For some of the young college students arrested after trespassing at Columbia University last week, it was not their first brush with the law.
One young woman from a $2.2 million home in suburban Atlanta had previously killed two senior citizens in Vermont when her pickup truck crossed over a double yellow line, crashing into the elderly couple’s smaller vehicle. They were killed instantly. Most of us would be in jail for such an incident. This young lady got off with a $220 traffic ticket because her father is a wealthy and politically connected CEO.
The activist students disrupting classes and shouting hateful rhetoric at Jewish students next to our homicidally negligent friend from Georgia are not like most of their fellow citizens. They are out-of-touch wealthy elites who seldom, if ever, are forced to pay for the consequences of their own actions.
Their priorities are not the priorities of most people. According to new polling from Harvard University, they aren’t even the priorities of most young people, most of whom are Democrats.
If someone goes online or to a college campus such as Columbia, one would think the most pressing issues for voters were the war in Gaza, climate change, and student debt. These drive far more activism on college campuses than anything else.
But according to the latest Harvard poll, out of 16 issues presented to respondents between the ages of 18 and 29, these three rank 12th (climate change), 15th (Israel/Palestine), and 16th (student debt).
Just as in the rest of the nation, “inflation” was the No. 1 issue on most young minds, followed by “healthcare” and “housing.”
Those in the student age cohort care far less about “crime” and “immigration” than do older people. Immigration, in particular, divides generations. It has become the most important issue for older voters but ranks 11th out of 16 among the young. But neither young nor old voters place a high priority on the issues that activists raise hell about and insist are important to the base of the Democratic Party.
One of the biggest problems with today’s Democratic Party, and one of the biggest drivers of partisanship nationally, is that candidates and officeholders get their information about the wants and needs of desirable demographic groups (young people, black people, Hispanic people, women, etc.) by talking to activists who claim to represent these “communities” but who actually only misrepresent them.
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Rich young women who live in grand houses and get daddy to bail them out of vehicular homicide don’t bear the cost of anti-carbon climate change policies. They can jet to tropical beach vacations and then come to campus and accuse Exxon of being the real murderer. They don’t have to pay the higher tuition caused by constant student debt amnesties. They will never have to pick up a rifle to defend a democracy under threat from murderous theocrats in the Middle East.
Not all Democrats are scared of the online mob. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has been outspoken in his support of Israel and his condemnation of President Joe Biden’s catch-and-release border policies. He’s also become one of the more popular senators in the United States. More Democrats should take notice.
