Young Voters Slowly Abandoning Hope & Change
**Written by Doug Powers
Could it finally be sinking in who exactly is going to be paying for all this alleged “free” stuff?
WASHINGTON — Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can” message are now saying “Maybe not” — and are backing away from the president in a worrisome new poll for the White House.
Obama is losing in a match-up against a generic Republican challenger by 37 percent to 34 percent among voters in the 18-34 age group, according to a stunning Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.
In March, voters in this group approved of Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent.
“The youngest age group may be the most impatient and the most easily disillusioned among all age groups,” said Molly Andolina, a youth-vote expert and DePaul University political-science professor.
“Easily disillusioned” is sociology-speak for “sucker.”
Even “Obama Girl” was struck by reality a few months ago.
This should give little comfort to conservatives, however. Unless the GOP fields worthy opponents, those disenchanted by the failure of rainbows, gumdrops and unicorns to materialize will have nowhere else to go but right back to the same people who continue to promise to deliver Shangri-La… eventually.
But the current drop in youth support isn’t merely due to younger voters finally figuring out that Obama and the Democrats are using their credit card. There’s also what I call “The Peggy Effect.”
Basically “The Peggy Effect” is this: Everybody who voted for Obama because of all the free stuff they’d be getting, such as the famed “Peggy the Moocher” (who was Obama’s freeloading answer to “Joe the Plumber”), have been running to their mailboxes for a year and a half now, and… pretty much nothing. No free mortgage; no free car; no free gas — hell, no free health care yet for that matter. It’s taking a toll on Obama’s approval ratings.
Here’s Peggy back in happier times:
Update: Obama tries to reel some of the disenchanted young lefties back into the Hope fold with this recorded message to the Netroots Convention in Vegas. JWF says: Basic theme of his message is to be patient, he’s working as hard as he can to screw things up.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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I’ve been predicting this for months and couldn’t be happier the bloom is off the rose, so to speak. Now, we have to convince the rest ‘Bambi’s only into you when he’s running for office.
I would think the fact these young voters can not find a job and those who actually get facts on what this bho, team, and the dc bunch are going to give them in 2011 should be enough to at least get them to vote for a candidate (r?) that might un-do the damage to them. No jobs and seeing that this bho has no intentions of cutting taxes might help, one can ‘hope’ for ‘change’ in their voting decision!
L
There’s hope for this generation yet!
Goodness! I sound like my parents! Does that mean I’m getting OLD!?!?
Saw a college-age girl sporting an Obama shirt at the library, and a college-age guy sporting one at Costco just now.
It was nauseating.
I am self employed. I desperately need to hire an assistant, I can’t because taxes are killing me. Thanks Washington Pols both D and R.
I know the joke about the 20-year-old conservative and the 40-year-old liberal, but I think there’s an educational gap that’s significant, too, especially in history. I think if there’s a concerted effort to make up for the lack of history education in the schools, it could reach the under-30 crowd even faster. Focus on concrete facts, talk about Communism in some context other than Joe McCarthy-remember that being alive in the 1980s doesn’t mean having been old enough to be watching the news when the Berlin Wall was up and when it fell, or to have any idea why those things were happening. Same with the marielitos thing in Cuba. Try to make them think about why people risk so much to come to the U.S., and how the U.S. became the country people would risk so much to live in. Don’t talk about the people swimming and boating out of Cuba without mentioning the sharks.
One of the key, and most dangerous, points there is that the “younger voters” are impatient.
They want what they want, and they want it NOW. Add to that the fact that they are completely infested with Entitlement Syndrome, and you have a very volatile and vengeful group of individuals who will look to the older generations and “make them pay” for their own perceived suffering.
Azygos,
You think it is bad now, just wait till the financial, health care, and no more Bush tax cuts come in! There are things in the financial and health care that will make it impossible for a large, much less, a small business to survive. This is the grand plan of this bho and team and has been from day one.
