(cross-posted at Daily Kos)
In October of 2004, a couple weeks before the election, I had the privilege of attending a rally for the Democratic challenger to Senator Arlen Specter, Joe Hoeffel, at which Barack Obama was present. Ostensibly a rally for the Kerry/Edwards ticket and Hoeffel, the then-candidate for the U.S. Senate in Illinois overshadowed the home state candidate with his inspirational life story and his recounting of the beginning of a campaign in Illinois that had been a long shot before he won the primary. After his speech finished, Obama lingered to sign autographs and to take pictures with students like myself who had skipped class to attend the rally.
A lot of the debate in the blogosphere has centered around various aspects of Obama as he ponders whether to run for president in 2008. But there seems to be one observation that a lot of people are missing in the blogosphere: his appeal to those in my generation.
One of the main tools that anyone in the blogosphere should use to evaluate youth sentiment are the social networking websites that have sprung up. There is MySpace, but it is a much more loosely structured website than its counterpart, Facebook. Facebook is now open to anyone in the public (it had previously been a website for college students only, and its main members are still predominantly in college), so feel free to sign up and verify any of the statistics I cite. The main way of evaluating a politician’s popularity in general is to search the groups that are present and see how many members are in each. If one does a search for Barack Obama, you will see that almost all of the groups that exist – most of which call for Obama to run for president – are highly positive. One group in particular, Barack Obama for President in 2008, has over 26,000 members – a huge number for any politically-related group on Facebook. The group has spawned its its own website, complete with a blog. For good comparison, the official Democratic Party group has just over 4,000 members. Take a look, on the other hand, for the results that turn up when one searches for groups related to Hillary Clinton. At an initial glance, the anti-Hillary groups far outnumber those who support her.
So why does there seem to be such an overwhelming contingency of support for Obama among younger Americans – those deemed to be not as interested in politics? Simply put, he represents a much different voice in politics than many of us are used to. I grew up during the Clinton years and have become involved in the political process during the Bush administration, and the memories I have of both are overwhelmingly negative. Granted, most of the negativity has come from the GOP and its right-wing minions, but as a 20 year-old, the rhetoric I have heard in the political arena has been near-devoid of positive thinking and optimism. Obama represents a change from the usual rhetoric, no matter how empty it may seem to those of us who wish to scrutinize his record. I recognize that much of the blogosphere has possibly had a chance to live in a time when political discourse wasn’t so hostile, but young adults like myself haven’t had a chance to experience that yet.
Another reason why many young people support Obama, aside from his relative youth to the rest of the field, is that we see, in him, the embodiment of the real America. The Senate consists 94 Caucasians and 6 minorities – Obama being one of the six. It’s obviously not reflective of the changing demographics of the country. Popular music, no matter how good or bad one thinks it may be, is populated by minority musicians. Younger Americans are the product of multiracial families. In a nation whose face is changing, Obama is the person who represents this change. Perhaps it’s a symptom of being what John Heilemann of New York Magazine calls a cipher, but in Obama, many do see the senator as someone who has the opportunity to reunite the country. But in a time where there’s a lot of despair in the country and around the world, Obama inspires hope because to people like myself, he relates much better to us than many existing politicians do.
This brings me to my next point, one I think Chris Bowers gets it right on when he looks at Obama in the context of the ‘culture wars’ stemming from the 1960s.
I have to admit a powerful, internal hunger to see the ground shift within the “culture wars” away from the long-standing paradigm of the 1960’s. As someone born in 1974, as is probably the case with everyone in Generation X and forward, I just can’t identify with all of that. As we have seen from 1992-2006, every single Baby Boomer based election will probably continue to be about Vietnam, the “counter-culture,” the south as a distinct region, single-issue advocacy, “electability,” and old, linear and single-issue based discussions of ideology. Enough already!
The fact that social issues always seem to be brought up in elections turns a lot of youth off. Why? Because young adults are overwhelmingly liberal when it comes to social issues. Taking a look at a CIRCLE fact sheet (PDF link) compiled 2 years ago, and it’s no wonder that young Americans my age wonder why the hell people seem so consumed about battling over supposed hot-button issues. Here’s a short summary of some of the findings:
- Over 80% support equal protection in housing and employment, and from hate crimes; 63% support civil unions; 56% support gay marriage; and 70% oppose job discrimination against homosexuals. These findings would seem to be supported by a cursory look at Facebook again, where a group, Legalize Same-Sex Marriage, has 100,000 members.
