I had an interesting conversation with a life-long friend... and he doesn't vote. [View all]

[In It to Win It]

This person was my best friend growing up. We're 90s-baby millennials. We live in South Florida. We know each other's families. He works at a hotel. He recently joined a hospitality workers union. He works two jobs.

He stopped by on Thanksgiving. We were catching up because we hadn't seen each other in some time. We had a long conversation about everything under sun. We get to politics, and I was actually kind of shocked that he had opinions on politics and politicians because as far as I've always known, he's always tuned out politics. He's always said he believes politics and politicians are useless because they do nothing for us. They have all the power to do good for working people, like himself, and politicians just refuse to do it and therefore, he doesn't bother to show up and vote.

Also, I was surprised to learn he was more tuned in than I thought he was. He thinks Trump is a clown and is in disbelief that people actually support him. He knew about Trump's idea of tariffs and didn't like them. He has student loan debt that he applied to have forgiven when Joe Biden announced his student debt forgiveness program. He liked some of the things that was in Joe Biden's stimulus bill, like assistance and food stamps for working people. He saw that as helpful for people who are like him, working just trying to get by.

The part that keeps him away from politics is that all those things that he thought was good was taken away, and taken away, specifically because politicians wanted to take it away. Politicians gave him a taste of what good policy is like for working people and took it away because they don't really want to help the working class. He thought he was about to have his student loans forgiven just to have that yanked away. He got the letter that said they couldn't move forward with the debt forgiveness program. This just further reaffirms the belief that politicians (not a particular party, but politicians overall) are useless. Politicians gave working people checks and more food assistance only because COVID forced them to and not because they wanted to do it. Otherwise they would have happily let them slave away for pennies getting no help from politicians.

I hear all of this, and I place blame on Republicans... and that's because I know that Republicans sued the Biden administration to stop student loan debt forgiveness and the case was heard and decided by judges that were picked by Republicans, but he doesn't know that (I did tell him). I know that Republicans would have never voted for any bill that increased food assistance and given it out with less restriction if it were not for COVID. I know Democrats went further than that with Joe Biden without support from Republicans, but he doesn't know that.

In his view, politicians do nothing for people like him, people that work two jobs and just trying to get by.