L
The youth were useful idiots. The media played on their starry-eyed idealism so that Bho would bring us to an alternative reality where everything would be fair and everyone would be prosperous. The young pups neglected to read the fine print of the contract. New college grads are in debt up to their eyeballs. Job prospects are grim and those with jobs will be hit with a tax increase. Bho has taken the taxes from paychecks they haven’t earned yet to save and protect UNION jobs at the expense of private jobs. I have spoken to a bunch of young pups who thought I was out of touch until a harsh reality set in. There is no free ride. Somebody has to pay for it. They were snookered and they don’t like it. Idealism clouds judgment. Now these young pups will have to work twice as hard to get half as much, and that is if they are lucky. Socialism is a b!tch.
‘It’s the economy, stupid’ – and the economy is hurting the young more than anyone. What BHO has accomplished so far is to turn off an entire generation of voters from the Donks. I’d like to say that’s a good thing, but I hate to see my country struggle. I would rather that BHO had gone against his own character and done the right things (lower taxes, less spending, less red tape) to turn the country around. Alas, it is not so, and we conservatives will have to try to clean up the combined messes of the last two presidents.
There is nothing like a strong dose of reality to bring clarity to the fore. Many young people have ridden the gravy train provided by their parents to get an education, and are now faced with actually having to earn a living at a time when jobs are scarce and competition is great. Very sobering to know that the hope and change guy is the emperor without any clothes and that his policies are making things worse, far worse.
Unfortunately, this situation is beginning to look like the lost decade of FDR but without an industrial base to help and with too many entitlements sucking everything dry. Obama has now admitted that unemployment is going to stick around for years – but he just blames Bush as that is the only thing he has to offer America.
I don’t know where they are going but the GOP will never have the youth vote. Not gonna happen.
It’s taken them long enough…
So many of the youth and recent college grads have had their egos stroked from kindergarten and never had their self-esteem bruised or called into question. I’ve heard some say how they hate both wars (hoping to sound like a 60′s radical I suppose) yet when it’s over they’ll consider joining just so they can go to college, since mums and dads are broke. Well, dear hearts, the military won’t need you then.
Every generation has had a ‘come to Jesus meeting’ and they’re going to have theirs. Welcome to Hope and Change.
“but the GOP will never have the youth vote. Not gonna happen.”
That’s quite the absolute statement there. Unfounded of course. But at least you’ve made yourself clear.
Lots of my dtr’s friends have come around and have move to being Republicans. Let us consider if we will all those young folks who go into the military. They are liberal Democrats? Hardly.
What is the ratio of “all those young folks” entering the military to “all those young folks” in general?
That would be like saying it is evidence that youth are becoming more liberal based on a sample size of those of them that are signing up for intramural hackeysack in college.
One point we should address for the unemployed recent grads are the number of H1-b’s still flooding our job markets. The tech magazines keep running articles about it but it never makes the headlines or MSM. I know one guy that is the only citizen working in a government office and the rest of the IT engineers are from all over the planet. The gap/hole in a possible security breach is appalling.
Dennis Prager, a columnist I have mixed feelings about, a while back made an interesting comment to the effect that young people having no acquaintance with evil in this country. Anyone who speaks of the profound dangers of communism, socialism, islam is looked upon simply as a fool, someone wearing a dunce cap under a white robe. The only evil in the world is caused by or has been caused by America. End of story.
Obama and his minions pressed this naiveté, this utter foolishness, to the max and won easily in 2008. I do believe that in the coming decade the realization that there is evil in the world, lots of it, and when you encourage it, even more results, will strike home. My sense is that it is certain the coming decade will be very bad indeed. However, by the end of it, there will be a consensus once more among Americans that there is evil in the world and that only a small part comes from this once great nation. Whether they will have this realization as even a semi-free people or in a GULAG is of course quite an open question.
