Young voters feel disconnected

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - They are connected to one another like never before. And they are as disconnected from American politics as ever.

They're avid volunteers for community causes, yet most hardly seem to care about government or campaigns. They see a government that's not deserving of their trust, resistant to change, and barely caring about their needs. They don't think their vote counts.

They are the young. Old enough to vote, numerous enough to pick a president or a Congress. And they don't seem to care.

"I don't pay taxes. I don't pay for my health insurance," said Emilia Pascarella, a sophomore at Pennsylvania State University. "I don't feel I'm being affected."

"I don't think about government that much," added Grace Nissi, a junior at Penn State.

Their comments are typical of nearly 80 young people interviewed in central Pennsylvania, a diverse cross-section of blue- and white-collar, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian-American, students majoring in physics, health administration, advertising, electrical engineering and more - from Penn State and the Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology.

And they explain why candidates for president are failing to tap the kind of youthful surge that helped Barack Obama win the White House.

Democrat Bernie Sanders draws big college audiences and gets good marks from many students. But his presidential bid remains a long shot. Hillary Clinton could be the first woman president, but young women don't feel the pull of gender history. Marco Rubio promotes himself as the leader of a new generation, but few are familiar with him.

They are not passive.

They're energetic volunteers and hard workers for community causes. They just see little self-interest in politics. By one measure, just one in five were politically engaged, according to a recent survey by the Harvard University Institute of Politics.

They see no need to be so. Most are confident they'll find jobs. They don't have to worry about compulsory military service. They can stay on their parents' health-care polices for several more years. The high cost of college is a big concern, but few see the government making things easier.

Rarely do young people cite the forces that seem to jar the rest of the civilized world, such as recent mass shootings or acts of terrorism. Those seem too difficult to resolve. On the three days of interviews, the news was dominated by the mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif.

Virtually no one brought up the incident.

Driving this disconnect, ironically, is their connectivity.

Protest rallies and marches, favorite tactics of their parents' generation, are yesterday's strategies. Organizing via social media, where people almost spontaneously group and promote a cause but rarely see or talk to one another, is the new form of mass expression. But it's rarely directed at the political process.

They see prodding the government as futile.

"Not much has really made a difference," said Evelyn Van Horn, studying to be an auto body technician at the Central Pennsylvania Institute.

They came of age viewing Washington as incapable and unwilling to ease the sort of tensions that could have consequences in their lives. The oldest of their generation were entering second grade as Bill Clinton was becoming president. That means that in their lifetime, government has been a relentless object of scorn, if not ridicule.

The only presidents they've known - Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama - all have been ongoing targets for not only critics but comedians. To the young, Washington is a leaden, bloated bureaucracy managed by confrontation-prone, self-absorbed lawmakers unwilling to bend.

Asked to name something government has done correctly, not a single young person volunteered anything at first.

At the Central Pennsylvania Institute, Jeremiah Bowers, a welding student, eventually mentioned highways. At Penn State, three finally spoke up. One mentioned support for gun rights, another help for disabled people, and a third said she was pleased some Syrian refugees can enter this country.

More common was the attitude of Alexa Pane, a Penn State junior. She sat for six hours in an emergency room this summer waiting for her insurer to approve an X-ray of the freshly broken bones in her ankle. She blames the Affordable Care Act, saying it's made the health system even more unresponsive.

Not even promises to ease the cost of attending college douse this skepticism, even though it's tough to find someone without a mountain of debt or a complaint about the cost of college.

Hillary Clinton is pushing a detailed college affordability plan, and Sanders would offer everyone free tuition at public colleges and universities. But few young people believe any program can win congressional approval, and if it does, it won't be in effect in time to affect them.

If anything, such promises reinforce the idea that politicians pander but won't deliver and seem to provide little comfort.

"By the time any such bill passed, I'd be long out of college," said Michelle Mehallow, a Penn State junior.