’ mini-summer of discontent, you’ve noticed that, at least within the Democratic Party, they are much more progressive than their elders and more likely to back insurgent candidates who pitch wholesale change.
Though it’s a group that leans left, the young right is also different. They’ve ditched Fox for podcasters, care more about cancel culture than traditional values like same-sex marriage or abortion, and share a skepticism of the status quo with their left counterparts.
In talking about the youth, or the younger half of the country (the median American is 40), we try to get a better sense of this moment in politics and where the ascendant generations are taking us next. We touch on recent intraparty fights and dive into the new political tribes that describe our divisions.
Joining me on this episode is Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights. She also writes the newsletter Type A- and is the author of the book The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up).
