As a young black millennial from a tough part of a major Midwestern city, he can give a voice to issues many in the Senate don’t relate to, and he can do so by gaining experience. He is the son of a United Auto Workers father and a mother of a public school teacher, who was born in a troubled, poor area of Milwaukee.
Of course, Mr. Barnes has his flaws as a candidate. He has encountered several mini controversies. He was once photographed wearing an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt and teamed up with Representative Ilhan Omar of neighboring Minnesota, calling her “brilliant– the sort of thing that might annoy centrist swing voters.
But some of Mr Barnes’ controversies are actually reasons why he may understand where younger voters are coming from. He was in arrears with property taxes and had an incomplete college education (both have since been rectified). He also made negative headlines for participating in BadgerCare (Wisconsin’s Medicaid program) while running for lieutenant governor in 2018. But running into financial challenges and making some early career mistakes sounds like a quintessential millennial experience. If more of our elected officials faced similar challenges, perhaps they would have a better idea of how to help others find solutions for them.
Of course, you don’t have to be a millennial to understand their issues, and age alone doesn’t guarantee support from younger voters. Many in the demographic were drawn to Bernie Sanders over other, younger candidates in the last two presidential primaries. But Mr. Sanders’ popularity was rooted in the fact that the country he described was a reflection of the country millennials had experienced—a country in which economic insecurity and wealth inequality had turned the American dream into pure fantasy.
To be fair, plenty of other Democratic candidates use this kind of rhetoric. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania is an example. But because of his relatively young age, Mr. Barnes is in a unique position to give voice to the concerns and problems of his generation: We millennials were introduced to the horrors of school shootings from the Columbine massacre in our adolescence; now our kids go through active target practice in pre-K. Our country is doing too little to tackle climate change, economic inequality, systemic racism, rapidly crumbling reproductive rights, declining voting rights or skyrocketing costs of health care, childcare and housing. The list continues.
Wisconsin is politically more complex than it sometimes seems. The idea that the state has a politician as progressive as Mr. Barnes cannot bear is pure fiction. Liberal candidates have won 10 of the last 11 national elections. Like Mr. Barnes, Senator Tammy Baldwin was also accused of going too far into Wisconsin when she first went into state office ten years ago, and was re-elected in 2018 by a margin of nearly 11 points. And while slogans like “Abolish ICE” and “Defund the Police” have become unpopular, the Black Lives Matter movement — which Mr. Barnes is an outspoken advocate for — is still quite popular in Wisconsin, holding a higher rating than almost any other. state or national politician, according to the most recent Marquette University Law School poll.