The signs are everywhere. The nation’s youth are waking up to the fact that the Democratic left – with its preening, humorless self-righteousness, its relentless judgmentalism, its mask-wearing Hamas-cheering campus-trashing college crybabies, its hypocritical pampered elites, and its octogenarian president who thinks he can buy young people off with abortions, dope, and bailouts – is totally uncool.

It’s about time. Now we just need a national anti-smoking-like campaign to sustain it.

There are so many recent moments showing this shift in attitude that it’s hard to narrow down the list. But here’s a sampling:

• A CNN poll found that 51% of 18-34-year-olds say they will vote for Donald Trump in November, compared with just 40% who say they will vote for Biden. That’s a stunning turnaround from four years ago.
• James Carville, that pugilistic former Clinton adviser posted a video in which he says: “It’s horrifying our numbers among younger voters, particularly younger blacks, younger Latinos … younger people of color. Particularly males. We’re not shedding them, they’re leaving in droves.” He later proceeded to mock these same voters, collectively calling those who won’t show up to vote Democratic “you little fu***ing 26-year-old.”
• New York Times correspondent Jennifer Medina says that the reason many young Latinos are leaving the Democratic plantation is that, while “many of these voters are the children of lifelong Democrats. They find Trump’s anti-establishment energy subversive and appealing.”

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Meanwhile, the college protests have succeeded only in making young leftists look like racist pansies who are trashing campuses to defend …. Hamas? A certified terrorist organization whose mission statement is to destroy Israel?

Young people can’t help but notice keffiyeh-wearing students – with the tacit approval of the kowtowing college administrators and the Democratic Party – engaging in nakedly antisemitic chants and even barring pro-Israel blacks from walking across campus.

Young people also have watched as the left turned on beloved liberal authors such as J.K. Rowling and popular liberal black comedians like Dave Chappelle because they won’t bend the knee to the radical transgender movement.

They’re hearing from comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, who was himself recently harassed by Hamas-supporting leftists for being Jewish. He blames the death of comedy on “the extreme left, PC crap, & people worrying so much about offending other people.”

They’re noticing that once liberal favorites, Elon Musk and Bill Maher, to name a couple, have suddenly awakened to the insidiousness of today’s hard-left Democratic Party.

They’re watching the cowardice of the left, such as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who literally ran away from a reporter who asked him about the murder of a Chicago police officer.

They’re reading posts like the one from Cherrie Currie, the former lead singer for the ‘70s punk band The Runaways, who said:

It used to be PUNK, R&R to vote Democrat. I fell for it. But when your party demands you live in fear, squaller, beyond your means by just buying groceries, gasoline, disrespecting our veterans, our police, our elderly, supporting CRIMINALS, chaos, riots, Hamas, FAILING Israel, demeaning us at every turn! HURTING our CHILDREN! Wasting OUR MONEY. Ineptitude with every policy! Lies and more lies … NO MORE! The Democrat Party can KISS MY A$$. They don’t give a damn. That’s true. Voting Dem used to be cool. But now, it just makes you a FOOL.

And, while young people are struggling to pay rent and feed themselves as Bidenflation rages, they’re noticing that Biden’s answer to their plight is to hand out hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to the small minority of their generation who graduated from college with useless degrees and massive debt, who then turn around and join chants of “F*** Joe Biden.”

Biden’s other attempts to woo the young are equally out of step, as though what today’s youth really care about is getting high and having abortions, when what most care about is jobs and opportunity — things Bidenomics is making worse.

The annual Harvard Youth Poll finds that the biggest concerns among 18-29-year-olds tend to be inflation, housing, health care, and jobs, all of which rank way above “women’s reproductive rights” and “student debt.”

It also finds that of those young people who voted in 2020, 61% cast their ballot for Biden, but only 38% would choose Biden over Donald Trump in 2024.

So that’s all well and good. But won’t the youth just go back to their socialist-loving, conservative-hating ways once Biden is out of the picture and the economy finally rebounds? Yes, if conservatives squander this unique opportunity.

Peter Heck, writing in Not the Bee, observed that “Conservatives should be seizing on the rebellious streak in young people to fight back against these would-be anarcho-fascists. This left-wing movement represents a clear and present danger to the very freedoms young people so desperately crave.” He goes on to say “The left has done an admirable job of winning over the youth by painting the right as the movement that opposes freedom and fun. Reality has always been the opposite.”

That’s absolutely right. But what can be done?

Well, how about modeling an anti-leftist campaign on the anti-smoking crusade of the 1990s? Back then, the public health community realized that if we were ever going to cut smoking rates, we had to concentrate on the youth – to stop them from ever lighting up in the first place.

And so, they built influence campaigns around changing young people’s attitudes about smoking. To make it totally uncool. To get peer pressure working against tobacco companies. It worked. Youth smoking rates plunged.

We need that sort of planning and execution now. Leftism can be just as appealing to young, underdeveloped minds as smoking was back then. It’s just as addictive. It’s just as poisonous. It stinks up the place whenever it’s tried.

So kids, just say no to the Neo-Marxism embraced by today’s Democratic party. Try the Freedom brand instead!

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board