IMO: Few of the Obama youth voters have an inkling of Doug’s credit card concept. The young in general usually don’t see themselves as ever getting older much less understanding social security. The Obama youth were/are all Peggys.
I am waiting for one conservative candidate who can effectively explain to young ears that they will have to work hard and wait for the benefits that come along with it if they want to see their country and themselves succeed.
“I am waiting for one conservative candidate who can effectively explain to young ears that they will have to work hard and wait for the benefits.”
Totally NOT needed. All that is needed is to explain to them their paycheck deductions and taxes and how their pay is going to someone else’s benefit.
Only takes about two paychecks to get the truth of it.
Believe me. I have young adult children. Two paychecks turned them into conservatives faster than any argument I had ever made.
I learned my lesson within about the same time frame as these kids, when my first-time-in-the-voting-booth ballot when to Jimmy Carter – the anti-Nixon vote.
Sound familiar?
By the next election I had switched to Republican and have never looked back (well, until now).
I pray that this generation learn the same lesson.
There was a woman featured on Glenn Beck friday, who runs a summer history camp. She described a simple exercise she had the children do. They were to blow bubbles from a common source of bubble liquid. Then they were each given a smaller container of their own, then they were asked which was more fun. They all replied that they had more fun and blew more bubbles with their own bottle. The discussion ended with connecting the individual bottles with freedom and the common bottle with socialism. They all got the concept.
The GOP absolutely refuses to adopt a clear and specific platform for this November. It is again going to be “we don’t suck as bad as the Democrats”.
We will have to wait and see what happens in November. Hopefully, the results will persuade many, if not all, of the usual RINO candidates from 2008 to stay out. We don’t need another toxic and vapid primary race dominated by empty banalities substituting for substance and principles. We need new candidates.
Let’s take care of business this year. Banish McCain on August 24 and let’s hope that McPalin is not the “new GOP” Trojan Horse candidate in 2012. We need Chris Christie or someone like him. Someone more than a media creation.
js #22
Same with my daughter when she first started working summers. Made good money and the deductions made her mad. But, she stayed part-time through the rest of the year and income tax killed any respect for those in govn’t and those, shall we say, less fortunate ‘using her money’….
So Phil if you don’t get your way are you going to stay home and pout and in doing so essential be a vote for the left?
The strategy can be to get rid of as many self-centered, progressives and liberal first. Then work on RINOS. Since the house has 2 year terms the message will impact them first. The senate is a tighter knit club and they play the vote manipulation game better, which allows those up for reelection to fain representation better, while the rest hope that their voters will forget when they are up for reelection. 2010 and 2012 will involve 2/3 of the senate. They are planning on us running out of steam. Their plan is to wait us out. Lucky for us, they keep giving us reasons to not give up.
rambler….
I’d say that is realistic. Move as far to the right towards conservative ideals as we can this election. Continue to move towards a conservative form of government each and every election cycle.
Some of these grumpy types who want to withhold their vote for a candidate if that candidate isn’t cnservative “enough” trouble me. That is how we’ll end up with more leftist and no movement to the right.
Absolutely agree with you there Phil. Conservative candidates would do better to run their own fiscal conservative, national security, secure borders, pro-private sector platform and forget about the GOP. Doug nailed it – The recent anti-Barry trend will not help Reps at all unless they articulate a clear conservative agenda and sell it.
Have to disagree about having to wait to see what happens in November. We need to be working hard NOW to take advantage of the disillusionment and get good people elected. My friends and a bunch of college kids from local churches are busting our butts this summer to get a conservative elected in GA 13 and for Governor. Things are looking good.
Also agree strongly with you that the “We are sooo screwed” bunch need to STFU and get to work. Everything is moving in our direction if we have a serious reality check.
“My friends and a bunch of college kids from local churches are busting our butts this summer to get a conservative elected in GA 13 and for Governor. Things are looking good.”
Good job! Really, very good work…..
