"Almost forgot that this is the whole point"

How Zohran's win, the tradwives, and a TikTok trend all connect to the politics of millennial & gen Z ambition (and the ambitions of our politics)

Two different political events — and a trending topic on TikTok — have me noodling on something I want to to tie together here with some advice for candidates thinking about how to win millennial and gen Z voters.

Stick with me for this…

#1: Zohran Mamdani’s victory

In the days after the election, I watched clip after clip of Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech, and later sat down to read the full thing, which is worth a few minutes of your time.

As I said, much has been written about his campaign since he won, especially on his focus on affordability.

Not as much attention has been paid to that second half of his campaign theme that hung behind on him during his victory speech: Afford to live & afford to dream.

“Afford to dream” - phew, what a phrase! The time, space, and freedom to dream, to want, to aspire for more — said another way: The capacity to be ambitious.

Mamdani ties it back to New York City as a city of dreamers, of strivers — a place where we can imagine more for ourselves. He connects it to how New Yorkers can demand more out of our government; we can envision something bigger.

There is so much about his campaign that connected to younger voters — voters ages 30-34 (what’s up, fellow millennials!) were the largest share of the electorate. Many have pointed to a combo of his policies, his communication style, his energy, that fact that Cuomo sucked, as the reason we showed up en masse.

All of that is true, and:

I think the way he gave millennials and gen Z permission to be ambitious mattered on a psychic level.

It was both a city-wide permission —New York City is the greatest city in the world and dammit, we should have government services that reflect that!! — and also personal permission: We can want more out of our lives.

Things may be hard now and the solutions may be challenging, but why not reach for the stars? We are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

Consider that in contrast to the other political occurrence I’ve been thinking about…

#2: The Turning Points USA conference for young conservative women

I can’t pick a favorite story about it — Emma Goldberg’s in the NYT, E.J. Dickson’s in NY Mag, and Kara Voght’s write up in the Washington Post all get at the same themes:

The right is selling a story to young women specifically about why things feel hard. (They’re selling a story to men too, of course, but the right’s relationship to men is obviously different, and for others to dissect.)

In the conservative recounting, the villains making life hard for millennial and gen Z women are feminists and girl bosses. Women are struggling to balance it all.

The solution they offer is for women to leave the workforce, marry young, and pump out kids. Don’t even try!

Each of these writers point to something undeniably true:

Hearing someone give voice to that anxiety that so many women have is powerful!

It does feel like it’s nearly impossible to balance a big job and a family and a life outside of work; it does sound tempting to fuck off into the woods and frolic with the sheep. I get it!

But instead of following up that diagnosis of the problem with solutions like paid family leave, universal childcare, and bodily autonomy, the right is telling women to dream smaller.

Forget about having a career. Focus on family.

It’s not that you need to quit your job and care for your aging parents because the GOP budget shut down all the nursing homes in your area, or that you need to stay home with your kids because daycare is unaffordable.

It’s that you’re going to want to.

Make the people want less and then you have to give them less.

This is not an accident: My friend

Emily Amick

has been writing about this at length for years as she regularly shines a light the political end-goals of the trad wife industrial complex.

As

Stefanie at TOO AMBITIOUS

puts it in her post about how they are getting more vocal about wanting women out of the work force:

“No matter how much you idealize a patriarchal vision of womanhood or dress it up in beautiful instagram aesthetics or whimsical conference swag, it’s a vision that demands women want less, and a reality that leaves us all worse off as a result.”

What Zohran was talking about in his campaign and what those young conservative women are grappling with are different manifestations of the same sentiment:

We do not feel like we can dream big anymore.

This is particularly (but not exclusively) resonant for millennials — consider

lyz

’s essay this week about what happens to millennial ambition, or Rainesford Stauffer’s excellent book, All The Gold Stars, on the changing nature of our generations ambition, or any number of the many books about ambition that have come out in the last few years.

Hell, I’d consider my book part of that discourse — the way millennial and gen Z ambition has evolved (and how leaders can create new structures that reflects those changes) takes up a full chapter in When We’re in Charge.

