BeeLine: Only The Young?

Taylor Swift seems to be all the rage today.

She has been raking in hundreds of millions of dollars with her The Eras tour.

When Taylor is not touring she is dating Kansas City Chiefs TE Travis Kelce.

Taylor wrote a song back in 2018 that she released as a single in 2020 titled, "Only The Young".

The song and lyrics are in the video below.

Click here if the video does not play in your browser.

The message of the song is that "Only The Young" can save us.

Swift is a Democrat and she told Variety that she wrote the song because of frustrations with what was going on in the country in the 2018 period. Donald Trump was President and several of her preferred Democrats had just been defeated in bids for Congress and the Senate in Tennessee.

It was hard to see so many people feel like they had canvassed and done everything and tried so hard. I saw a lot of young people's hopes dashed. And I found that to be particularly tragic, because young people are the people who feel the worst effects of gun violence, and student loans and trying to figure out how to start their lives and how to pay their bills, and climate change, and are we going to war – all these horrific situations that we find ourselves facing right now. ---Taylor Swift to Variety

Swift later allowed the song to be licensed and used by the Biden/Harris campaign in 2020 free of any cost.

That itself was a somewhat curious choice.

"Only The Young" being used to promote Joe Biden?

Let's compare the data on a few issues that Taylor Swift was concerned about when she wrote the song in late 2018 to what has transpired since.

Gun violence is up from about 15,000 deaths to 20,000 deaths per year.

Credit: https://www.thetrace.org/2022/12/gun-violence-deaths-statistics-america/

Young people are struggling more than ever to start their lives and how to pay their bills.

Rents have soared.

Source: https://www.redfin.com/news/redfin-rental-report-july-2023/

Consumer prices have done the same and although wages are up the increases have not been enough to offset the higher prices.

The result has been real wages have been falling.

Real wage growth has been negative for most of the last three years under Biden.

This has hurt young people just starting out the most.

Credit: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2023/feb/nominal-wage-growth-individual-level-2022

This is reflected in the New York Times/Siena poll that I wrote about in my last blog post which showed that the youngest voter group (ages 18-29) is the most dissatisfied with the economy under Biden.

Taylor was also concerned we were going to war with Trump.

It didn't happen. In fact, major strides for peace were moving forward with Russia, North Korea and the Middle East in particular.

However, what do we now have in Ukraine and Israel? We also are finding out that North Korea is helping arm Russia in the war with Ukraine.

When considering all of this keep in mind that the youngest voters (ages 18-24) voted for Biden over Trump 65%-31% in 2020. Biden would not have been elected but for that huge margin with young voters. They may now be finding out that everything was not quite as bad as they thought it was.

Taylor might want to think again about licensing that song to Biden and the Democrats in 2024.

As I have written before, there is a lot to be said for both the oldsters Biden and Trump stepping aside in 2024.

As of right now that doesn't look like it is going to occur.

However, I am still steadfast in my belief there is only a 1% chance that both will be on the general election ballot next year.

As far as turning over the country to the young, that looks rather ill-advised right now.

There is a lot to be said about infusing the energy and ideas of the young to the body politic.

For example, consider the ages of those who were instrumental in the founding of our nation on July 4, 1776.

James Monroe, 18

Gilbert Stuart, 20

Aaron Burr, 20

Alexander Hamilton, 21

Betsy Ross, 24

James Madison, 25

Thomas Jefferson, 33

John Adams, 40

Paul Revere, 41

George Washington, 44

Unfortunately, the younger generation of today does not seem to have been tested in adversity and had anywhere close to the life experiences of those young patriots of yesteryear to prepare them to lead us where we need to go.

It is also troubling to see the ignorance of history that many younger people have.

The same young people who have taken to the streets about so-called "genocide" by Israel against Palestine are not aware that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

One in ten actually believe the Jews caused the Holocaust.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study?CMP=share_btn_tw

Is it a surprise then that pro-Palestine hashtag views outnumber pro-Israel hashtag views by 27 to 1 over the last 30 days on TikTok in the United States among the age 18-24 age group?

#FreePalestine 446.6 million views

#StandwithIsrael 16.5 million views