'When they go low, we go high,' Michelle Obama's famous line, has become a Democratic mantra. The trouble, argues Edward Luce in the Financial Times, is that virtue only persuades people who still believe the system can deliver. Gen Z largely doesn't — and that one fact is reshaping American politics from both ends.
The evidence is everywhere. Zohran Mamdani, the new democratic-socialist mayor of New York City, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez openly embrace the socialist label. A Cato Institute poll last year found that nearly a third of Americans under 30 view 'communism' favourably, and roughly two-thirds look kindly on socialism. It is tempting to brush this off as youthful misguidedness — Gen Z is variously written off as entitled, unambitious or ignorant — but Luce insists there is nothing unserious about the politics driving them. It is not hippie to wish for affordable housing or to fear what AI will do to your earnings. Nor is it Stalinist to want universal healthcare.
That explains why a 41-year-old Senate candidate in Maine, Graham Platner, is staving off scandals that would have sunk earlier candidates. Platner once had a skull-and-bones tattoo of a symbol used by Hitler's Waffen-SS, and has been caught sending extramarital sexts. Yet his polling against Republican Susan Collins is strong enough that Maine's competent, scandal-free Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has chosen not to enter the race. Mills is 78. She, unlike Platner, has no plans for single-payer healthcare or taxing the ultra-wealthy. Platner's seeming immunity from scandal shows that Bernie Sanders-style left populism is still potent.
The Democratic split over Platner reveals something deeper than tactics. Establishment Democrats have spent their moral capital opposing Donald Trump and fear that a Platner nomination could cost them a winnable Senate seat. But Platner is appealing to exactly the voters Democrats most need: the young and the working class. His campaign — like Mamdani's run in New York — is being dismissed as irrelevant to middle America when, in fact, it may be the only model that energises the young and the blue-collar. Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering a healthcare executive in late 2024, is still treated as a folk hero by many young Americans — a sign of how angry the mood has become.
A parallel shift is reshaping the right. Younger MAGA Republicans, the audiences of podcasters like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, are routinely hostile to Israel, while older Republicans remain reflexively pro-Israel. The same root feeds flirtation with communism on the left and antisemitism on the right: a sense that the existing establishment is morally bankrupt. Gen Z on both sides rejects the idea of America as exceptionally virtuous and rejects the 'peace and love' framing of the flower-power generation. More worrying, Gen Z voters across left and right are noticeably more willing to approve of political violence to settle disputes — a habit, Luce notes, of postponing serious thought until after the next election, which never quite comes.
Luce's warning to his fellow Democrats is therefore blunt. Opposing Trump is not enough to win young loyalty. Even retaking the House of Representatives in 2026 may not be enough to win the Senate, and it will almost certainly be insufficient to win the presidency in 2028. The party has to show it can actually deliver — on rent, on wages, on AI, on healthcare. Overlooking the troubling but reasonable complaints of Gen Z, Luce concludes, would all but guarantee Democratic failure.
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/why-young-america-is-trending-socialist
A third of Americans under 30 now view 'communism' favourably — not because they've read Marx, but because capitalism, as they've experienced it, has failed to keep its promises.
Edward Luce, writing in the Financial Times, argues that the Democratic Party is being reshaped by a generation that has lost faith in the system older liberals still defend. Two of the most-watched younger Democrats — Zohran Mamdani, the new socialist mayor of New York, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — openly call themselves socialists, and a growing share of Gen Z voters are happy to follow.
Luce points to other examples too: Graham Platner, a 41-year-old Marine veteran running for Senate in Maine, has survived scandals (including an old Waffen-SS-style tattoo and leaked sexts) that would have sunk earlier candidates. James Talarico, a Christian progressive Democrat, is running in Texas. Both prove that Bernie Sanders-style left populism still has serious electoral pull.
The Democratic establishment keeps repeating 'when they go low, we go high' — Michelle Obama's mantra about taking the moral high ground. Luce's point is that this only works if voters trust you to actually deliver. For Gen Z, that trust is gone, and lectures about decorum sound like the people who broke the system telling them not to complain too loudly.
If you're a high-schooler in the US, this is the political environment you'll vote in. The candidates winning Gen Z aren't promising small tweaks — they're promising rent freezes, single-payer healthcare, taxes on the ultra-wealthy, and a foreign policy that breaks sharply with both parties' recent past. Whether those promises work or backfire will shape the job market, college affordability, and housing costs you'll face in your twenties.
Luce's warning to his own side is blunt: simply opposing Trump won't be enough to win Gen Z loyalty, and even retaking the House in 2026 may not be sufficient by 2028. America has been here before — the late 1960s, which Luce explicitly invokes, also produced a generation that distrusted institutions and reshaped both parties for decades. Watch for second-order effects: Democrats moving left on economics, Republicans fracturing over Israel, and a growing share of young voters in both parties who say they'd accept political violence — a worrying habit, Luce notes, of postponing serious thought until after the next election.