The cries to vote them all out (regardless of party) brings up an interesting question…if you have a conservative incumbent and no one is running against them – what then? I see the signs at all the rallies and it seems to be the current mantra. Yet, I’m not crazy about the guy because he’s voted on some things I disagree.
Shades of holding your nose in 2008 and McCain. Sometimes we’re stuck with what we’re handed.
“The GOP absolutely refuses to adopt a clear and specific platform for this November.”
This is not true but more importantly it is irrelevant. What matters in 2010 is what your local folks stand for not some GOP platform.
The existence or non-existence of any GOP platform is a distraction.
Its one more way Phil looks for ways to attack the Republican Party with a criticism that sounds all important like but at the end of the day is just negative and empty criticism.
The candidates I support locally not once did I say, “Hmmm, let me check that GOP platform and what the GOP stands for before I…”
Did you?
“Shades of holding your nose…”
The real world definition of politics.
FIFY – You can’t be serious. People are looking for leadership and clarity of thought and purpose. The GOP is playing hip-shot reaction to everything that goes wrong in Barryland, but not defining proven alternatives or a path forward. People are not stupid. They want to hear genuineness and committment to principles. The indies that are turning from hopenchange in droves are looking for something to turn to. The GOP presently offers them absolutely nothing – as in nada, zip, zero, zilch.
Number one priority – send Steele down the path of obscurity where he belongs. He is out of his league and way over his head, and further damages the party’s already seriously diminished status every time he opens his bewildered pie hole.
There are at present at least 4 or 5 party “platforms” floating around the cosmos that no one agrees upon or adheres to, and they are divisive at best. This is further indication of an entity with no leadership, focus, purpose or direction.
“You can’t be serious.”
Quite. The election in 2010 and the GOP platform have nothing to do with eachother.
So when you are getting ready to vote in 2010, your in the booth, you thinking, “Gee, what is the GOP platform…” or are you thinking, “What does this person stand for…”?
“The GOP presently offers them absolutely nothing – as in nada, zip, zero, zilch.”
Ah, another Republican basher. I see.
Glad folks like Bobby Jindal is offering nothing. No wait, maybe Rubio is an empty suit? Rep. Issa? Maybe he as something to offer? No, wait, he can’t. He is after all a Republican and they don’t offer anything, nada, zip, zilch…..
Then of course there’s nothing here to see…zip, zilch, nada….
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/110113-end-the-bailouts-a-new-idea-on-america-speaking-out-rep-cathy-mcmorris-rodgers-
And then just absolutely nothing to offer here….
http://jimjordanforcongress.com/
I could do this for a long time by the way. You’d think I wouldn’t have much to point to given there is so little to offer…… I mean how many links does it take if I have nothing to point to…
Grumpy dudes indeed.
Even if true, which it is not, that is entirely beside the point.
The Democrat Party is the party of wildly out-of-control and corrupt Big Spending, multiculturalist open borders, diplomatic and military incompetence even worse than Bush’s, lionizing Europe and Islam while belittling middle America and America’s History.
The Democrat Party is rotten to the core. The Democrat Party is the party of Let’s Not Complain About The Muslims Putting A Victory Mosque At Ground Zero Or They Will Think We Are Intolerant.
As of 2010, anyone who votes for any Democrat for any reason is nothing but lowlife traitorous garbage.
In order to have leadership, an individual must stand for something. To stand for something one must define it, believe in it and actually want to do it. For too long individuals calling themselves leaders have stood for getting reelected, which has left us watching various types of shape shifting, flip-flopping and down right deceit to garner votes. The guidance was available through the Constitution, but all chose to ignore it in favor of their silly arm twisting self-preserving deceptions. Liars are not leaders. There has been so much manipulation that none of them know how to put together a plan because it’s exposes them; makes them feel vulnerable. They need a scape goat. It takes guts to stand for something, because those on other side always spends more time slamming the opposition’s ideas rather than giving their plan and having a debate. The 2 parties have turned into rival dictators, with neither wanting to ask the people what should be done. When one side actually has a good idea the other side will slam it 6 ways to sunday because the goal is not to let the other side get away with implementing something worthwhile. This has put us where we are today and neither side will admit it or atone for it.
