As a cusp millennial myself, I've obviously run in those circles. Why are millennials "unreliable"? Because we spent our whole lives under the thumb is pseudo-fascist politicians and have lost faith in the system. Many of my fellow Millennials actually self-identify as "anarchists." With the exception of friends who were born and bred into extremely conservative cultures, we are democrats in the most basic sense: we want power for the people. We want equality under the law. We want fair and equal treatment between genders, races, and ethnicities, and we want financial equity.
Ask yourselves why Millennials turned out in droves for anti-war protests, Occupy Wallstreet, and marriage equality, but they don't show up "reliably" to the polls. My experience tells me the answer to this question is obvious, it's because these things require *action*. When we protest, we have our fate in our own hands, democracy on the street-level. They don't vote not because they are lazy, but because voting has not yielded the urgent results they think the country needs to become a place where they feel they can thrive.
Oh, I hear it now, "but don't they realize that if they don't vote, they could get someone truly terrible, a true fascist?" Oh, they realize it. Remember how I said many of them are anarchists? A good portion of Millennials want to see the word burn, not because they are sadistic, not because they love the idea of destruction, or pain, or suffering, but because they view the system as so irredeemably convoluted, corrupt, and insidious.
Is this just "youth in revolt"? Perhaps. Fortunately, our society, since the 80s, has seemed resolute in miring us in a perpetual childhood of nostalgia and dependency, the fancies, and the malcontents, of youth have been allowed to spill over, now into the 30-44 demographic. The old metric says that people become more conservative as they grow older, fatter, happier, more set-in-their-ways, and afraid of change. The result of Reganomics, Corporatism, financial instability, has deprived this generation of its comfort, and given it a thirst, a desire, a need to see things change. We are a generation of 30-year-old burger-flippers, minimum wage drones, the first generation in a very long time with less economic opportunity, not to mention a lower life-expectancy, than our parents. This disquiet, this lack of opportunity to thrive, to be happy, this overturning of the hierarchy of needs, has resulted in the expansion of the period of idealism.
This is why simply telling them, if Sanders is ultimately defeated, to vote for Clinton because "do you want a Trump or a Cruz?!" will not work. We're tired of the lesser of two evils. We're tired of Democrats spending their entire tenure as president putting out the fires lit by their predecessors to the exclusion of true progression (not to mention the fires they light themselves). One step forward, two steps back, we're running in place. And some--not myself, but some--would rather see the ultimate birth of what has been gestating for their entire lives, not because they want it, but because they think it's necessary, because the momentum is behind it, and sometimes it's better to actually reach a destination, than suffer through the unbearable tension of the inevitable. It's terrifying, but though this be madness, there be method in't.
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