U.S. Rep Sara Jacobs on Why Democrats Need to Stop Gaslighting Young Voters
One of the youngest members of Congress shares her thoughts on Democrats' path forward -- and what's on her FYP.
As Democrats grapple with their post-election loss reckoning, young leaders in the party are speaking out about what went wrong and their vision for a path forward.
Last month, I had the opportunity to speak with Rep. Sara Jacobs (CA-51), who — at 35-years-old — is one of the youngest members of Congress.
You may remember hearing a bit from Jacobs last summer, when I spoke with her at the Democratic National Convention. At the time, Jacobs told me that “vibes alone do not win elections” and that Democrats needed to hone in on how their policies would actually impact the lives of young people.
Just months later, Jacobs is blunt about how Democrats fumbled the ball by “accidentally” adopting the status quo, despite the fact that “the status quo wasn’t actually trusted or working for people.” Moving forward, she says Democrats need to show up where young people are (on podcasts and across social media), with a focus on issues like the cost of living and housing.
Our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity, is below.
You're one of the youngest members of Congress. Do you feel a responsibility to be a voice for young people in the chamber, and in the party, and how does that manifest?
Jacobs: I absolutely feel responsibility to make sure young people's voices and concerns are heard here in Congress and in the Democratic Party. Often our issues don't get the importance that they need, because there's just not that many of us actually at the table when these things are being discussed. I'll give you one example.
After the Dobbs decision, obviously reproductive freedom impacts everyone, but it particularly impacts people of reproductive age, and I was one of the few women of reproductive age in Congress. When we were having discussions, it really matters. For instance, I was getting a lot of phone calls from peers, and constituents, and friends asking about their period tracking apps. We saw on TikTok, there was a whole like ‘delete your apps’ thing. So I introduced legislation to address reproductive and sexual health data from period tracking apps, website searches, all of this. And through that, I had to do a lot of explaining to my colleagues that, yes, people track their periods. Yes, there are apps that help you do that, and this is why it's important to protect that data. That's something I know because I myself use period tracking apps, and I myself am in the age cohort who is directly impacted by this.
That's one example, but I spend a lot of time explaining technology, pop culture, LGBTQ+ terms. My youngest sibling is trans and my middle sibling is gender non-conforming. So I have a whole way that I explain that to people. I help my colleagues download Signal on their phone. From things small to big, it really matters that we have more representation.
Elephant in the room. What's one thing that you think Democrats could have done better with outreach to younger voters this cycle?
Jacobs: First of all, there was a whole generation of people who came of political age during the housing crisis. I think that a lot of my colleagues didn't understand how much the Great Recession, plus the war in Iraq, really made our generation distrust institutions in a way that I think previous generations didn't.
The way we communicate with people has to be different. And I think we accidentally fell into becoming the party of the status quo when the status quo wasn't actually trusted or working for many people.
One very concrete way that showed is if you're young, basically your biggest expense is housing, right? Whether you're trying to buy a home, if you have kids, it's also childcare. And we took much too long to pivot from thinking only about the economy as unemployment and jobs to really thinking about the cost of living and talking about it in a real way. And unfortunately, because [Sen.] Joe Manchin took out child care and housing from what became the Inflation Reduction Act, we actually didn't do anything on those things, and so we didn't have a good message to tell people.
It took the party much too long to realize that even if you have a job, and even if you have a good job, you can't afford things. That really was impacting people, and we were trying to tell them that what they were experiencing wasn't real, and that's like, not a good way.
And young people, I think are even are better than most at spotting bullshit. What they want is authenticity, and we can't gaslight them into saying that what they're experiencing isn't what's really happening.
Both things can be true. The numbers of the economy can be good, and it can feel really bad, because housing and childcare went up way more than inflation and haven't come down. It’s really important that we don't pretend that our systems are working when they're not. We need to actually talk about how we're going to change the systems so that they actually work for people, instead of just trying to protect them against what [President-elect Donald] Trump is trying to do.
Because if people's choices are keep what there is, or blow everything up, they're going to choose blow everything up because we didn't give them another option of like, ‘actually, here's the way we can fix things’ that isn’t blow everything up.
People just really want change. So there's what we were talking about, and there's two other things Democrats need to do better when talking to young people. One is that I think we just were not showing up where they were. And so in a lot of ways, it's not even what we were saying, it’s that they didn't hear what we were saying at all. So it's not that they didn't like our message, is that they never got it. I think think we need to be much more creative about how we go to where people are.
