The Osterley Times: The young and the restless

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The young and the restless

There's a very interesting opinion piece in the LA Times which talks of young voters and how, during what we refer to as their "impressionable years", they form political allegiance's which usually last a lifetime.

Historically, political realignments have begun with the young. In the face of the Depression, people in their 20s rejected Herbert Hoover and flocked to Franklin Roosevelt. Most of them went on to develop enduring identities as Democrats. That generation's staunch loyalty was integral to the Democratic Party's political dominance through the mid-1960s. As late as 2006, the voters who came of age in the 1930s remained solidly Democratic, outnumbering Republicans 57% to 38%.

A parallel development -- this one benefiting the Republicans -- took place in the 1980s. Drawn to the optimism and clarity of Ronald Reagan, for the first time in decades a majority of young people who cast ballots voted Republican. These young voters in turn went on to become a cornerstone of Republican dominance of presidential politics over the last quarter of a century.

The article goes on to note that the person attracting the most young voters during this election is Barack Obama.

Among this group, Obama has won 22 of the 25 Democratic primaries for which exit poll data are available. In 13 of these states (including Missouri, Virginia, Wisconsin, Georgia, Illinois and Maryland), Obama won by margins of greater than 30 points. Even in the states Clinton most recently won, Ohio and Texas, he led among 18- to 29-year-olds by 26 and 19 points, respectively. In fact, were 18- to 29-year-olds alone to decide the Democratic nominee, Obama would win nationwide by a landslide of at least 20 points.

Clinton's campaign - which she really could have pulled from a 1980's textbook - has had no effect amongst young voters at all and, as her campaigning style has become more relentlessly negative, she is turning young voters away from her in their droves.

The article concludes with an important point for, not only the super delegates, but every Democrat to bear in mind:

In Obama, the Democratic Party has a potential nominee who offers a unique opportunity to bring the younger generation firmly into the political process, to make many of its members lifelong Democrats and perhaps to lay the groundwork for a historic realignment on the scale of Roosevelt and Reagan.

It is now clear that neither Obama nor Clinton will be able to win enough pledged delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination. In all likelihood, it will fall to the superdelegates to resolve the increasingly bitter contest between them. As they search for the wisest course of action, they would do well to remember that today's young people -- those born between 1979 and 1990 -- will still be a major electoral force in the 2050s and beyond. If the party alienates them, it will be a mistake whose reverberations will be felt for decades to come.

I wouldn't expect this argument to cut any mustard amongst Hillary's supporters, but the more sane members of the Democratic party would do well to bear this in mind.

UPDATE:

And, as if to emphasise the point, Bill comes out with this crap:

Older voters gravitate to Hillary Clinton because they're too wise to be fooled by Barack Obama's rhetoric, former president Bill Clinton told Pennsylvania voters today.
Clinton's comments, to a packed high school gym about an hour north of Philadelphia, were one part presidential politics and one part legacy protection. His beef was with Obama's contention that many of the problems facing the country today were simmering long before President Bush took office seven-plus years ago.

"I think there is a big reason there's an age difference in a lot of these polls," he said. "Because once you've reached a certain age, you won't sit there and listen to somebody tell you there's really no difference between what happened in the Bush years and the Clinton years; that there's not much difference in how small-town Pennsylvania fared when I was president, and in this decade."
Hillary Clinton, he said, would be a "servant leader," and voters had to decide whether that was more important than electing a "symbolic leader." "You gotta decide," he said, as if he had laid out even arguments for each.