S4 Ep53: Trump Is All They Know (with Peter Hamby)
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, and this week we're covering one of the trickier demographics this election cycle, the youths, the youths, as Joe Pesci would call them, young folks who are voting in their very first presidential election, and they are adorable. This is a tough demographic to cover. We're going to talk about the youths, the youths, the youths, the youths, the youths, the youths,

But I want to unravel some of the common threads tying together young conservatives and young progressives that might explain why this demographic is different from their predecessors and why some, especially Gen Z men, could be more open to Trump than we might expect.

My guest today is one of my favorite youth correspondents, Peter Hamby, co-founder of Puck News and host of Snapchats. Good luck, America. Peter, thanks for being here. Great to be here talking about the youths. Two very youthful people talking about the youths. I know. I think last time actually that we did this, we spent the first 15 minutes just talking about like 90s trivia and about how old we are, which I will say- We can skip that.

When I do the young – and this is a very young demo that we did because they are all first-time voters. The, like, you kids get off my lawn instinct in me, like, really does come out when they just, like, say things that are so patently untrue or they're being unnecessarily bleak about things. I want to be like, you kids, shape up. Shape up. Yeah.

How did you find our kids this time around? I mean, obviously, we're going to get into this. But last time we talked on this topic, Biden was the nominee. Things have obviously shifted. Gaza was a heated issue. It's still...

is, I guess, not in polls necessarily, but it showed up a little in the focus groups among the young progressives. So there's one sort of table setter thing that I think is interesting is we're recording this right after the new Harvard Youth Poll came out, which I think is the gold standard of polls when it comes to 18 to 29-year-olds. Harvard Institute of Politics, John Della Volpe, the pollster, runs it, comes out twice a year. Some polling, some of it's noise, some of it's crosstab diving.

But a lot of polling has shown this sort of Gen Z gender gap opening up. Washington Post ABC poll from, I think, two weekends ago had Kamala Harris winning young women by like 38 points or something bananas, but only winning young men by three, which is not what Democrats typically get, at least going back to the first Obama election in 2008. In the Harvard Youth Poll that came out, Kamala's opened up a huge lead among young women. It's like...

70, 20 or something crazy like that. But among young men, and these are likely voters, it was Harris 53, Trump 36. So a narrower lead, but still bigger than some of the polling that we've seen and some of the commentary. Now, when I was watching the focus groups, the young progressives, I assumed the young progressives would be when Megan asked them, you know, how have your feelings changed since Biden left the race? Now that Kamala is the nominee, who's excited? I

They weren't excited. And so this might play to your crotchety old millennial, Sarah, where you're like, what else do you guys want? That's right. What the hell do you want? Like you didn't like Biden. Literally in the focus group, you could see people sort of going like, man, like waving their hands side to side when Megan asked them if they were super hyped about Kamala. More people were more interested in voting against Trump. And the young conservatives, what I found interesting is most people

said they were voting proactively for Trump. Now, again, this is a little crossways with the Harvard IOP poll, which showed enthusiasm much higher among young Democrats than young Republicans. So anyway, there's some interesting threads to pull at cross-checking this new poll against what I just watched in your focus groups. Yeah, I would say that my overall takeaway when I watched the two groups was just a little bit of...

wanting these kids to like be a little more invested, maybe like pick up the sense of urgency a little bit. But, you know, they are, they're like teenagers. Like, yeah, oh, I don't like this and I don't like this. Some quality Gen Z haircuts on the Young Progressives. There were. Great Gen Z TikTok haircut.

Some big hair on the boys. All right, we're going to get into all this. We're going to go deep on it. I want to talk about your puck piece at some point, because what was interesting to me about your most recent piece, which I had just read, is about how it was sort of about the youths, but it was more about the olds. And I want to talk about the olds. Even though we're going to talk about the youths, I want to talk about the olds relative to the youths at some point as well. But before we do that, let's just listen to how these young conservatives who are going to be voting for the first time talked about Trump.

Like whether you like him or not, he is a politician that fulfilled his promises, even like the soft ones. I didn't think that abortion was going to get overturned like Roe v. Wade, but he did it. So I was surprised that he kept that one. There was a bunch of other promises like the wall. He started building the wall and I saw it and the economy, jobs. And I just think things were going well.

The reason I'm voting for Trump is just because he's closer to my beliefs on abortion and immigration and the economy. One of the main things was energy independence, how under him we exported more, I think it was oil or whatever, than we imported, which I think is definitely important. I feel like the system...

is corrupt. But as to why I'm voting for Trump, it's mostly because of the corruption. Like all politicians are corrupt. Kamala's corrupt. Biden's been corrupt. All of our presidents have. I think Trump is, but Trump's more of a businessman than a politician. So I feel like he kind of knows, I don't think knows is the right word. He'll make better decisions for us in terms of the economy. A lot of people feel like that's a huge issue and he'll definitely improve that.

So kind of just the fact that he isn't fully under control by people kind of behind the scenes. He ran America like a business and he's pretty dang good at running businesses. But judging by the fact he's a multi-billionaire and has successful real estate holdings and companies and all that. So he's dang good at what he does. I have a very interesting memory from the 2016 campaign. I distinctly remember, even though I was like,

10, maybe 11 years old at the time. I would be arguing with my cousins or whatever, aunts and uncles at the family gathering like, "No, guys, come on. Trump's really good. Trump's awesome." I didn't know anything. I didn't have access to the internet at the time. I knew like, "Oh man, Trump's a cool guy."