Is that the Crocodile Hunter’s wife in the “the Tab” photo?
Stalin used to call people like these young voters useful ifiots. It applies here.
Who do they think will pay when the older people are long dead.
Roland, and we’ve only 90+ days to get the job done or we’d best close up shop, turn out the lights and hang on. If significant numbers of conservatives are not elected we’re toast.
jsmiddleton4:
You’ve made your point; there are some good Republicans out there. Trouble is, the party won’t do enough to support them because Steele and company prefer people who don’t rock the boat. I really like Jindal; I just don’t know if he’s electable with his unpolished speaking style. Name recognition is a problem with the others you mentioned. It would be up to bloggers like MM and Doug to ring their bell.
Not going there. I will take whatever we get in the next election and then build on it. I have been feeling like a “Tea Party” person since Reagan gave amnesty to the illegals. It took this long for the rest of the country to catch up with me. Each election is a battle in a larger war. Win some, lose some, but never give in. Wear them out. The country and freedom are at stake. What is that worth to people? It’s worth a lot to me. I spent the first half of my life being afraid of the communists outside the country. I will not spend the second half of my life watching communists inside the country steal that country by manipulating the truth. I am in it – to win it!
Thank you sir. You make my point better than I. The GOP is utterly irrelevant precisely because no one knows or cares what they stand for – because the GOP does not know what it stands for. It is not important what you or I think in the voting booth – it is the indies that will decide this and all elections. Jindal and many others have a great deal to offer. The GOP however at present offers nothing compelling to indie voters. I am looking for conservative values together with proven leadership capabilities regardless of party. I would vote for Jindal in a heartbeat, but not a “republican”. I don’t even know what that means anymore.
It is interesting in this summer of discontent when the opportunity exists to evict the Democrats/statists from control of the country that suddenly there appear on the board multitudes of posters who are declaring unconditional surrender because this candidate or that candidate or the Republican Party isn’t “conservative” enough, even though it’s unlikely that one in ten can even define “conservative”. And I’m not even counting Phil, who’s already declared himself an independent country of one. It tends to remind me of the kind of people who are starting to infest the tea party movement, declaring themselves “leaders”, and flashing their “neo-Nazi” or “racist” roots. Nothing but Democrat operatives and leftist shills. If we are going to make progress this fall, and I do mean take over both houses of Congress, we’re going to have to get out and finance and work for the candidates of our own choice in what’s left of the primaries – but we’re also going to have to support whichever candidates win the primaries. The IMPORTANT thing this election is to retake control of Congress. We have two years to find a good conservative presidential candidate and find more good conservative candidates to run against anyone who wins this time and then doesn’t follow through after the election. If we don’t take control of Congress this time, I seriously don’t think that we’ll ever get another chance.
Their Che shirts were probably in the laundry.
Moonshot, you may not be old enough to remember the Carter years but I do. The recession, Iranian hostage crisis and high unemplyment were quite enough to drive young voters to the GOP. But then Ronald Reagan Regan came on the scene and MANY young people saw hope for a robust future. Lots of young Democrats changed parties overnight. I did.
Seems like the times are very similar. Now we just need another Reagan.
What the GOP and conservatives need to do is take some pages from the Dems playbook.
1. We will not get politicians who will always agree with us. Someone who agrees with us 60% of the time and votes in our leadership is better than someone who agrees with us 10% of the time and votes the oppositions leadership in. I may not be a big fan of Snowe and Collins but they sure beat the alternative.
