Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning PHOTO COURTESY OF TUFTS

Here is a pop quiz for the Democratic Party leadership: What are the “11 millennial trends”?

The answer, according to a New York Times survey: big hair; the “Sex and the City” sitcom, which ended in 2004; wired headphones, instead of Bluetooth; mustaches; “recession pop” such as 2009’s "Down" by Jay Sean and Lil Wayne; photo dumps; choreographed dancing; hair accessories; physical media such as DVDs, CD, VHS and cassettes instead of streaming; 1990s JNCO jeans with their flared leg openings sometimes 50 inches in circumference. (JNCO means “Judge None; Choose One” or “Journey of the Chosen One.”); and Pokémon.

These trends among Generation Y -ages 29 to 44 — provide a window into one aspect of the lives of these relatively young Americans and an opportunity to understand their politics.

Their voter turnout exceeded 50 percent in 2020 but declined eight percent last year, Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (the Tufts CIRCLE) reported. Importantly, “after several cycles of overwhelming support for Democratic candidates, exit poll data suggest that young voters supported Vice President [Kamala] Harris over President-elect [Donald] Trump by just four percentage points.”

Some of those voters were “ignored by campaigns or lacked support to vote” and fewer that one in four and only 13 percent of those who did not vote “feel like they belong to a group that expresses itself politically.”

It is fair to assume that the more young politicians in a party’s leadership, the better its chances of knowing what youth want. The Democrats have several of them, including David Hogg, a Floridian who is just 25. In February, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) elected him its first Gen-Z vice-chairman, calling him “one of the most compelling voices” of his generation.

“Part of the issue is that we’re surrounding ourselves with people who tell us what we want to hear instead of what we need to hear,” Hogg told HuffPost. “I get that it’s uncomfortable to be told what you don’t want to hear but we need to build that culture as a party.”

Hogg “criticized some of the biggest decisions made in the Democratic Party,” HuffPost reported, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ decision not to appear on Joe Rogan’s rightwing podcast. He conceded it would not necessarily have decided the election but that “it speaks to a broader problem within the party where we’re choosing to live in a comfortable delusion a lot of the time of where the country actually is, rather than an uncomfortable reality of where it is.”

Three months later, Hogg announced that he was leading a $20 million primary push to replace some Democratic members of Congress through his new Leaders We Deserve organization. He predicted, correctly, that such a move would “anger a lot of people” and he anticipated “a smear campaign … to destroy my reputation and try to force me to stop doing this.”

But, he told The Times, “People say they want change in the Democratic Party but really they want change so long as it doesn’t potentially endanger their position of power. That’s not actually wanting change. That’s selfishness.” Hogg was the only DNC member who refused to sign a “neutrality policy” barring activities that would “call into question their impartiality and evenhandedness … both in their DNC capacity and in their personal capacity.”

For Hogg, however, it was not about telling people “you’re old, you need to go,” he told The Times, but that “we need to make room for a new generation to step up and help make sure that we have the people that are most acutely impacted by a lot of the issues that were are legislating on, that are actually going to live to see the consequences of this.”

The DNC responded by ousting Hogg from his vice-chairmanship, claiming it was not silencing him but that a procedural complaint required redoing the vote. Hogg called it a “fast-track” effort to push him out and he withdrew as a candidate, while indicating that he had no intention to shutter Leaders We Deserve. The DNC brass therefore lost a leader who is well-equipped to understand young Americans and what would motivate them to vote for Democratic candidates.

At age 17, Hogg survived the 2018 mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 fellow students and staff members and injured 18 others. He was a leader of subsequent March Our Lives rallies advocating gun control. A year later, he told The Washington Post, “there have been seven assassination attempts” against him.

Hogg had to cope also with other harassment, including by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. She was caught on camera haranguing him on the street, calling him a “coward” and claiming the Parkland tragedy had been a “false flag” event.

Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in Congress rejected New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 35, for a seat on the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. She lost to Gerry Connolly of Virginia who was ailing and died in May from cancer at age 75.

Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the House Energy and Commerce committee, dropped out of contention for the Oversight seat, telling reporters, “It’s actually clear to me that the underlying dynamics in the [Democratic House] caucus have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as I think would be necessary.”

However, the Democratic leadership, at least in the House, may have sent a signal when California’s Robert Garcia, 47 and a progressive, was elected on Tuesday to fill the vacancy on the Oversight Committee, defeating 70-year-old Stephen F. Lynch of Massachusetts by 150 to 63 in the secret ballot.

Democratic leaders could be finally shifting from the centrist position which Tony Coelho, while DNC chairman, instituted in the party in 1981 to attract wealthy donors, “on the assumption that the working class could be taken for granted once they had nowhere else to go,” as J.R. Ranney of California wrote in a letter to The Nation.

It has been part of a rejection of progressives who have been calling for fundamental change in the party’s platform which they see as especially urgent now. That message is being promoted in a series of well-attended rallies in Republican districts by the nation’s leading progressive, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders – an avowed “democratic socialist” who is 83 years old and has a major youth following.

Sanders was a co-founder and first chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and its only Senate member, chairing it for eight years. The CPC started with six members in 1991 but they now total 95, making it the second-largest grouping in the wider House Democratic Caucus, after the New Democrat Coalition. Frost is one of 10 vice chairpersons and Ocasio-Cortez is one of four at large executive board members.

CPC members “believe that government must be the great equalizer of opportunity for everyone. We are committed to passing legislation that advances justice, dignity, and peace for all people,” according to its website.

The CPC advocates policies such as “comprehensive immigration reform, good-paying jobs, fair trade, universal health care, debt-free college, climate action, and a just foreign policy.” It describes itself as “the leading voice calling for bold and sweeping solutions to the urgent crises facing this nation, including ending America’s broken forprofit health care system, raising American wages, eliminating political corruption, supporting the labor movement, and taking action to protect the planet for generations to come.”

Sanders and his supporters evidently believe that it is time for the Democratic Party to more forcefully confront the increasingly predatory capitalism which has taken over the country, as venture capitalists, newly minted tech billionaires and the wealthy from the industrial age become the main beneficiaries, critics insist, of President Donald Trump’s budget bill which proposes major funding cuts for social safety programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.

It was 170 years ago that Frederick Douglass made the point: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”