Okay, so this last guy makes a point I want to get into further, which is basically the kids voting for the first time, the young people voting for the first time, they were 9 or 10 when Trump launched his first campaign. Which leads me to a point I like to make a lot to reporters when they ask questions about young voters, which is especially when it comes to young conservatives, voters.

They came to the party because of Trump. Like, younger conservatives are like, what is a Nikki Haley and why would I want that? And it's actually the older voters who came for Reagan or became conservatives just at a different time that are like, I do not like this Trump fellow. This is not my jam. But the young ones, they're there for it. So,

You've written about how Walls and Harris should be doing more like going to Trump-friendly podcast spaces like the Joe Rogan type. What's Trump's strategy been for getting to the youth? I mean, he, first of all, at the Republican convention, we saw pretty clearly what his strategy was to reach men and

and young men by including Dana White from the UFC, Hulk Hogan. Kid Rock is not young nor cool, so maybe that's not targeted toward them. But he has done something that Barack Obama can do and used to do, something that Bernie Sanders has done. I'm trying to think of other Democrats who can go into some of these podcast spaces, do a Theo Vaughn, do a Joe Rogan. And by the way, Sarah, as you know,

Theo Vaughn, Joe Rogan, other white male podcasters, a lot of them appeal to Republicans, but they themselves aren't technically Republicans. They're just sort of like

Guys who are like, you got to do your own research. They're contrarian types. You know, they don't like woke, quote unquote. And Trump has been leaning into that heavily. The gender gap with Gen Z, whether it's what we saw in the Harvard poll this week or whether it's much closer among young men, it is still obvious and evident that young men have been leaving the Democratic Party, at least in these polls.

since 2020. It showed up a little bit in 2022. If any exit pollsters from Edison or AP are listening, please do age and gender breakouts in the exit polls this year, because that was not included in 2020 or before, at least in my research. So it would be really helpful to know come election day how many young men versus young women.

voted Kamala Harris versus Trump. Not to plug a podcast rival, but Adisu Demisi and Dan Pfeiffer did a very good conversation about this Gen Z gender gap. I called it in Puck the Swift-Rogan election, although Swift is a little more millennial than Gen Z in terms of fandom, I think. They validated what I'm saying to you right now, which is, and Dan made this point, Barack Obama, if he wanted to reach young men,

in 2008 or 2012. He'd go on SportsCenter and he'd fill out his brackets with Andy Katz for March Madness. The media environment is so fragmented and splintered now, it's hard to do any singular media event that reaches any group of people. That's one thing. But then two, like...

Who's the Barack Obama of 2024? And like Tim Walls can talk about sports, sure. And he can change his carburetor, sure. But he doesn't sort of check the box, I think, for the rebellious young guy. I made this point on CNN and some people made fun of me the other day about like Jeff Zeleny interviewed a voter in Asheville, you know, which is a liberal enclave in North Carolina, older white guy about why he loves Tim Walls and how Walls can help reach men. And

And this voter is wearing a future as female shirt. Like that guy's already a Democrat. This terrible ad that came out with like white dudes for Harris, like that feels like it was cooked up in a lab by like Elizabeth Warren supporting men. But it didn't like tell me why a guy should vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And so I do think there's a lack of a bench of voters.

men who can go into these podcasts, but also like who can reach the young black men, young Hispanic men as well. And, you know, not come off as sort of just like a nanny state liberal. I'm sorry. Like Barack Obama was versatile in that way. And Bernie Sanders has some natural appeal there.

to younger men. And we saw that even in the young conservatives focus group that you did. And I think the bench is pretty limited for Democrats in terms of who can do that kind of outreach. The last thing I'll say on this, young men overall, still, I'm separating out the young conservatives that you have in your focus group, are pretty progressive when it comes to climate and the role of government. They're not like explicitly Trumpy. They just kind of like his brand, his rebelliousness, and the fact that he's not

I guess at this point, Kamala Harris. So I thought that was interesting as well. Okay. I want to switch to the young progressives. We had a lot of polls over the summer showing Biden's numbers absolutely in the toilet with young people. In the weeks after the June debate, Biden was only leading by about 10 points among the 18 to 29 demographic. Biden won the youth vote by about 24 points in 2020, according to an average of the post-election surveys. Hey,

Harris leads by about 22 points since the debate, according to the crosstab aggregator, which we name check on this show all the time. So one of the things that I really took away from the last time you were on the show that I just like burned into my brain is your 60% threshold.

Right. You said that Democratic presidential candidates have about 60 percent of the young vote to be in good shape to win. Hillary Clinton was below that line and lost. And Harris right now, she's like right on the bubble at about 59 percent.

But you said, like you point out in the Harvard Youth Bowl, Harris is leading 61-30. So she's at your magic number with the 18-29 demo. And that includes leading by 17 points among men and then 47 points among women. So it was clear from the progressives we talked to why the progressives were down on Biden and why Harris's fortunes have improved by comparison. Let's listen. I was on the edge about whether I'd even bother voting because...

Well, I mean, either one of them is probably going to do stuff that I don't like, especially since at the time when Biden was starting to ramp up, I was really dissatisfied with his inaction regarding the situation with Israel and Palestine.

Their lack of action on that and stance on the matter really has left a bad taste in my mouth. And some of that has carried over to Harris as well. But that plus just his lack of action on a lot of things in the last few years made it feel like it was a matter of which of the two I dislike less.