2. Learn something from Madison Avenue. No more “it’s their turn candidates”. Twice we ran curmudgeonly old war veterans for President, twice we lost. Obama came off as a young attractive guy full of spirit, while McCain looked like your grumpy Uncle no one wants to see at the holidays. Don’t you think it helped Scott Brown that he was a good looking former model. Nevada is a good current example. The party had a choice between a guy with great family roots in Southern Nevada (Danny Tarkanian), a former model who is still great looking (Sue Lowden) and a frumpy but really conservative woman (Sharron Angle). We could have put Harry the Mortician away with the first two (in the Glitz capital of the world) but Nooooo.
3. Social conservatives still matter. The reason Newt should not run is 3 wives (also why I listen to Rush with a grain of salt). Some of us are tired of having the Sodomist agenda and “let’s accompadate Islam” shoved down our throats. The Dems actually try to cater to their base, can’t the GOP.
4. Find a way to bring indsutry back to America. Whatever it takes. Tear up NAFTA, bans on foreign goods, tax breaks to bring jobs back, whatever. If new factories started popping up all over, the GOP would be heroes.
5. Find a way to take over the MSM. Give Sarah a daytime talk show. Demand conservatives on the nightly news programs. Best of all, someone should start an all conservative network (no Fox News doesn’t cut it). No talk shows with gay hosts, no shows with lewd plot lines, make fun of the left as they do with us, i.e fight fire with fire. If companies do not advertise, boycott them. Heck use “rules for radicals’ against them.
Sorry for ranting, but I am tired
of the GOP fighting Marquis de queensbury rules, while the Dems use Marquis de Sade rules.
One word, Jobs. Many recent grads, like myself, simply can not find work.
Lucky I still have the PT retail job I had when in school, but despite sending out resumes to almost any job that would fit, at most I got the “we have received your resume for job posting 1234566, Such and such position. We will get beck to you within the next X days if we wish to go further, etc.” email. I know many Co Workers in the same boat.
I know it probably won’t help much under the circumstances, but if you can arrange it, face to face interviews are a lot more effective than mailed resumes. You have to sell yourself, and that’s hard without a meeting. I never got a nibble out of a mailed resume, but once I could get into an interview room I could make my case, even at times when my background didn’t appear to be a good fit for the job. I didn’t get every job I interviewed for, but I never got one I didn’t.
Buy ‘em books and send ‘em to school and all they do is eat the glue off the pages.
…and pi$$ away money on Obama crap.
As related to the GOP, did you ever notice that whenever an R responds to something a D said the the R’s statement is so weak and tippee-toee that it seems there were no cajones behind the statement?
It’s like the D will give some outlandish paragraph and the R’s reponse like one 7 word sentence.
How the h@ll is our message gonna get any traction?
Same here, but it didn’t take two paychecks. I explained to my son when he was 12 how taxes worked.
He is now 15 and is rather conservative.
***
HI MATTM–#55. You’re not alone. My niece graduated with a journalism degree a few years ago. She went back to school and graduated as a lawyer to improve her income–and employment is really hard for her to find. Ditto for my son-in-law–his MBA hasn’t helped him so far in getting a better job.
***
The new Comrade Obama (PBUH) economic gains have resulted in a new definition of RICH PERSON = ANYONE WHO STILL HAS A JOB!
***
I don’t think things will improve much until we get real “hope and change” and vote out these socialist / marxist clowns in the 2010 and 2012 elections. And then it will take years to undo the damage they are causing to our economy.
***
John Bibb
***
My son and two of my nephews will be 18, 18, and 19 in 2012.
Zero will probably get the Class of ’11′s vote. He attends a Jesuit high school and his mother is an uber ‘social justice’ Catholic
As for my son and other nephew, they see what’s happening and know that it’s THEIR futures that are at stake.
They’re looking forward to casting their first votes against BO.
I don’t believe they will just go back to the Democrats they just will NOT go to the polls. Those younger idiots usually just stay in bed on election day or they forget to go after work because it was a long day. Either way it is a WIN for Republicans!