Technically, yes.
Technically, yes. Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com

Yesterday, in her speech to the students at Temple, which was also a speech to the 70 million 18 to 30-year-olds in the country, Hillary demonstrated her campaign's ability to listen to the concerns of millennials—oy, that word—by adopting the voice of a librarian during story time and telling the students what they think and feel.

"You see how much needs fixing in our country," she said. "From the soaring cost of college to the scourge of systemic racism to the threat from climate change. But you also know the only way we can meet those challenges is if we meet them together...You want something to vote for, not just against." She later added, "You know that all these challenges are intersecting, and we must take them on together."

Hear that vocabulary? Intersectionality. Systemic racism. College. Clinton gets us.

To support these claims she cited her journey from being an activist "during the Vietnam War" to becoming, essentially, a career politician. She talked about the youths who have influenced her decisions, including a girl named Sophia, a 17-year-old basketball captain who convinced Clinton to run for the Senate by whispering the words "dare to compete" in her ear. She also mentioned relevant policy proposals, especially the ones she worked on with Bernie—free in-state college tuition for households that make up to $125,000, the ability to pay back student loans as a percentage of income (which...we can already do that), and offering tax incentives to companies who pay for vocational training. She received the most claps and woos when she slammed Trump.

Her policies are better than Trump's. They're better than Gary Johnson's. They're more feasible than Jill Stein's. It's 49 days before the election and Hillary has the best shot at defeating Trump. Voting for her is a no-brainer. But in terms of my feeeeeeeeeeelings? My precious millennial feeeeeelings?

Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history over at Berkeley, outlined the thing I feeeeeeeeeel about Hillary's attempts to connect with millennial voters on the Berkeley Blog back in April.

To briefly summarize, Fass argues that Hillary struggles to feel millennial pain. The bulk of Clinton's advocacy involves fighting hard for "kids and young people and families," which she doesn't let anyone forget. But a lot of us don't have children and families because we're fucking broke denizens of a destabilizing global economy. She might as well say she's been fighting her whole life to put a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Technology + globalization isn't just costing the U.S. jobs in the manufacturing sector, Fass goes on to say, it's threatening jobs in the professional worlds of medicine, law, and teaching, too. Clinton's' debt-free college line is good, but it's not the whole story. On the stump, she's not addressing the anxiety about how to enter the workforce after college, and how to maintain a work/life balance if we do manage to find a job.

And she says she "gets" that millennials who are totally against Trump still have some questions about her, but at no point in the speech does she explain her "cozy" relationship with Wall Street, or her hawkishness, or any of the other actual beefs many millennials have with her.

But then I imagine myself in Hillary's shoes. Here I am, a 68-year-old hard-ass woman staring into the still-budding faces of 18-24 year-olds. I've held grudges longer than they've been alive. I've endured daily sexist nonsense longer than they've been alive. I've been running for president longer than they've been alive. I'm running against a proudly racist, xenophobic, egomaniac and they're talking about voting for Jill Stein, who has never been elected to anything in her life. They're talking about voting for Gary Johnson? Didn't these people hear about Brexit? They do know that it's a close race, don't they? They do know that it's a close race between me and a fucking racist rhinoceros, don't they? They do know that even if I were Mitt Fucking Romney they should be voting for me over Donald Fucking Trump, don't they? And they're prepared to threaten this country with a Trump presidency to get a few more campaign promises out of me? I guess one thing you can say about this generation is that they're not afraid to take risks!

I hear all of that frustration bubbling up in little moments in her speeches. When she says, “Not voting is not an option. That just plays into Trump’s hands. It really does,” the urgency in her voice when she says "it really does" sounds so real. And when she sounds real, I feel as if I'm talking to a real person. And when I feel like a real person is talking to me, or when I've been properly tricked into thinking a real person is talking to me, then I don't feel condescended to.

As she says, she's fine with never being the showman her opponent is. But, if she wants to "earn" our vote, it couldn't hurt her to speak to our anxieties. And the least she could do is stop accidentally dropping Chumbawamba references. If she doesn't, the next 49 days will feel a lot like this: