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Democrats Fighting Wrong Battle Because Trump Is a Symptom of a Huge Societal Problem [1]
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Date: 2025-03-19
Everyone agrees that a big reason for Trump winning in 2024 was his over-performance with Gen Z, especially amongst men 18-25. Democrats have been focused on the tactics--Harris lost because she didn't go on Joe Rogan says the conventional wisdom. The result of this is the podcast This is Gavin Newsom, where the Governor of California talks with esteemed citizens like Steve Bannon about how the Democrats can better reach moderate and conservative voters. Major news outlets are running stories about how the Democrats can't agree on a strategy to confront Trump. And our party's approval rating is in the gutter. I read an article the other day that made me think about all of this and conclude we have it all wrong: Trump is a transient symptom of broader societal problems, and if our party wants to stop Trump, it should seek to understand and address those problems.
The article was in Business Insider and is entitled Gen Z: The Ghosted Generation. It talks about how technology has changed the experience of young adults--and not for the better. The college admissions process is fundamentally broken by the rise of algorithms, artificial intelligence and companies that profit off of the dreams of kids who believe the American ethos that we all have an equal shot.
Meanwhile, more technology-augmented opportunity has also bred much more rejection in the college admissions industrial complex. Until 1960, more than half of all college applicants applied to just one school. In the 2023-24 admissions season, the average applicant applied to 6.65 Common App-affiliated schools alone, up 7% from the previous year. Just in the past two decades, the number of applications to the country's 67 most selective colleges has tripled to nearly 2 million a year. Gen Zers are knocking on more doors to their future than ever and, in turn, having more doors slammed in their faces. For some, this is shaping their core beliefs on motivation and merit. Dylan, a 22-year-old New York University student whose high school credentials included varsity rugby and a 4.7 weighted GPA, tells me that he applied to roughly 20 schools — including most of the Ivies and Stanford — a number he felt "insecure" about compared with his peers. "I know a lot of people who applied to 20 to 40," he says. In the end, he received only three or four acceptances, which was demoralizing. "I just remember feeling like it wasn't necessarily our qualifications that mattered, that it was just like, hopefully, the right person read it on the right day."
And that's if a person even reads the essay you spent days writing. In the modern era, that essay could well be thrown out by a robot that finds a spliced comma.
For the lucky ones who pass through the barriers big tech is putting up and are admitted to--and graduate from--college, the world just becomes worse. With HR Departments at 4 in 10 companies posting fake jobs to gather intelligence on the state of the job market and bank resumes, rejection is becoming common place in the job market. Many young people apply for hundreds of entry level jobs and don't get an interview. The Business Insider piece describes the hell of seeking a job in this big tech fueled hiring process well:
Among the Gen Zers I talked to, their "body counts" of submitted job applications were regularly in the hundreds. Christopher, a 24-year-old who graduated with a finance degree, says he'd applied to 400 jobs in finance and 200 in merchandising before finding a job that still wasn't what he really wanted. His computer science grad friends have been sending applications in the thousands, he says. Even though the logistics of applying are more or less streamlined, Gen Zers note the disconnect between the effort they're expected to make versus the consideration given in return. Colleges at least have to formally tell you no, while jobs, like a dating app match, tend to ghost at any point in the process. Is it really a mystery why some Gen Zers have started ghosting employers back?
You put in hours and hours at night and on the weekend to craft cover letters and take the made up exams that hiring organizations have all because you dream of having the dignity of getting up to go to a job that you enjoy. And you don't even get a response.
When those jobs that are the dreams of so many are taken by H1B visa holders; when a quarter to a third of the graduate students at Harvard, Yale and Stanford are International students; and when people from poor small town America are endlessly rejected by these big institutions because people like them shouldn't dare to dream, the bigotry of Donald Trump becomes appealing.
I went to college in the 1990s. I grew up in a small rural town on the fringes of a major metropolitan area. Then, the town's economic base was agriculture (an investment in commuter rail has turned it into an exurb). I was the first in my family to go to college after high school. My family worked blue collar jobs. My birthday is in the Fall. One morning near my birthday in my first semester of college, I got a thing called a card in the mail. Inside was a money order for $10 and a note that said, "I am very proud of you and envious you have this experience. Cherish it and I'm sure you will be on your way to a better life."
That was a different time--where a connection with a good guidance counselor could help open doors to colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education weren't deluged with tens of thousands of applications thanks to things like the CommonApp, and one-click applying. The world was smaller then.
The world was also definitely smaller on the dating scene. There were no apps. People met each other at bars or maybe grocery stores or laundry mats or class. The Business Insider Article notes that the typical Gen Zer is rejected romantically more times in one week than a boomer is in a lifetime.
At the same time big tech has expanded opportunities to far flung corners of the globe and made people from disadvantaged communities in rural and urban America compete with the elite of foreign countries for jobs and college slots, Instagram and social media put a daily reminder of what life is like for people who didn't have rough patches or challenges finding employment. The lucky one who got into Stanford is posting stories talking about their day ahead of going to a great job, picking their kid up from daycare, paying their house cleaner and going out to eat with their husband while doing their makeup. It's a reminder of what didn't happen for you; it's little wonder that Gen Z has truly staggering levels of depression and other mental health issues.
And the Democratic Party's response to this? Fighting between septugenerian and octogenarian leaders who haven't been in the job or dating market for literally the lifetimes of Gen Z. One of those leaders, Chuck Schumer, proudly brandishes his flip phone at every opportunity.
Simply put, big technology is ruining the lives of any American under 50. And, if DOGE completes their messing with the social security payment system, may well ruin the lives of every American over 50 too. We haven't regulated technology well because the political party most suited to favor regulation--the Democratic Party--has largely been led by elderly politicians who are ill equipped to experience the harms of technology first hand, and who also have incentive to be in favor of technology to appear modern and hip, and not old and dated.
The problems with social media now go back decades (Facebook is 20 years old now!). And for decades people have been telling us the same thing over and over and over again: they feel left out and left behind. The Trump Administration is actually giving the Democrats a golden opportunity to rally around a confrontational stance with the tech industry, especially the worst elements of the tech industry (crypto and Elon Musk), who are basically running his administration. If you're a politician and you can't make the case against endless crypto scams that cost retirees billions every year, perhaps you should retire and let someone else do the work.
Basically the Democratic Party needs to focus on how to make people's lives better. Some of that involves regulating technology--like banning the use of artificial intelligence in the college admissions process, banning the posting of fake jobs, prohibiting the use of AI to review cover letters and resumes, perhaps putting hard caps on the percentages of international students at American Universities, limiting the use of H1B Visas, and on encouraging people to disconnect.
We want to believe that we can constantly expand opportunity. It is part of the American ethos rooted in Manifest Destiny. But the reality is for every H1B Visa holder, there are probably 10 Americans who graduated from State schools with computer science degrees who'd like that job, but can't get it. That dynamic gives rise to Trumpism. Whether and how strongly Democratic leaders confront big tech will determine whether we succeed or fail at stopping Trumpism.
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