One, I'm really hopeful that she will be able to reinstate Roe v. Wade. I think that's something that should absolutely happen. And her being a woman and having a very firm stance on that matter is something that I'm really happy about. She was talking about Project 2025 and Trump's association with it. And she was calling him out on it. And he was like, oh, no, I know nothing about it. Oh, I don't know nothing. And I don't really believe him because I feel like he is associated with that. He's just trying to backtrack. And I'm like,

Like, Trump, like, you're literally a conservative. You were literally grifting towards conservatism. Why are you trying to act like you don't have nothing to do with that? You know what I'm saying? And I feel like he was trying to backtrack and, you know, say, like, he doesn't see all those things. And also with abortion, too, is very important. She was talking about how, like, he was the reason why the Roe v. Wade got overturned. Because when he was president, he put people in power in the Congress or whatever to go and, like, how do you call it?

to overturn Roe v. Wade. And he was the reason for that. And I'm like, that's why I wanted to vote for her because maybe she might do something about it and like maybe bring it back or something. And when Biden was in the race, even when he was talking, it was just like kind of embarrassing. If he had stayed in the race, honestly, I felt like Trump would have won because it's like he didn't even know what to say. And he was kind of like stuttering and stuff. Like, I don't have a problem with him stuttering, but like it was like it was really bad.

I am honestly hopeful that she'll win because of the debate and how she was speaking. I just feel a bit more confident in her answers. And I believe that Trump has a tendency to lie about a lot of things, especially with the Project 2025 thing, his stance on abortion. I do recall people that he is...

like affiliated with, I want to say they're a part of that. And I just don't feel comfortable with him being our president. So whenever I saw that Harris was going to be like the new candidate and stuff, I honestly felt a lot better because I felt that she would be better than Biden at least.

I definitely agree with a lot of things that she's saying. And she speaks very like she knows what she's talking about. And like in the debate I watched, it was like night and day with her and Trump. Like she knew what she was saying. I guess I'm a little hesitant because any politician will make a bunch of promises and then they get in office and they don't actually do much of what they say. So that's kind of.

my hesitation towards her, but yeah, I am excited that she's a woman and she likes and agrees with a lot of policies that I agree with also.

Her and Tim Waltz have still not done very many interviews. And it would be cool to see them doing a little bit more of that. And I'd just like to hear more about her plans. Especially, this brings me to my biggest problem with her, is there's been a sudden lack of coherence with her previous ambitions for a greener future, which has been a really big problem for me. All of a sudden,

I understand having fracking being a thing that's transitioned out of, but during the debate, she didn't even follow up her statement about fracking with something about what she was going to do for the environment or going towards that kind of future. It irks me a bit when, especially during the debate, like she's clearly pandering towards more middle ground voters or right voters. And I think that that's not always like the best political move.

Okay, so those are our progressives. Now, Peter, back in June, you were writing about some of the polling of young voters by a Democratic firm called Blueprint, and they had some startling findings. For instance, only half of the young voters were, quote-unquote, bothered by Trump's stolen election claims, and only 46% were bothered by him asking Brad Raffensperger questions.

to go ahead and find him 11,000 votes. There were all other kinds of Trump moments. The voters didn't know about them. They weren't widely known. Because if you're talking about someone who's 20 today, they were 11 when Trump announced his first run in 2015. And so what we consider freakish and unacceptable is to them normal. So you did it a little bit with sort of the men. You were talking about men.

What do you think is happening overall that is pushing younger people to be interested in Trump in a way that defies historical precedent? Well, let's step back. I mean, young people overall still prefer Kamala Harris. And they prefer Joe Biden, not by the margins that he would have needed to win. I think it was only 13 points in favor of Biden in that last Harvard poll compared to now when Kamala Harris is winning young people by 31 points.

Another note is I was struck by the young conservatives. And you're absolutely right, and I'm glad you're bringing this up because when you get older, sometimes you're like frozen in time and your conception of like what an older person is is frozen. Like seniors now are baby boomers. They're more progressive than seniors were in 2008 when those seniors came up in a different time. And so I was fascinated by this because we hear a lot from young voters in these news cycles right now. We don't hear a lot from first-time voters.

I mean, these are people who could be 18. Some of them could be 17 right now. And that means that, yeah, they were eight years old when Trump was coming down the escalator. And so, as you mentioned, their concept of a Republican and by the way, their concept of Democrats, too, is different than ours. You and me, Sarah, because for a lot of those folks, Democrats in their lifetime are

It was Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. I'm sorry. They're not Barack Obama. They're not. And a lot of people probably assume that young people think Democrats are cooler or whatever. Like if you came of age watching Hillary Clinton telling you to Pokemon go to the polls, you

I'm sorry. That's not cool. So Trump is what the Republican Party is now in the young conservative focus group. I was struck by a couple of things. One, yes, you could hear them parrot some of Trump's language and some of the MAGA language, his terms of the debate, talking about woke culture a little bit, attacking the media came up a lot. The media twists things. They say things are worse than they are. Um,

the wall, the border wall. But also, some of these young folks sounded like college Republicans when you were at Kenyon, if they had college Republicans, and I was at Georgetown. Like, they sounded like Paul Ryan college Republican nerds. They were talking about the Republicans are good at business and the economy. They were talking a lot about abortion.

They kept going back to the economy. And look, Republicans have this built-in advantage, and they always have on that economy question who would manage it better. Because Republicans are perceived as like the party of low taxes, or they're perceived as businessmen, you know, like Mitt Romney or Donald Trump. By the way, they're not wrong. Prices were lower four years ago. You can blame that on COVID. You can blame it on Trump. You can blame it on Biden. But it's a fact of life.