A corollary of that is that what a lot of people want, and especially young people, is they want to know their leaders as humans, and they want to feel an authentic connection with them. To do that, we have to be more comfortable talking authentically about ourselves as people and not always being so scripted and not always being so tied to talking points and so worried that we're going to say something the wrong way, because then that just makes us come off as out of touch.
The last thing, is that we need to do a better job of distinguishing young people from each other. When you talk to a lot of these campaigns about youth outreach, what they actually mean is student outreach, which does not actually count all young people. College campus organizing is very important, but it is not the whole range of young people. We need to really make sure we're meeting people where they are in real life and on line and and talking to them about the issues that matter to them — and showing that we have a real plan to address them.
What are some of the forums where Democrats need to go to better reach young people?
Jacobs: There's a lot of talk now about how we don't have a Democratic equivalent of Joe Rogan and it's true. But we also aren't cultivating that. We didn't go to all the YouTube influencers, and podcasts, and everything. We need elected officials to go to these places.
But we also have to understand that it can't only be elected officials. We need an infrastructure of credible, relatable folks who can translate and expand our message.
And that we're finding talent and helping promote them and giving them access and respecting their value in the same way we treat and respect the traditional media, which I think we haven't done a good job of. We need to make sure that we are from the top down, helping encourage that and encourage people to go to those places. It's important that [a majority of news influencers are men], and yet, women are more likely to consume on certain social media platforms, young men on others. And so I think making sure that we are going where people are, and having the right message for people, and not treating young people as this monolith, and being authentic about it is important.
What’s one YouTube show or podcast you want to go on?
Jacobs: I really want to go on ‘Call Her Daddy.’ I think that’d be fun. I also think I’d have a good time with Joe Rogan. I think I could hang.
In your eyes, what's the best way to gain trust with young people?
Jacobs: It’s a few things.
One is actually respecting young people and not assuming they're just going to vote for us because they're young, but actually respecting that we need to work and earn their vote. And we can't do that just by like glitzy celebrities every now and then, but actually, [need] the real hard work we do with other demographic groups to earn their vote.
The second is we need to show that government can actually work for them, and that government actually cares and is listening. That's why one of the most important things when I'm talking to young people is that I remind them that, you know, when young people made their voices heard, we were actually able to pass climate change legislation, we were able to pass gun violence prevention legislation.
To that point, we need to do a better job of both writing the legislation and having an executive branch who can implement the legislation more quickly, so that people actually feel the benefit. Because you can't blame people that they're like, ‘Okay, you said you do all these things, but my life doesn't feel any different.’ They haven't actually felt the full benefit of these laws yet. A lot of politicians, their response to young people is like, ‘Oh, you'll understand when you're older,’ or ‘You just need to be more educated.’ It's very condescending. We saw that with the Gaza protests. And I think, again, respecting young people, respecting that they have a point of view. In my read of history, young people are usually right, and so the whole idea that we're looking down on them instead of respecting what they're trying to tell us, I think is something we need to do better on.
What’s your social media strategy moving forward?
Jacobs: It will continue to be, but maybe more supercharged, what I always try to do — which is show up authentically as the young woman that I am.
I talk about policy while doing get ready with me videos and makeup tutorials and doing my egg bake meal prep.
Really just trying to show that government isn’t this thing behind a marble wall. It's actually people doing our best.
One of the things that I'm obsessed with is trying to figure out how we create more and better, two-way feedback loops between ourselves and our constituents.
And, lastly, what’s on your for-you-page?
Jacobs: I love reading toddler blogs. I have a two and a half year old niece and a one year old nephew, and also toddler blogs — very helpful in dealing with other members of Congress. The content is helpful, you know, ‘Validate the feeling, not the behavior.’ So I have a lot of like, positive reinforcement. Let's see what else, ‘Trying to stay calm while someone else is having a tantrum.’
So I have a lot of toddler blogs, I have a lot of makeup tutorials. I have a lot of healthy cooking, even though I don't cook, I always think I might. And skincare, fashion — not like, high fashion, but people talking about what they wear to work.
Your feedback
I’m aiming to do more Q&A’s with elected officials, candidates, creators, and leaders across industries — not just politics. Who do you want to hear from? Let me know with a comment, DM, or email.