HARRISBURG, Pa. — Millennials, there’s a reason Americans are so anxious and angry in this election, Bill Clinton says. It's you.
It's no secret that Hillary Clinton's campaign has been frustrated that younger people are flocking to Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian democratic socialist.
But in a speech on Thursday to about 1,000 people in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the former president, who was stumping on his wife's behalf, betrayed yet another frustration with younger Americans. He said the country would be in a much better place now if the youth had not been so apathetic and had voted six years ago, when the tea party wave put Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives.
Clinton got to that point by first praising the job President Barack Obama has done in bringing the country back while noting that incomes have stagnated for most people.
"The reason that there’s so much anxiety, intensity, anger, blame in this election is that 80 percent of the American people have not gotten a pay raise since the crash eight years ago, after inflation," Clinton said.
"A lot of young people feel like they’ve played by the rules, went to school, they’re gonna graduate with debt they can’t repay, or they’ve already graduated with debt they can’t repay, and they may not ever get to do what they really wanted to do with their lives," Clinton said.
By way of extolling Obama's efforts at recovery, Clinton argued that the president at least brought back employment -- even if wages are no better.
"We got our jobs back in seven and a half years," Clinton said, before coming back around to name the slackers in the economic equation.
"If all the young people who claim to be disillusioned now had voted in 2010, we wouldn’t have lost the Congress, and we’d probably have our incomes back," he said.
Many millennials were probably too young to vote in 2010, it should be noted.
Pennsylvania's primary election is next Tuesday. According to the HuffPost Pollster average of polls, Clinton holds a commanding lead in the Keystone State, leading Sanders 54 percent to 36 percent.
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