Obama and reviving the youth vote
Obama would like to energize the people who were instrumental in putting him over the top in 2008, the youth vote.
When a person is accustomed to having the magic touch, it’s hard for him to perceive that the gift he’s always relied on has deserted him. One of Obama’s greatest strengths was his appeal to naive youth, who were starry-eyed over his promise and his promises. But Obama now seems to be having a difficult time grasping the notion that, not only is Velma Hart exhausted, but those youths who fell in love with him two years ago aren’t so starry-eyed anymore. Reality bites, indeed.
What Obama may also be forgetting—or perhaps he never really appreciated—is that the youth vote is notoriously difficult to motivate to actually get to the polls. And the erstwhile Obamaphiles are no exception to that rule. It was 2008 that appears to have been the anomaly:
Another [University of Wisconsin] student, Madeline Coyne, 21, said she waited in line to see Obama when he spoke on campus in 2008. Now, she said, “the euphoria has dimmed down.”
Still, would she vote on Nov. 2?
“At the midterm elections?” Coyne asked. “Probably not.”
However, let’s not be too sanguine. Democratic strategists are not being altogether stupid in appealing to the youth vote. They know that Obama and the Democrats have lost the Independents, the group candidates usually need to win. The alternative path to victory is to significantly energize the base and increase turnout. And only a small increase can make a large difference in the ordinarily low-turnout midterm elections.
The key, however, is that word “ordinarily.” This is not an ordinary year. It’s the Republicans and Independents who are energized to vote and to turn out in large numbers, not the Democrats.
At least, let’s hope so.
O’s going on the road to get these gomers fired up.
I call it the “Bring Out Your Dead” tour.
We all need to PUSH HARD to vote in the mid-terms and help to get out the Republican vote. Please do that even if you are in a safe Republican district as I am. We not only need to control the US congress but need to control state offices and legislatures as well…for redistricting after the recent census.
By the way, I noticed that O’Donnell in DE is gaining on Coons. You go girl!
There are indications that Texas will pick up 4 House seats in the reapportionment. Some are worried that the influx will be liberals from New York, etc. and make Texas a less red state. I like to think that anyone smart enough to get out of the Rust Belt and/or New York is smart enough to vote Republican. 🙂
texexec – the Massachusetts voters who moved up to NH were somewhat less liberal than the MA population as a whole, but not enormously. May you guys have better luck.
Look ahead to 2012. That youth vote from 2008 will all be 4 years older. That tends to chip away at liberal enthusiasm a bit (though it usually takes marriage and children to seal the deal). Some will be less liberal; the starry-eyed a bit more jaded, less likely to knock on doors, go to rallies. The 14-17 y/o’s who come of age will have done so in an era of much more criticism, and much less mythology about Obama.
We need to keep stressing that they are the ones who will be paying the bill for all this. As students, they were net receivers – now they’re going to be providers.
None of that carries an election in itself, but it does eat into a Democratic strength. Similarly, I think the 95% black vote will go down to 85%. The government union vote will remain strong, but the trade union vote will not be so motivated (it always pays to keep those two separate in your calculations).
Here’s a worry, though. The poor and those who have need of government supports strongly tend Democratic – and there will be more of those, even if it is from Democratic policies.
I attended a couple of presentations given by researcher Marilyn Moats Kennedy, who said that younger consumers are far more suspicious than their baby-boomer counterparts. (Imagine the surly IT people in your company.)
Boomers like executive summaries and attractive presentations; younger buyers say, “Give me the spec sheet and I’ll draw my own conclusions.”
This seems contrary to the observable fact that Obama was strong on summary and short on specs, but the buyers at that time were those who felt that they had been conned by Bush. Therefore, Obama’s only task was to convince the younger buyer that he was decidedly not Bush.
Those who were attracted because Obama he was the trend will likely think that the trend is passed.
As the specifics of this administration have become clear, those who were voting for ‘change’ will be disillusioned by the mere fact that Obama has necessarily left some of Bush’s policies in place. Others will see that the guy is incompetent, and this technical generation expects things to work properly at a minimum.