And so that isn't just a talking point. And if you ask young men in any poll what the number one issue is, it's the economy. If you ask young women what the number one issue is, it's abortion. And so I think that's also driving the gender gap that we're seeing a little bit, too.

Yeah, I mean, when I listen to young people, and it actually wasn't as pronounced in this group, but I would say they are hitting the economy for the first time. Often these kids are actually so young. They are like 18 to 21. They mostly still live with their parents, I suspect. But when you talk to the 18 to 30 demo and you've got people who are trying to get their first apartments, they're suddenly paying for their own groceries. They are experiencing some real shock around prices and affordability that I do think changes things.

Okay, I want to get into the conservatives a little more because you bring it up. They were really interesting. And most of our focus groups- They're interesting. Sorry to interrupt, Sarah, because they liked J.D. Vance. Yeah, this is exactly where I'm going. It is hard to find people who like J.D. Vance and the Republican Party's stance on abortion. Like when you're just doing general voters and certainly when you're doing swing voters. But these young conservatives were different. Let's listen to how they talked about Vance and the direction of the GOP.

So I think J.D. Vance is definitely a much better pick than Mike Pence because Mike Pence was pretty boring. And I think he was just out of touch with the Republican Party. And he didn't really agree with much of the stuff that Trump was doing. So it was kind of like a detriment.

But J.D. Vance is this newer generation. He's younger. I feel like he's more moderate. So I personally don't know a whole lot about Vance. Like when I look at a president, I really don't.

pay a whole lot of attention to their VP. Like it's always been Biden or Trump or Trump or Hillary or whatever. Something that I thought was really cool was when Trump and RFK came together because I like a lot of RFK's ideas specifically around like health and the food system and whatnot. I guess Trump being kind of a figurehead for the party that he's willing to take on these ideas that

politics has seemed to kind of neglect all the conglomerates of corporations that just are ruining people's health. I believe it was at the RNC where they give the party platform. I believe this year was the first year that they didn't have a call for a federal abortion ban in their party platform, which is like their beliefs. So that was kind of disappointing for me personally.

I don't really like pay attention to the smaller guys, but I do know obviously our like country motto is God's country, you know? And I know he's a big advocate for like freedom of religion. And he is also a critic for like the whole cultural woke things that are going on. And I feel like he would be a really good asset to the Republican party because he's super traditional and super respectful to,

the traditional ways of living, I guess. I don't know what I can say and what I can't say, but his intentions are pure in terms of like the woke society.

Okay. So it's all in there, right? So he's anti-woke. I love the guy who's like talking about RFK and how he's really glad Trump's bringing RFK in. And this is where the young men, young women thing gets thrown into stark relief. You were talking about sort of the manosphere influencers, but there is this

weird, like one of the guys in this group who was very pro-life, he was a Bernie bro. He's a self-described Bernie bro who like became a Trumper, lives in California. He had very long hair. It was a cool looking dude.

But like, I guess when I listened to these, it was mostly men in this group, very pro-life group, a lot of talk about religion. And so they did in that sense remind me of sort of young conservatives that I knew. They cared about the economy. They talk about God. They're very pro-life. And yet they liked this sort of newer generation, even though RFK is 70, but this barstool sports, wellness, free speech, Elon, man.

Manosphere that's all kind of coming together, I think, to shift how men are thinking about things politically. But

But women, they get more and more progressive, right? And it's not nearly as pronounced in older folks. Older folks are much closer together in terms of their voting behavior, whereas the polarization among gender with these young people is so bad and so pronounced that I do wonder, like, can we propagate the species? Like, how will men and women find each other and decide to cohabitate, you know, going forward? Right.

I have a funny story about this, which is adjacent to your focus groups, which and my wife, Katie, showed me this. It was some survey of young women and they asked young women. This was a couple weeks ago. Obviously, you saw it on Twitter. Forget the headline. Forget the link. So maybe I'm just peddling fake news. But they asked women what the most appealing hobbies are.

young men could have to make them more attractive, more dateable. The top hobbies that young women said for young men would be like knowing how to cook, playing an instrument, being interested in books, being interested in politics. Oh, it wasn't playing video games, huh? So at the bottom of the list, it was like video games, being interested in crypto, listening to podcasts. So again, all the things that are driving this gender gap, not all of them, but

But some cultural things that are driving this gender gap validate your point, I think. And that's pretty interesting. Look, crypto is a good example of something that I think we should talk about here. So if you think about young men, and again, I'm parroting John De La Volpe's polling here. I'm just being his hype man. One thing that comes up in polls over and over and over again for him, whether he's doing them for companies or for Harvard poll, whatever, is that, as you mentioned, when young people enter the economy,

They feel like they do not have access to it. It is hard, cost of rent, buying a car, finding a job, being underemployed, like being a wage worker or driving an Uber versus having a full-time job with benefits. That feels hard for them. The other thing that is different from millennials

is that Gen Z, men and women, care way more about their personal financial security, the financial security of their friends and family, money. They care more about money than millennials do. Millennials were, this is a stereotype, but like more interested in like

Saving the world, going into politics, becoming a founder, joining the Peace Corps. The Gen Z folks coming up after the Great Recession, that's not what they're interested in. And so with crypto, whenever I'm on a college campus and I just am doing man-on-the-street interviews, ask about issues. Late November last year, I was at the University of Wisconsin interviewing just kids on campus.