- Countering the xenophobia that seems to be latently present in discussions about immigration in the present, an overwhelming supermajority (76%) of young voters believe immigrants should be offered the same rights as everyone else.
In a Bloomberg/LA Times poll conducted this summer, the pollsters seem to agree that the issues that so-called ‘values’ voters care about are ones that are turning younger Americans away from the GOP:
Bush’s 2004 re-election strategy also may have damaged his party’s standing with younger voters by stressing things intended to drive religious voters concerned about social issues to the ballot box, such as opposition to gay marriage.
“The very cultural issues the president wants to use to rally his party’s base are exactly the issues that are alienating younger voters,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “Across a broad swath of social issues, younger Americans see the administration as being out of line with what they believe.”
Perhaps it’s wrong of young Americans to be turned off by the discourse, but there’s a very strong streak of social liberalism that exists today – and whenever these social issues are discussed in the public arena, it’s in the context of the past, particularly the 1960s, that many of us don’t have an understanding about. Therefore, there’s a strong inclination to tune out a discussion because it doesn’t make sense to the young adult who didn’t grow up under those circumstances.
Booman has his own take on Obama; he doesn’t associate with the senator for different reasons:
I am not really post-Vietnam. I don’t come from the 1990’s MTV multi-ethnic, major urban center, cosmopolitan, post-identity politics type of place that Chris comes from. And that might strike Chris as strange since I am highly educated and cosmopolitan and live in a major urban center. But, that is not how I experience politics. I see just as much appeal in John Edwards’s little mill town upbringing as I see in Obama’s eclectic experiences. And I don’t at all think that the majority of the voting public (which is older than me) is going to go all ga-ga over Obama’s multi-cultural post-identity politics identity.
The fact of the matter is that very few political pundits, bloggers, or any other observers of politics can understand the Obama phenomenon unless you are one of the youth in the present. Adam Conner, part-time guest blogger at MyDD, blogger at RunObama.com, and someone only a few years older than myself, had this to say about Obama’s appearance in New Hampshire:
First, the energy in the room today was absolutely incredible. I’ve really never seen anything like it, particularly when you consider that the New Hampshire primary is at least a full 388 days from now (the final date hasn’t been set yet).
[…]
Another word on today’s sizable audience of 1,500. If you’re an active Democrat in New Hampshire, you’re pretty much constantly inundated with opportunities to see Presidential candidates speak. And to pay $25 dollars to see someone…forget about it. So for an event to gather this much attention, it seemed consensus among folks from NH that I spoke to that this wasn’t just flavor of the month kind of attention. There’s definitely something there. And holy shit, I’ve never seen a political candidate be mobbed in a crowd like Obama was. Rock Star might be the most accurate description because I can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen that even comes close to comparing.
Bill Clinton also has a rock star persona, but when he was president when I was growing up, many of us didn’t get a chance to see it firsthand because he had to defend himself from rabid right-wing partisans. Al Gore and John Kerry, during their respective presidential campaigns, didn’t have it. But in Barack Obama, what you see is what you get – someone who is a riveting speaker from the stump, making a public park in downtown Philadelphia or a crowded hall in New Hampshire go silent when he speaks. Like many others, I’d like to hear a little more substance on the issues from him, but for many youth, this won’t be an issue. Take the matter of Darfur, for example – an issue that many young Americans care about (a Facebook group called 400,000 Faces, for the number of people who have died in the genocide there, has about 348,000 members). Obama has a grade of A+ on Darfur legislation.
I think that for many youth, it won’t necessarily be the definitive record of the past 2-4 years of legislation under Obama’s belt (2 of which were in the Senate minority). Instead, it will be the potential that the senator brings to the table that will inspire many. When RFK ran for president, he had only been a senator for 4 years. But it was the possibility of what could be done, the hope that he brought out in Americans back in 1968 – it was that passion that drove his campaign. For many of my peers, it’s the same passion that exists now for Barack Obama. To us, he represents the best of the next generation of America.
