Millennials, collectively, are serial killers.

A Sept. 28 Buzzfeed article rounded up some highlights of headlines about all the things those born from 1981-97  murdered in cold blood: the napkin industry, vacations, soap and sitcoms, among others.

And now they’re also being accused of killing the election. A driving narrative in this election cycle has been the idea that it will be young people’s fault if Donald Trump wins. Their protest votes and dissatisfaction with Hillary Clinton will hand the election to an orange and fascist version of Grimace, the thinking goes.

This idea is best summed up by a Sept. 15 tweet from Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones. In response to an article from the New York Times stating that third-party candidates poll best with young voters, she said, “I have never hated millennials more.”

The Democratic establishment has been unhappy with young people’s failure to get in line with Clinton since the start of the election cycle.

Bernie Sanders won millennials in the primary by 43 points, prompting a lot of people to tsk over his progressive policies.

He was raising their expectations too much, they said. Now when the general election came around, his young, rabid supporters would be to blame if anything went wrong.

That’s reductive and wrongheaded.

Scolding a demographic that already feels neglected by a candidate is not a good political strategy.

Donald Trump is a sexist, racist, ignorant, authoritarian xenophobe who does not deserve to make eye contact with either of President Obama’s dogs, let alone occupy the White House. Obviously.

And while Clinton is certainly a flawed candidate, her flaws are mostly an extension of the status quo, as opposed to Trump’s catastrophic hatefulness and idiocy. Saying that the two are equally bad is laughable.

But the problem here isn’t disaffected third-party voters. It’s Trump voters. And Trump voters are not 18-35 years old, mostly.

According to Washington Post statistics updated through Sept. 25, Clinton has a 12-point lead in 18-39 year-olds. Trump, on the other hand, has a 1-point lead among those 40-64 and a 10-point lead with those 65 and older.

Maligning millennials for not being enthusiastic enough about Clinton doesn’t make sense when they’re the only age demographic she’s winning. It also doesn’t make sense to chide them for being disappointed Clinton isn’t as progressive as we’d hoped. Sanders did succeed in pushing some of her policies – particularly education and the minimum wage – left, which is a welcome concession. But it doesn’t feel like a win when she is focusing on winning over moderate Republicans.

According to a Sept. 2 article in Salon, almost immediately after the Democratic convention ended, the Clinton campaign began reaching out to GOP donors and operatives, trying to convince them to abandon the demagogue their party nominated.

It’s been a mostly ineffective strategy.

Republicans overwhelmingly support Trump because he is saying outright what most Republican lawmakers have only been strongly implying (for example, that women should be punished for having abortions). They’re not going to shift in large numbers because their candidate says what establishment Republicans dance around.

If the campaign instead tried to reach out to young people, then maybe fewer of them would vote for a third-party candidate.

I’m a young progressive who plans on voting for Clinton because Pennsylvania is a battleground state, and Trump might start a nuclear war.

But I wish she wouldn’t take me, and my demographic, for granted.