RFK Jr. came up multiple times when I was talking to some bros walking across campus. I was like, why? And it's like, oh, I think he says he's like into crypto and protecting crypto. You know, crypto is a way to...

Get rich quick. Let's cut to the chase. It's not about like building an alternative like economic system. It's sort of like gambling in certain ways. And so that appeals to young people who care about their finances. Another interesting thing about crypto, and by the way, depending on the poll, like maybe there's a gender gap that's huge with young men. Maybe there's not. But Kamala Harris at a New York fundraiser the other night basically came out and said she's going to protect –

Cryptocurrencies. Like she wants to stand up for those emerging industries. And that, that to me signaled, she's like talking to the tech industry. Yes. But also talking to young people, but yeah, dudes like crypto, the women, they don't really care about it. Well, Donald Trump says he's going to pay for everything with crypto. So great news, easy peasy, quick solve. Speaking of crypto and paying for things now we got to go pay some bills.

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Because here's the thing, our electoral system works and Democracy Decoded will help you understand why. Listen now at democracydecoded.org or on your favorite podcast app. A big thanks to Democracy Decoded for sponsoring this show. All right, now I want to revisit something that you and I talked about last year. Participants' worries about the future, which sort of goes to what we were just talking about.

So one thing I like to ask in focus groups of 20-somethings is how they're thinking about things like having kids one day. It's a good proxy for whether people are feeling hopeful about the world that they're stepping into. And as you may guess, conservatives and progressives answered that very differently, but in a way that I think is instructive because they do have some overlapping concerns. So first, let's listen to the conservatives. I kind of agree that it could be scary to bring children into the world.

I think it was ridiculous, personally, to politicize climate change. I think that it would be silly to look at the climate and try and ignore that things are changing, whether we're in control of it or not.

It's scary to me, but I don't think that that's a valid reason to not bring kids into the world. Why are we trying to make it a better place if we don't want to have kids to have it be a better place for? What's the point? So that's kind of my viewpoint. I feel like the future has always been super uncertain. I remember...

someone was giving a discussion or something like 30 years ago and they were like, the 2000s are coming up. This is scary. Like, should I have children or not? And so I feel like it's always kind of been something that's scary, but I feel like that's kind of the point of why we're here. I mean, just the Abrahamic covenant just kind of states that our purpose is to multiply, replenish the earth, be good parents, be loving family members. Being a Christian, the Bible says that children are a blessing from the Lord, that

like arrows in the hand of a mighty warrior are the children of one's youth, right? That's the responsibility we have for most people. And that I don't really see much satisfaction in life, you know, just earning money or something else, like, you know, just all the blessings that come from children. It mainly goes down to my religion. My religious beliefs say that that's kind of the purpose here on this earth is to like,

I don't know, procreate and multiply or whatever. And yeah, I'd say I generally agree with that. When I'm lying on my deathbed, am I going to be surrounded by the money that I made? No, I want to be surrounded by the people who I love and care about and the family that I helped to grow or whatever. We have a lot of tools and ways that we can be successful in our life.

We were given great technology, but I feel like we're also worse off because we have a lot more adversity headed towards us because we are obviously the new generation. But there's also so many corrupt things that are going on that we have to learn how to handle versus 20 years ago when our parents were our age. When you talk to young conservatives, are you surprised by how socially conservative they sound? I spend a lot of time for my Snapchat show online.

Hanging out in flyover country and going to red states and purple states. And in my career, I have too. So, you know, it's not unusual to encounter young people who are pro-life. So that doesn't surprise me. If you look at the polls, say it's 60-30 Democrat, Republican among young people, like that's a lot of people who are conservative. You know, I think what was interesting to me was how many of the young men were

They just used a lot of religious imagery and the covenant here and with the arrows. And I feel like in that sort of sphere of influence for some of these young men who are more right, does you feel like it's infused with a kind of religiosity or do you feel like it's much more secular? Yeah.

I guess I was trying to figure out whether these people are just being raised in Christian households or whether it is in the mix. Not exactly the manosphere, but like in the things that all kind of come together. I mean, I've been to...

tent revivals and evangelical churches, like anywhere in this country from Oregon to South Carolina. And you encounter just young conservatives whose worldviews are influenced by their Christian upbringing. That's partly cultural, partly geographic. But I think you're right. Like the rise of Christian nationalism in this country is correlated with the rise of Donald Trump. And like,

Tucker Carlson talks about this kind of thing. Candace Owens is like a big, big thing for her. Like she's very Christian and she talks about how it influences her identity and her political worldview. And she's

She's in the top five podcasts on Spotify this week. So yeah, don't tell Tim Miller that. Yeah, it's I think it's a little bit of both for sure. Well, the young conservatives, they were optimistic enough and motivated enough to make sure that they were procreating. But let's listen to how the progressives answered this question. I'm on the fence of having kids because like.

I was kind of scared of like a relationship and marriage anyways. And also I'm not a big fan of kids because like I used to live in a one bedroom apartment with seven other people. I mean, six other people. And it just sucked. And it was like it was just horrible. And I felt like really sad because I couldn't have my own space. I couldn't have a lot of things. And I'm afraid that if I have a kid, they might be in that situation, too.

The jobs available right now, the salary, I don't want to have them in that predicament also. So that's like why I'm also on the fence with having kids with

anything in this world at this point. I've always wanted to have kids in the future, but with how things are going, I'm hesitant because of like financially taking care of them. It's, it's changed. It's really expensive. And then there's the safety that I'm like extremely worried about, especially with like the abundance of school shootings that we're having now and children bringing guns, having access to guns and,

that really worries me. And like in that college student mindset, we're always worried about like finances and how much things cost. And I feel like

I would worry more about dealing with that. And I really wouldn't want to put a child in like a situation where they can't get the things that they need. I think that there's a few factors that really keep me from wanting to have kids. It is something that I like would be interested in, in different circumstances. But my main thing is climate change.