I feel it myself! I am personally and professionally ambitious, which feels silly to say out loud — because, no duh, I have a big job, and also some big hobbies, and I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I didn’t want to be.

But like everyone else, my ambition has shifted over the years.

I’m not seeking a particular role or a title. Rather, I’m ambitious for a better type of life.

I want to do work that makes a meaningful difference in the world, that interests me and challenges me. (And yes, I also need to pay the bills, and at the moment, raising two kids in New York City is not particularly cheap.)

At the same time, I aspire for joy. I want the time and resources to be a full person with interests, hobbies, friends, time with my husband and kids, and, as much as I can control it, good health. I want to work hard and not be miserable doing it.

I don’t even allow myself to pretend I want to “have it all.”

Our society as it currently exists is not set up with the kinds of safety nets and support systems to even imagine that. It should be! But it isn’t.

So instead, my ambition as I’ve defined it is to create a life where I have enough of the things that matter — and the definitions of what matters and what “enough” of those things might mean is under constant negotiation.

I know I’m not alone in this. (See: all the essays I linked to above!)

When I spoke to 130+ people for my book, I’d ask many of them about their relationship to ambition — parents or not, men and women alike, nearly every leader was questioning whether the hustle was worth the sacrifices it required.

We were told all through our childhoods and adolescences that “if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life” and if we simply followed our passions, we ’d find our callings. At the same time, so many of us were pushed to work harder, achieve more, climb the ranks, get the best grades—millennials especially were raised to be “optimized,” from school straight through to the workplace.

That was all a well-intended load of bullshit that set us up to fail or, at least, set us up for disappointment.

Consider how many times over the years millennials and Gen Zers have seen hard work, big bets, and major job titles fail to bring happiness, satisfaction, or even long-term financial stability. While we are not unusual in living through unprecedented times, it does feel particularly acute for us.

Whether it was entering the workforce during the recession in 2008 or trying to climb the ranks during the early days of COVID in 2020, so many of us have been forced time and again to ask:

What’s the fucking point?

It’s telling that a social media trend of the last few months has literally been answering that question, as people share videos and pictures of their kids, pets, nature, ice cream, whatever, with the caption or text, “almost forgot that this is the whole point.”

I’ve watched countless numbers of these videos. The “whole point” is never work! It’s not even money or luxury goods. It’s having the mental space (and literal time) to enjoy the other stuff.

Which brings me back to politics:

Telling us what the point of it all is will be the task of any political movement who wants to capture millennial and gen Z power in the next few years.

If we doesn’t give people permission to dream bigger and want for more — and prove that more is possible! — the right’s story about wanting less and settling for less will stick.

Yes, it’s about offering policies that solve those problems, and hopefully delivering on those policies in a way people can feel (which, tbh, is why I do not envy anyone running for Congress right now — what can you promise that you can actually deliver?)

But it’s also about making sure those policies reflect a psychological truth:

Millennials and gen Z are looking ahead to decades (if we’re lucky!!) of life ahead of us, and feeling despair about what the future might look like, and how realistic we can be about what might be possible.

We look to a future where we can never retire, can never buy a home (or never move out of the starter home we bought when interest rates were low), can’t afford to send our kids to college — where we are working hard without ever seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Consider that Zohran’s answer to “what’s the point” is, to paraphrase:

We can make New York City more affordable. And since you won’t be so stressed about the cost of housing or childcare, maybe you can imagine a future where you can open that restaurant, or write that novel, or spend time with your kids.

Sounds nice, right?

It doesn’t surprise me that it took a millennial candidate to tell that story so clearly back to us, but I think/hope candidates and politicians of any age can do it.

We have to paint a picture of what it might be like when things don’t suck — of what that might open up for us when we have the chance to breathe.

It’s not just about what it might do for our bank accounts — it’s about what that economic security might make possible for us beyond the money.

Our generations’ ambitions have changed. Our politics needs to change with them.

---

Other links & reading recs will come back next week. (It’s been chaos!)

In the meantime, for more about ambition — especially millennial and gen Z ambition — and what leaders can do in response to the changing nature of it all, pick up a copy of When We’re in Charge.

You can order it in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.

---