The same establishment press that swore Hillary Clinton had it in the bag and that the red wave was a fiction is back with a fresh storyline: Gen Z is turning on Trump, and Republican corruption will doom the midterms. If your trust in that apparatus survived 2016 and 2022, it shouldn't now.
Slate trotted out Adam Mockler, a 23-year-old podcast host anointed as the latest "Gen Z whisperer," to deliver the headline: "Younger voters absolutely are souring on Trump." Mockler's evidence is his own read of the room. He told Slate that Gen Z experienced Trump's first term as "a vibe" — they were in middle school, parents paid the bills, and 2017 felt fine. Now, Mockler argues, they see Trump starting new wars and posting memes about Netanyahu on a demolished Gaza Strip. His advice to Democrats: dump the means-tested micropolicy and match Trump's "big, bold ideas" on messaging.
HuffPost is running the corruption track. The piece catalogs GOP scandals — an Ohio utility bribery scheme, a House ethics probe in Georgia, a revolving-door fortune made by Republican candidates in Michigan and New Hampshire — and pitches it as the Democrats' path to retaking the Senate. Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey told HuffPost the party must tie Washington self-dealing to grocery prices and energy costs, something he admits they botched last time. "It didn't connect with the broader electorate," Kim conceded of the party's anti-corruption messaging during Trump's first term.
What neither outlet spends much time on: the track record. The polling and media apparatus pushing these demographic narratives missed the two biggest electoral shocks of the last decade. Now, weeks before midterms, they're serving up the same product — this time with a Gen Z wrapper and a corruption bow.
Republicans are pushing back. The National Republican Senatorial Committee noted that New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas is married to a lobbyist, that Democratic candidates are tied to megadonor Reid Hoffman — who admitted visiting Jeffrey Epstein's private island twice — and that Democrats have their own revolving-door problems. NRSC spokeswoman Bernadette Breslin said Democrats "have zero credibility leading an anti-corruption campaign."
The question isn't whether some Republicans have scandal problems or whether a liberal podcast host senses a vibe shift. It's whether voters will buy what the same institutions are selling — again.