I don't know. Changes are happening like pretty rapidly at this point. We're seeing like a lot of flooding in places and obviously different weather extremes and 50 degrees above in the Arctic.

So stuff like that is just scary to bring, like want to bring a kid into that world. And then other thing is, yeah, like schools, you know, just not feeling like fully safe. Not just schools, like America in general, as it stands, just doesn't feel like the safest, most like homey place. I go to like Europe kind of frequently because my grandma lives there. I would be easily persuaded to like have a kid there. It would just be, there's so much more social infrastructure that supports life.

The U.S. is very much like pay for your health care, pay for X, Y, and Z. You know, if you have a kid, do you want to leave work because you had a kid? No, no, no, no. Keep working. Doesn't matter. You just had the baby. But come back. I don't know. It's just pretty bleak world to have a kid. And I mean, I don't know. Maybe one good thing is I know that Harrison Wallace want to introduce about next credit. Great.

But even so, I mean, I don't know, unless really something can be done about the environmental state of the world. Because in a hundred years...

So, Peter, we heard a lot of concerns about the cost of living, the climate, the fact they can't live the way their parents did. I'm particularly interested in the progressive cynicism we heard, you know, that life is just going to suck for them in perpetuity. Some of this is endemic to being in your 20s. But do you think this generation's bleak view of things is going to have a radicalizing effect? Absolutely.

Every time I listen to progressives, they don't want to have kids. They're like, everything is so terrible. We're going to end up with only conservatives are going to procreate and they're the only ones who are going to find each other. I last time we did this podcast, we had a young progressive who was like, I don't know. Rent is so expensive where I live. And it turned out this person like lived in Manhattan or something. It's like, yeah, that's endemic to being in your 20s.

First of all, and these 18-year-olds don't have kids right now. You're fine. Like, figure it out in 10 years, okay? Just chill. That's part of it. Poll after poll after poll surfaces a lot of anxiety about the future among young people overall. So the Harvard poll, 59% fearful about the future of America. 51% feel nervous, anxious, or on edge generally. 47% have questions.

quote, trouble relaxing several days a week. And it goes on down the line, like anxiety, fear, depression. And by the way, some of this cuts to

why a lot of young women don't want to have kids or say they are fearful about relationships. And this is related to why some young men are having a negative reaction to conversations around gender and relationships and masculinity. It depends on what feed you're in. But you go on TikTok, you see a lot of women, young women being like, oh, men are terrible. Dating sucks. Men suck. This sucks.

And like Reductress, which is sort of, you know, progressive female humor website, made fun of that just this week. And they had a headline that says, basically like the onion, ugh, typical straight white man says typical straight white woman. I thought that was kind of funny. The economy, look, hopefully-

The older you get, you can accumulate some personal financial security to the point where you can both have a relationship, find a place to live, and then maybe have a family. That is always the case.

And the economy goes up and down. The economy has been shitty for a couple of years in different ways for young people, and they're experiencing that as they're going to college or graduating college, et cetera. Climate change and gun violence, though, those two observations you hear all the time. Not just talking about should I have kids, but just like the future. They're much more cynical about the future of this country generally. I don't know.

I don't know if we're going to see a net outflow to Canada or Norway in terms of like migration patterns as this generation ages up. I have a hunch we won't. But those are real existential fears. Absolutely. For this generation that's different than ours and people who are older than us.

My impression of young people often is like, yeah, but they've still got that can-do spirit. You know, when you're young, you have optimism that you can be the change you want to see in the world. You got a long runway. There's, you know, you got energy. And I guess what depresses me is when I feel like there's a sort of fait accompli attitude as opposed to like,

no, I can get in there and I can help this be better. Yeah. And like, this is a common thing that you and I hear from our friends and people older than us in the workplace, in corporate America, that it's like hard to manage millennials, but really like Gen Z, because they, again, some of this is cliche and some of it is true to life. They're impatient. They want to talk about their feelings every other day. They want to get promoted faster. And like people like us are like,

When I was your age, I put on a blazer and I went to my boss's office and I was extremely nervous and asked for a raise. And now it's like you can work somewhere for six months and be like, time for a promotion. Let's go. The instant gratification aspect, I think, has absolutely been accelerated by social media. The grass is always greener somewhere else when you spend your life gratifying.

looking at social media, every single poll. Other than Snapchat, by the way, Snapchat is the only social media platform, according to surveys, that shows people are happier after using it because you're talking to your close friends and family and you're not performing for the world and you're not looking at influencers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's true though. I mean, I say that like social media makes you think that your life isn't as great as somebody else's and then that flows into how you see the world. Totally. But here we are, you and I, just once again,

A couple of middle-aged folks complaining about the youths. So I want to pull on one other common thread between these two groups as we kind of get closer to wrapping here.

We heard a lot of the participants talk about foreign policy. They talk about the world and how they feel like everything is, you know, popping off and they're scared. I think you wouldn't be surprised to learn that a lot of young folks are not exactly hyped up about America's involvement abroad, even when we're not actually particularly involved abroad. But given the 180 the GOP platform has done post-Trump around Ukraine, around foreign intervention in general...

and how young progressives talk about Israel and Gaza, I want to play both groups talking about things because I think it's pretty interesting. So let's listen to how the conservatives talked about things first. These like warmongers in office who just like feel the need to involve us in every single conflict internationally.