In short, the majority of younger buyers are smart and wary, which means that they can be encouraged to vote right once they understand that they’ve been hustled.
Before 21, I was liberal.
After 21, I was libertarian ( I wanted a cut in government to the tune of 80%) – I wasn’t the marijuana libertarian.
Between the ages of 22 and and 33 I became a centrist conservative – I understood that you couldn’t cut government that radically and if you just capped TOTAL spending levels (thus the centrist label) and re-prioritized what the federal government’s duties were over the course of a 10 year period that the economy wouldn’t be hit so radically.
That’s common sense centrist conservatism.
But then again – I’m 40 now. How will I view things when I’m 60?
Really we need to teach young people economics 101. In CA we have a commercial running by Jerry Brown against Meg Whitman. It talks about Meg’s position of cutting the capital gains tax rate and how that benefits the rich. I got exercised by the commercial and my girlfriend of 48 years old says, “but it does help the rich”.
I said to her:
CA has an unemployment rate of 12.6% because of the liberal policies of class warfare and creating an anti-business and anti-rich climate. Liberalism spreads misery and heaven forbid we actually spread prosperity and lift all boats with the rising tide of economic success!!! I was frustrated and I let it show and guess what??? She didn’t listen to a word I said and I recognized it. I only said 2 damn sentences!!!
2 !!!
Frustrating. No depth in some people’s thought processes…
I’m happy about one thing…
My girlfriend is not that motivated to vote this election season…
She doesn’t even want to talk about it. She basically shuts down even though I have pleaded for equality in that area letting her know that I have taken in interest in celebrities and things that interest her so that I can engage in discussions about Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt 🙂 as well as others –
Hey ! Give me a pop quiz question about any celebrity to see how I’m doing ! 🙂
From Representative Pence’s speech:
“…. it is not the president’s job to manipulate the nation’s youth for the sake of his agenda or his party. They are a potent political force when massed by the social network to which they are permanently attached. But if the president has their true interests at heart he will neither flatter them nor let them adore him, for in flattery is condescension and in adoration is direction, and youth is neither seasoned nor tested enough to direct a nation. Nor should it be the president’s business to presume to direct them. It is difficult enough to do right by one’s own children. No one can be the father of a whole continent’s youth.”
Frankly, I do not underestimate anyone’s stupidity, especially the young/immature. Although high unemployment, losing health insurance, and the corrupt means by which Mr. Hope and Change passed Obamacare over the will of the people may have opened a few eyes. If the young and dumb do not participate in the midterms it will probably be due more to disinterest in yesterday’s fad than increased wisdom.
Three problems with relying on the youth vote.
1. The young tend to be flaky and irresponsible. Half of them probably show up at the polls on Wednesday.
2. The young also tend to be exceedingly fickle and flit from fad to fad as they tire of each. Yesterday’s hot band is today’s punchline.
3. Coupled closely to #2, the young have antennae exquisitely attuned to what is “in” and what isn’t, and can smell desperation – the apotheosis of uncoolness – from a mile off.
So…lotsa luck, Barry. Paradoxically, the more you put yourself out there, the more you exacerbate the problems above.
PS: Say hello to the Backstreet Boys for us.
@Baklava – So do you really think Angelina is manipulating Shiloh to act like a tomboy?!?
Pop culture is cotton candy for the brain, and helps ease my mind after pondering the political issues of the day.
Personally JuliB – I’d rather see the child choose that look over the look that Suri Cruise chooses with high heels and what not.
Having had two girls (who are now 11 and 14) who chose dresses – I understand girls wanting to dress girly but Tom and his wife should limit injuries by cutting out the heels and being “parents”.
Is Angelina manipulating Shiloh? No. Zahara (who is 5) chooses girly clothes. Logically I don’t know why Shiloh would have been manipulated but Zahara not.
🙂
As for cotton candy? My cotton candy is … well …. yes…. yes it is… my cotton candy…
Baklava and Occam’s Beard:
Winston Churchill said that if you aren’t a liberal when you are young you have no heart and if you aren’t a conservative when you are older, you have no brain.
I think Neo may have called our attention to that some time ago.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2010/09/60-of-economists.html
http://www.ruth4az.com/index.html
excerpt:
Fired UP!!
