Sasse is one of my favorite incumbent Senators (I would be deeply excited to see him ascend to the Presidency), but I think a number of his specific critiques are off-base; in my experience, it is far more common to learn "virtue" from the schooling system (or, alternatively, through organized religion) than it is from parents. I'm also unsure that "virtue" as he defines it has ever been part of the political system; the radical transparency of the modern day has revealed things that were hidden in (say) the 1960s, rather than inventing them. He is correct about the decline of parenting, but it's very difficult to see that shift reversing without very broad shifts in culture which are essentially still heading away from what he wants (for instance, two-working-parent households are still becoming more and not less common, and parents cannot parent if they aren't there).
A great deal of opinion polling of "societal attitudes" shows that Millennials hold deeply individualistic and "yuppie" views. The strong Millennial vote for Democrats is a result of a wide variety of cultural issues (most obviously stratification by race, but also the far more secular and far more climate-change-accepting nature of the generation) and predicting that the Millennials will bring in "class consciousness" seems like a very long shot to me.
What happens when the prosperity that is necessary to sustain the choose-your-own-adventure, consumption-centered way of life is no longer a reality for most people?A failure of governance has taken place and reforms to bring it back become necessary.
I think that you're right about attitudes, and there's clearly not much solidarity among most millennials as of 2017. It's the banal material hurdles like unmanageable student debt and unaffordable housing that pose a problem for most, rather than a sense that there is some structural lack of economic justice. But if those problems continue to worsen, at some point they will be one severe enough to provoke a political response, no?
I'm a bit off from where you are in that I think they're severe enough to provoke a political response right now (and that the Sanders campaign effectively
was such a response, though I think the extent to which his coalition could be transferred to another "socialist" candidate, or even himself in a crowded field, remain to be seen), and I would be saddened, if unsurprised, if Sanders or a candidate with a similar platform were to win in 2020. But, much like Trump himself, the broad cultural acceptance of the movement just isn't there (and it would have to be there among the entire population, not just millennials), and that would translate into a floundering in Congress and ultimately a lack of success in enacting a broad legislative agenda.
If you're suggesting that in the future there will be what you describe as solidarity, I'll say that's contingent on a belief that ordinary life for millennials will worsen over time, not really consistent with American history, and finally would require a very broad shift in culture that doesn't seem to be coming, though it's possible to cherrypick some evidence that suggests it might be beginning. That's not to predict that it
won't -- just that if it will, we're decades and a lot of unusual history away from it.
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