Rock The Vote--Or Maybe Not

The past few years we've all heard from the Democrats over the exciting development of the youth vote. Whoopee! They're coming out in force. They're going to change America with their enthusiasm. They love Obama and support his hopeychange entirely. They're the future! Recent reports indicate they are quickly becoming the past.

Youthful voter turnout has often happened in the past, and it was normally a flash in the pan. Younger people, and more so today than in the past, have amazingly short attention spans. The big turnout for Obama is losing its steam, and it would seem it's losing it an astounding rate. All those promises, so little time. Young voters often think in terms of slogans, and will turn out for a candidate who seems to fit the slogans. "Hopeless" and "more of the same" won't get the youth to put down their X-Boxes, bongs, and Cliff Notes long enough to vote. "Hope" and "change" seemed to fit the bill, and when added to "yes, we can," were irresistible to slogan-thinkers. And since most of them have been told that America is a racist nation, this was the closest thing to genuine, principled rebellion they could come up with. Obama is The One.

They suffer from a serious dearth of historical information and historical perspective. "Yo, MTV raps" is to them a serious political statement. "Rock the vote" is a clarion call to participate in the political process, or party, whatever. "I'm like, um, young, and I'm like, Obama is really cool, I'm gonna vote for him, and text my friends to vote for him too (U shud vote for that Obama guy)." Republicans and conservatives are all far too old to have any problems, but youth, ah youth, have problems that only a really cool guy like Obama could understand. With that kind of depth of thinking, is it any surprise that there is no indication that the youth vote will be showing up in any numbers in the upcoming election? "OK, we helped get him elected, so what's for dinner?"

The other facet of the youth vote is that younger people have largely not yet joined in the "real world" of responsible adulthood. That's not even a criticism. As Shaw said, "Youth, what a shame to waste it on the young." Yes, I know, some attribute the quote to Twain. Young people are just beginning their lives, and have very little real life experience with what it means to strive, raise a family, build a business, and deal with all the boring details of everyday life. A famous youth anthem summed up the thinking of a large portion of perfectly normal young people: "You gotta fight for your right to party."

My boy E. J. Dionne at The New Republic just wrote a pompous, pedantic article that tells us something we've all known for years. Young people are generally liberal, but apathetic in doing anything about it. Long ago, Churchill said that anyone who was not liberal when young had no heart, and who was not conservative in his later years had no head. It's the natural order of things, but with all the statistics and studies that Dionne cited, you'd think he had just had an original thought. He cites the "liberalism" of today's voters by age group and dates of birth, and is astounded to find out that the older the voters are, the more conservative they are. He needs to take a good hard look, slide that generational grid over the past 200 years, and discover that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Without adult experience to give them context, a candidate who can spout the right slogans and have the right look can easily lead them down the primrose path, get them off the couch, and get them to the voting booth. The youth vote went to Kerry and Gore, but in nothing like the numbers or percentages that it went for Obama. Why not? They didn't have the right slogans and the right charisma. Kerry looked like a corpse or a wax dummy, talking about issues that were important when their parents were young. Gore was the overblown fat guy who wanted to stop global warming, which would require taking away their cars, not to mention censoring their pornography.

Then, along came Obama. He not only had all the right trappings to stir up the youth vote, he ran against John McCain. To the younger voters, McCain was like the slightly-addled great uncle who came to family dinners, couldn't remember anyone's name, and talked about how tough things were when he was young (a couple of centuries ago). They've also discovered that most of the people in Congress who have to enact Obama's schemes look a lot like McCain, or Medusa.

But Obama, now he's cool. And since life is not perfect for youth, and Obama promised it would be if they dumped their apathy and voted for him, they showed up at the polls. A mere year later, things are not perfect. In fact, they're worse. He hasn't delivered on a single one of his promises (except for spending money on things they don't care about). The post-racial society has turned into something faintly resembling the pre-60s racial divide. And they've discovered an eternal truth: "Words are not the same thing as deeds." Even Dionne recognizes that the youth vote, largely embracing "the Millennials," still have a high opinion of Obama's personal "cool," but think as a leader, he's largely a failure. In their view, the world should have changed overnight, he promised it would, it didn't, and their enthusiasm is fading like cheap vegetable dye in the bright sun.