Baklava:
You’re a better man than I am.
Luckily, my cats don’t care about celebrities any more than I do.
Considering the 2010 dollar is less than $0.20 on the 1970 dollar, and at the current rate of inflation, the 2030 dollar will be about $0.27 on the current dollar, I’d say we better vote for someone who understands a few more things than Obama does.
I’m curious how long before the youth catches on to how less free and manipulated they are by the liberal establishment. This is going to get very interesting very soon i think.
The other zeitgeist that concerns me is this: maybe a lot of people are fed up with Obama, but a lot of them never got over bushilteritis, so now they are just anti-everything. I see this in “normal” people who are not brave/wired enough to consume the alternate blogo-media and thus never realized that Bush wasn’t all that bad after all. A lot of these people vote for Ralph Nader every year (heck I don’t know what a lot of people would do without Nader).
So I have seen a lot of just utter disgust and apathy at all things political. These people kind of frustrate me in a different way because I know they can see how bad Obama is but they do not know what else to believe, they have never been told anything but the standard narrative. And they have further been told that anyone outside the standard narrative is a whackjob so they stay away from whackjobs like myself.
I blame publik skool.
Anna – Public school or not, at some point people are responsible for opening their own eyes.
I hate to say it, but if these people are turned off by O and his ilk, but still hate the Rs, then if they don’t vote (or ‘waste’ their vote), all the better.
I agree: ignorant and apathetic people not voting is a good thing.
Boy is it ever put up or shut up time for Obama. If no one comes to his Madison rally, or if people leave in droves after the star music acts and before he takes the stage, he’s toast.
Some time ago, there were hearings, televised on CSpan, about capital gains taxes. The impact on, or benefit to, the rich was part of the discussion.
It transpired that all beneficiaries of capital gains tax cuts were rich.
See, it happens this way. You may be making ordinary, averge income. But when you sell something, a house, a farm, a small business, some stocks you own, then you have the income from the sale. Which, it turns out, makes you rich. In that year. Temporarily.
One of the congresscritters asked an IRS person if they could differentiate the permanently rich from the temporarily rich for purposes of this discussion. He said they could not.
Perhaps that has changed.
Speaking of Wisconsin, I see at Drudge that Russy Feingold won’t be attending the Obama for Russ rally today. Scampering like rats through the aqueduct !
I’m afraid you give the youth vote too much credit. They were starry eyed, but not because of his promises. They were starry eyed because he was handsome, elegant, young, and yes…because he was black (it’s so chic these days; if you the right “type” of black). And the youth vote has lost interest not because of policy, but because the “new thing” is no longer new. They’re simply bored with him. No, youngsters care little about actual policy; their lives revolve around feelings and emotions, not logic. So if you want to reenergize the youth vote, I recommend adding a handsome and popular rock star to the ticket. Or perhaps a really attractive and well known lesbian actress. You know…something “new” (like a shiny bauble) that will hold their attention.
In today’s headlines, Obama is scolding Democrats for their apathy, saying it will be “inexcusable” if they don’t vote in November. Apparently he thinks that by reverting to professorial scold mode — finger-wagging, scolding, and nagging — he’ll reinspire the once-starry-eyed young voters who are falling away from him. Yup, sure, that’ll work.
JohnR22…Yep, the ‘yoots “ADD” has got to be a frustration for His Infantile Majesty. Also, they’re seeing many friends graduate and go–gasp–jobless. How’s that Hopey-Changy Thingy workin’for’ya, ‘Yoots?
JohnR22,
I think you speak some truth there.
When will we get that woman vice-president or PRESIDENT though?
Nyom?
Obama was like a drug… first theres the high followed by the letdown of reality once thd drug wears off… and there you are stuck with the world as it was before the high. Theres a lot of people now experiencing the after-high letdown.
As noted in this Hugh Hewitt article:
Perhaps this is the best explanation of the Obama phenomenon.
Obama fires up supporters at University of Wisconsin-Madison rally
host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/article_a4b071e8-cb5d-11df-b464-001cc4c002e0.html
notice how many are wearing communist red..