I also am a citizen who has been facing like inflation. So that's definitely been a big struggle for like all Americans. And yeah, I feel like there's a lot of manufactured division, especially in the media. I feel like a lot of people agree on a lot more things than they might think. I don't think that it's wrong to support other countries that are in need.

but I also don't agree with war or promoting it in other parts of the world. So it's not so much that I would want him to end the aid that the US has been giving to countries like Ukraine, but to not promote violence, like I said, and also take enough actions here, make sure that this country is also getting the help that it needs.

So when I do focus groups with young people, this is the most common things that you hear among young conservative voters, which is like no foreign entanglements, like solve our problems here at home. It is also something you hear from older conservatives, right?

But it is much more pronounced, especially words like warmonger. Like if you cut this group out and just played the foreign policy part independently to somebody like me, I'd be like, oh, well, those are a group of young liberals because that's how liberals talked when I was this age. What do you make of sort of the shift on young conservatives on foreign policy?

Some of it is parroting Trump, like Trump is the Republican Party. And by the way, I saw Trump speak at CPAC in 2011. For him being a completely empty vessel in terms of ideology, like he's an isolationist in certain ways, and he's always talked about China. Again, maybe that doesn't apply to foreign conflicts necessarily. He obviously flip-flopped on the Iraq war repeatedly. But I think, one, this generation didn't come up with –

conflict millennials new friends who were in afghanistan and iraq and like only a little bit but then you go back farther to vietnam and like people had friends and relatives dying overseas in vietnam and cambodia now the wars people fight are on social media sorry and the

They are, I think, much more impressionable by a charismatic leader just talking about how the world should look. And all of this blows the minds of people like Joe Biden who lived through the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. And also like Gen X. Like Gen X came up in the Reagan era and the end of the Cold War. They –

were raised with the idea that you needed to have a muscular, strong national security overseas. And so this generation just doesn't have that. And I don't want to be glib. Obviously, there's lots of folks in Gen Z who are enlisted, who are in the military. But yeah, it's just, this is one reason why everyone was talking about over the summer that Chicago, the convention would be like 1968 and all the Gaza protesters would show up. And I was like, that's not going to happen because like we don't have security

soldiers in the Middle East. There's not US military over there fighting and dying and getting wounded like there was during Vietnam. And so it felt more like a boutique kind of campus issue, Gaza. In other words, you would see Gaza protests at Columbia. You didn't see Gaza protests at UC Riverside or major land-grant universities or community colleges where economic pressures were the most important issue. If you can afford to care and protest

about what's happening in Israel, maybe check your privilege a little bit. Not that that's not an issue you should care about, but maybe I'm just being way too glib about all of this, but I think part of it is people parroting Trump's talking points, and part of it is the realities of a dangerous and violent world haven't really come home for this generation.

Yeah. I also think that the Iraq war and, you know, us just getting out of Afghanistan and then that being sort of catastrophically done, but like these guys all grew up where- They knew that that was a misadventure, that that was mismanaged. That's right. That's recent history. You're right. And I think that's recent enough that people believe that like foreign entanglements abroad, like I just think the public doesn't want it. But what's interesting to me is that

Right now, America is not in any wars for the first time in a very, very long time.

But I think the specter or the potential of America getting involved in another war or that World War III could happen and we could end up in it is this thing that kind of looms in the psyches, both of young people and older people, where there's just a lot of fear about the world getting more dangerous and us not really knowing what to do about it now that going and fighting a war over it

basically has no purchase. Like, there is nobody who's like, boy, if China invades Taiwan, what are we going to do about it? You know, like, that kind of stuff is just... Again, these are 18, 19, 20-year-olds maybe in these focus groups, but...

Reason backwards from Taiwan, reason backwards from Ukraine. Like, there are reasons why we have ASEAN and NATO. There are reasons why diplomacy exists. There are reasons why the world order is the way it is. It's like, if Donald Trump just says the war in Ukraine is bad, and then people tout what he's saying, and in the same breath,

criticize NATO. It just doesn't compute for people who have been watching this stuff. It sure doesn't compute. It sure doesn't compute. What do you think, Bill Kristol? Yeah, yeah. All right, hold on. I want to get, just because you brought up the 50s and 60s, let's listen to how the progressives sounded.

We should be more involved abroad in general. Granted, like not like we were in the 50s, 60s with the CIA trying to enact clues in random countries all across the world in the name of, oh, like, let's prevent communism. And then we just supported dictatorships. But, you know, supporting the moral values that we have as a nation, freedom, democracy, things like that. And then also, you know,

I think our greatest adversary slash rival in this day and age is China, which not to like get into a whole America-China debate, but the Communist Party, the dictatorship and their foreign policy has been pretty adversarial in the recent past. And you could say the same about Russia as well.

I think it's important that we focus on strengthening our connections with the allies that we already have. But at the same time, we should still be holding them accountable for their actions. Israel shouldn't be allowed to just go do whatever they want simply because they're labeled under the category of the good ones with us. I think having black and white labels like that, just letting them do whatever because they're our allies is very harmful. It can lead to tragedies like what we have been seeing.

