Just like Wulfgar!, I like what this Balloon Juice post has to say:
I do get sick of the way everything revolves around boomer narratives. We all joke about hippie-punching, but when Joe Klein goes off on the "far left" (or whatever he calls us now), that is what he thinks he's doing. And the electorate is polarized along age lines as never before (since the advent of demographically detailed exit polls), though the greatest divide is between those over 65 (who are too old to be boomers) and those under 30, not between Leno's generation and Conan's.
Wulfgar! mentions that a Boomer's been harassing him about how his generation could organize and "get things done," apparently contrasting that to how kiddies organize these days. I'll get to that canard in a moment, but first I want to touch on something similar I heard recently from a respected source, that young voters abandoned Obama "just like they did McGovern," and that his campaign was therefore essentially illusory.
Or, as Hunter S. Thompson said about the youth vote in 2004, "yeah, we rocked the vote all right. Those little bastards betrayed us again."
But here's the thing. McGovern, despite all the organizing around young voters, barely topped Nixon among 18 to 29 year olds, as Nixon carried 48 percent of that age group. Compare that to 2008 voting statistics: 18 to 29 year olds went sixty-six percent for Obama. And turnout for the young in 2008 was fractions of a percentage point from matching that generation's record-setting turnout rate in 1972, the first year that 18 to 20 year olds had the right to vote.
Young voters are still supportive of Democrats. According to a forwarded email from CIRCLE, young voters went for Coakley in the Massachusetts special election at a 58 - 40 rate...but only with a 19 percent turnout rate. But then Coakley didn't bother with any GOTV aimed at her biggest supporters.
The way I see it, is that Obama did a much better job organizing and appealing to the young than the McGovern campaign. I think Coakley's campaign illustrates that you still have to earn their votes every election. The lesson? Winning the youth vote - and elections - means pursuing good, progressive issues that impact the young, and rolling up your sleeves to get them to the polls.
Young voters are hardly the vanishing and illusory voting bloc that many long-time politicos believe...it's just that, for many establishment politicos, the work, creativity, and risk-taking policy agendas needed to woo them aren't worth the effort. |
