October 5, 2007
In Search of 'BarackStars' to Get Out the Youth Vote
Can Barack Obama “rock the vote” in Iowa by appealing to college — and even high-school — students in the state?
The Washington Post’s political blog examines the Democratic candidate’s attempts to appeal to youth, saying that his campaign believes that younger voters “are an ideal target for a youthful candidate with a message of generational change.”
The blog item notes that Mr. Obama is visiting many of Iowa’s college campuses (he was at the University of Iowa earlier this week) and also created a program he calls “BarackStars” that is aimed at generating enthusiasm for his candidacy among high-school students old enough to vote.
“But there are limits to the youth strategy,” the blog item hastens to add.
It points out that, under Democratic caucus rules, each of Iowa’s roughly 2,000 precincts carries a predetermined number of delegates, which are apportioned based on the share of support each candidate gets in each precinct. That means that a candidate won’t always benefit much from scoring big in college towns (and the few precincts they occupy), the Post notes.
Youth voters are also notoriously fickle, the blog item says, and it is likely that the Iowa caucus will be held when universities are on break, complicating the ability of out-of-state students who register in Iowa to vote.
Sara Hebel | Posted on Friday October 5, 2007 | PermalinkComments
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If Mr. Obama wants to score big with college students, how about addressing student loans??? I think some of us have written to him on this…
Oh. That would be me and the folks from www.studentloanjustice.org
— kgotthardt Oct 6, 11:35 AM #
“A youthful candidate with a message of generational change” may indeed attract the vote of high school and college students. John F. Kennedy’s youth and looks most certainly inspired those of us who were in our teens and twenties during his days of campaigning for the presidency.
However, J.F.K. had a message that appealed to people of all ages and backgrounds in a very different era: the era of Civil Rights, the looming threat of the Cold War, and America’s enthusiasm for Space Exploration.
Kennedy, unlike Barack Obama, was a true statesman who inspired confidence in his leadership across generational lines at that crucial time in history. Good looks and platitudes about social change alone would not have gotten him elected, and it won’t get Barack Obama into the Oval Office. Many of us have yet to sense that statesmanship in Obama and detect genuine substance in his rhetoric.— Sylvia Wasson Oct 6, 04:24 PM #
Since Sen. Obama has about as much leadership experience as the average college student, he should appeal to that — what’s the word? — demographic. More-sophisticated students will, of course, prefer Sen. Clinton, who lacks the executive experience of a John Kerry — Vietnam vet and, as we learned in 2004, former co-owner of a three-employee Boston cookie shop — but who, simply by her greater age, has probably read a lot more about leadership than Obama.
And let’s not make too much of this executive-experience thing. It’s entirely possible that one of these junior senators will be able to manage and motivate to action millions of employees and a multi-trillion-dollar budget, fight the quotidian media battle, and, with no prior experience, figure out how to get new public policy implemented. I mean, I once got an “A” on a test without studying. It’s the same thing, right?
— S. Britchky Oct 8, 12:53 AM #