Young people and voting
I was listening to NPR on the way to pick up my daughter from daycare this evening, and there was a story on young people and what motivates them to vote.
The women who was being interviewed argued that young people are only motivated to vote if their is an issue that they care passionately about.
This might be true to a degree, but I also think there is a "pied piper" effect. In other words young people are more likely to be motivated by charisma. Not John Edwards or Mitt Romney pretty boy charisma, but real charisma. I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it. McCain has it, so does Obama.
2 comments:
I think I heard part of the same, or at least a similar program on NPR.
I know I'm far from the mainstream, but every time I hear that generalization that young people only vote if there's an issue they are passionate about, I cringe. Sure, if there's an issue we're passionate about, we vote. Doesn't matter the age.
Young people tend not to vote because their views are fringe. They've 'rebelled' against their parent's and grandparent's politics and found their own. But they don't have a candidate; except the fringe ones.
Look at Obama on the Democrat side: promise change, and they'll flock. Look at McCain on the Republican side: talk straight (essentially a change for a politician) and they'll flock.
Personally, I see that as lies. Obama can't/won't change anythng really; and McCain doesn't talk any straighter than any other politician.
That's the problem with young voters and our fringe ideas. They don't work. That's why our parents gave up on them, and why they now present their mainstream candidates.
McCain is the only Republican who is against torture and willing to try to do something pragmatic about immigration. All the other Republicans are pandering to what they think the right wingers want to hear. Telling people what's right even if they don't want to hear it - it takes courage and it is straight talk.
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