Hillary Clinton makes impassioned plea to millennial voters — but Bernie Sanders may yet influence the election
Ms Clinton faces high hurdles as the younger voters who backed Bernie Sanders appear increasingly tempted by third-party candidates
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Your support makes all the difference.Hillary Clinton has made her most pointed plea to millennials on the campaign trail to date, urging them to get out and vote - and warning them of the dangers of the Republican alternative.
But her message remains overshadowed by the spectre of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which energised young people in a fashion that Ms Clinton has so far failed to replicate.
Speaking to a room packed to the brim with students at Temple University in Philadelphia on Monday, Ms Clinton lauded millennials as “the most inclusive, progressive, and entrepreneurial” generation the US has ever seen, and laid out her list of policies that would benefit the powerful young voting bloc.
The crowd erupted when she announced a position that sounded similar to a signature policy of her former rival, Mr Sanders.
“I worked with Bernie Sanders on a plan,” she said. “We came up with a plan that makes public college tuition-free for working families and debt-free for everyone.”
Millennials, or voters under 35, were crucial components of Barack Obama’s winning coalition in 2008 and 2012, and were key to Mr Sanders’ long-sustained candidacy. But Ms Clinton has struggled to gain their favour.
The Clinton campaign suffered a major blow in recent polls that indicate her lead amongst younger voters has all but disappeared. Last week’s Quinnipiac University poll found that Ms Clinton has 31 per cent of likely voters under 35, while Donald Trump has 26. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson has 29 per cent.
In her address in Philadelphia, Ms Clinton acknowledged that younger voters were flocking to third party candidates like Mr Johnson or Jill Stein of the Green Party in the wake of Mr Sanders’ concession.
“Even if you’re totally opposed to Donald Trump, you may still have some questions about me,” she said. “I get that. And I want to do my best to answer those questions.”
She added: “I need you as partners, not just for winning this election, but for driving real change.”
In her latest appeal to millennials, the Clinton campaign has aggressively deployed the likes of Mr Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Michelle Obama, and Mr Obama – who has delivered a number of enthusiastic and impassioned speeches for Ms Clinton in the past week, and made his case for the former Secretary of State’s experience and expertise.
“We always like the new, shiny thing – I benefited from that when I was a candidate – and we take for granted sometimes what is steady and true, and Hillary Clinton is steady, and she is true,” he said during his Philadelphia appearance last week.
“The young people who are here – who all you’ve been seeing is just the nonsense that’s been on TV,” he added, “you maybe don’t remember all the work that she has had to do, and all the things that she has had to overcome.”
Mr Sanders reminded college students about the burden they will face when they leave their schools with student loan debt.
“Eighty-three per cent of American families should be able to send their kids to public college and universities tuition free,” he told students at the University of Akron in Ohio on Sunday. “So when you go out and talk to your friends and they say, ‘Oh God, I’m not going to vote, it’s a waste of time, every body is terrible’, ask them how much they’re going to leave school in debt with. Ask them about that.”
Ms Warren, who has become a champion of economic reforms and one of the most vocal critics of Mr Trump for the Clinton campaign, unleashed another scathing attack on the New York businessman’s appeal to racist groups in the country.
“Trump has more support from the Aryan nation and the Ku Klux Klan than he does the leadership of the Republican Party,” she told an audience at Cleveland State University. “For years, Trump has led the charge on the birther movement, and only when his handlers tied him down and made him, did he finally admit that it wasn’t true.
“What kind of man does that? A man with a dark and ugly soul, a man who will never be president."