President Trump's re-election drew a lot of post-analysis attention to the large numbers of young people who had broken for President Trump, helping to swing the election for him. Not many people had that on their bingo card. But it happened.

I was able to get some insight about this striking trend by going to a terrific gathering of the Young Americans' Foundation yesterday in La Jolla.

YAF is the updated name to Bill Buckley's Young Americans for Freedom, and they remain a still-strong group, apparently the largest group for young conservatives. Former Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is its president, and he was present at the lunch -- an impressively sharp and focused leader with encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. politics. After meeting him, all I could think was, I sure hope I get another chance to vote for him again as president some day.

It was a lunch, with the featured speaker my friend Daniel Di Martino, a Venezuelan-American who's only been in the U.S. for seven years, yet is already a Ph.D. student in economics at Columbia University in New York, a Manhattan Institute fellow, the founder of 'The Dissident Project' which educates Americans about the ills of socialism from those who lived through it, and an unusually talented and powerful public speaker who has addressed 40 schools about the importance of conservative and free market values, drawing on his experience as a Venezuelan who survived the Chavista socialist regime. 

He was extraordinary.

Four things leaped out from his presentation on the problem of Joe Biden's lawless open borders:

That the current wave of illegal migration into the U.S. doesn't resemble that of previous waves of immigrants in that the migrants are often lured to the states with promises of welfare and public benefits, not jobs. He wasn't without compassion for the current crop of Biden open-borders illegal immigrants, saying many had been abused as he found from interviewing many of them in New York. But the economic cost was too large and he showed a series of Ph.D. level graphs demonstrating it. He was most struck by how the setup now did not resemble the setup in decades past, describing the system that worked previously as almost a social darwinian one in that those migrants who came to the U.S. and who were willing to work hard did stay in America, and by extension created the unique dynamism that the U.S. is known for. Those who didn't, pretty much always went back. That says a lot about who and what we we are as a country.

Second, that the Venezuelan experience with socialism, and its slide downhill into a one-party state is uniquely useful for Americans to pay attention to, in that Venezuela's downward slide came as a result of citizens voting their way into this socialism. In other socialist regimes, ruling groups shot their way to power or were installed as puppet regimes. Only Venezuela actually willed its slide into tyranny through the ballot box, which tells us how important it is to educate people about the ill effects of socialism. 

Third, that it's better to educate the young when they are young, not when they are set in their beliefs. Kids form their political views much younger than most people suppose -- like around the age of 9 or thereabouts as he noted of himself. I recall I got politically conscious around the age of 13. That's the best time to educate them on the ills of socialism -- when they can absorb this information.

Lastly, Milton Friedman remains a gateway drug to kids, something I didn't expect to hear. He discovered Friedman's writings and became fascinated by free markets, same way a lot of young people did during the 1970s and 1980s.

Amid this fascinating presentation, I was able to meet lots of very bright young people, many of whom went to fancy schools, many of whom were "people of color" as the left likes to say. The young people I met from Charlie Kirk's Turning Point group, which was responsible for swinging many swing states were particularly well versed in how politics works and able to read which ways the winds are going. They (it was more than one) assured that it was hard work to achieve all they did, driving registrations of young people and turnout as well, but they felt good about all they did. One also told me they were working very hard to retake California, which was music to my ears. If anyone can do it, they can.

It's great news to know they are out there, and that there are so many brilliant young people who did so much to swing this election to President Trump.

Image: Monica Showalter, via Twitter