But I do still agree that it's important to focus on our allies right now. In the past, America has done pretty absurd things to many countries across the world, installing fascist dictatorships.

working against democratically elected leaders in many countries. And I wish they didn't do that. And I think they do that less now, which is good. I think that America should stop supporting Israel. In fact, they should send support to Palestine or at least force Israel and Palestine to come to some sort of agreement.

i don't know i mean i think a two-state solution maybe i don't know but that's conversation for another time and i think it should also help ukraine i think maybe the level the amount of money is kind of absurd

This was interesting to me, too, again, and just like sort of the, I don't know, political realignment. The progressives were more willing to be like America should do something, right? We should force a compromise between Israel and Palestine. We should help Ukraine. And it's like we shouldn't go do all those things we were doing before.

They don't like the Reagan, Dick Cheney era adventurism, but like the progressives still seem to think America had a role in the world in a way that the conservatives very much are sort of like, no, we want to stop being a force in the world. I mean, now I've heard it a lot, so I guess it's not surprising, but it is. That is a real realignment. It is a real realignment. When you talk about Republicans, Democrats, progressives, conservatives compared to older generations. Yeah.

you know the rage against the machine ralph nader crowd in 2000 was like no foreign wars etc and that was george w bush and we saw what happened there uh now it's interesting these young progressives

They've grown up over the last or at least become politically sentient over the last five or six years. And what do you have to see in front of you? Like your influencers in the Democratic Party are generally like standing up for the current world order and saying that Russia is bad in that order, which I think is true. And I was interested that China came up because China, maybe it's

because some of these young folks are thinking a little more about the economy. But when I was that age, I didn't think about China very much.

I don't know. I'd be interested to know if that guy has TikTok on his phone while also saying he's against China's – I'm sure that he does. We've done a couple of specific TikTok-related young episodes, and the kids are on TikTok. Sure are. They kind of know it's Chinese spyware, but they're also like, what? The only other note here, and again, this is hashing over stuff that was probably flaring a little more –

earlier this year, but the young progressives' perspectives on Israel have really changed from older generations. And I think part of that is, you know, they're farther away from the Holocaust, right? So like older folks think Israel has an existential right to exist. But then also, you know, young progressives came of age in the BLM era and more sympathetic to oppressed people around the world and people of color. Again, like very imperfect,

to graft that onto the situation in the Middle East. The colonial, anti-colonial thing doesn't work there when you think about that framework, but you can see why they would drift toward supporting the Palestinians

than Israel. And by the way, some of this stuff always existed. I mean, people had Che Guevara posters in their dorm rooms when I was in college. Yeah, and they didn't know what the Che, they was just like, they sold them at the poster store all the time. Literally every college campus in Kenya probably had the same thing. There's a poster store and all the dudes had a Pulp Fiction poster, maybe a Che poster or like the John Belushi college poster. That's right. Or the usual suspects. The girls had the Starry Night poster. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

No, Strange Brew. I remember all these. I had a Rage Against the Machine poster. You know why? Whatever quotation was on it, like, spoke to me. But I didn't listen to Rage Against the Machine. I didn't have, it was just like, whatever. Here's my big beef with all the kids. And I guess I wonder what you think about this.

Do you think part of the reason Democrats are underperforming with Gen Z is because they take a more jaded view of America and what it can be like or what its role can be in the world?

I feel like Kamala Harris has tried to do this. She's being very, America's a good place. Like, let me tell you a good story about America, where Donald Trump is constantly telling a dark story about America. But is there a disconnect with these young progressives who are taking a bleaker view of the world? And is that causing the Democrats to not connect with them as well? Or do you feel like they can be brought along? Like, I guess I'm looking for a leader who can inspire in these young people.

A deep sense of optimism about what America can be. Yeah, look, so I think if you're our age or older, you think about patriotism in a sense of the U.S. versus the rest of the world, that we are the shining city on a hill. You know, we saved the world from...

Nazis, and we are unambiguously good in a sort of moral sense, mostly correlated with foreign policy. I think what Kamala Harris is trying to do, and the Harvard poll today says that a lot of young people think she's more patriotic than Donald Trump. But think about the way they see the world, and a lot of it is through the accountability

The economy and their ability to exist, to get ahead, the fundamental freedoms thing, that umbrella term that Biden was really embracing, and I think Kamala is as well as it relates to abortion rights. But that frame needs to apply to the economy. It needs to apply to gun violence. It needs to apply to climate change. Will you be free in this world?

And can you do that in the United States of America is a real question. And look, I mean, like, I think her talking about working at McDonald's and being like the daughter of immigrants and sort of like, you know, being pretty middle class and getting ahead and the challenges required within that student loans, et cetera. If you can, man, this sounds so Republican, but if you can like reframe the United States as a place where you can get ahead, live the American dream, work hard, play by the rules, that's

That sounds like Bill Clinton. It sounds like Ronald Reagan. But all Donald Trump does is talk about how much this country fucking sucks. Yeah. You know, and if Kamala Harris can say, look, it's hard out there, but like if you work hard and like there's a place for you in this country that is not really related to foreign policy. It's not the idea that we grew up with the sort of like

heroes of the Cold War. It's more about America as the land of opportunity, which is a very Republican talking point. But look, I mean, damn it, my juices are going. Obama got that. Biden really got that in 2020. And that's got to be where she's going. Again, like abortion is part of that. These right wingers are taking away your freedoms.

your freedoms. So that's the kind of patriotism I think Kamala Harris should be talking about and Democrats should be talking about. Love that. Agree with it. I think we need to get these kids feeling optimistic about America. But Peter Hamby, you make me feel optimistic about America. And thank you so much for joining us. Thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group podcast. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube. We will see you next week. Bye, Peter. Bye.