NN11 Young Voter Turnout Session – How Do You Convince Someone...

NN11 Young Voter Turnout Session – How Do You Convince Someone They’re Better Off Despite Their Lying Eyes?
By: one_outer
Saturday June 18, 2011 2:10 pm

<snip>

In 2008 Barack Obama won the presidency in large part due to energetic turnout among young people. After eight long years of the Bush Administration, young Americans were starved for hope in their future and looking for a way to move their issues forward. These votes turned out heavily, and broke decisively for the president.

Over and over again at NN11, speakers and bloggers are taking for granted that the president has a problem with his voters. Addressing the problems the president and the Democratic Party have with their base has been built into most panels and most speakers remarks. To a person all the speakers have alluded or directly addressed the electoral problem Democrats, especially the president, are facing for the 2012 cycle: a lack of enthusiasm and voter apathy as a result of no fundamental change from conditions during the darkest days of the Bush administration.

This afternoon’s youth voter turnout panel with Debbie Hines, Rep. Donna Edwards, Jeneba Ghatt, Kristal High, Judy Lubin and Scott Roberts is not an exception to this rule. Sometimes I wonder what planet these people are living on. For instance, Kristal High of politic365, and African American politics website, just repeats the general administration line – that we have to “educate people about accomplishments” and be “guarding against voter apathy” and “remind people of what is at stake”. In other words, it’s the 2010 midterm argument. But the other guys are worse! Vote Democratic.

And this...



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More: http://my.firedoglake.com/oneouter/2011/06/18/nn11-young-voter-turnout-session-how-do-you-convince-someone-theyre-better-off-despite-their-lying-eyes/

:kick:

Quite the contrary actually. Obama has a stratospheric approval among Democrats (the highest since JFK). For the most part, the people who think Obama is a complete failure are the people who never voted for him in the first place.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

Here's the difference...

2008 - my time, my money, my active support, my vote.

2012 - my vote... I think... We'll see...

:shrug:

Stipulation: I will never vote for a Republican.

:kick:

Of course there are always going to be some people on either side who voted for someone in one election and who do not approve of their job performance later on, in every election from 1796 onwards.

The question is how many. And my point is that in this case, the answer is really not many. In fact, it is really a historically low number.

It's not just the poll numbers that are relevant.

It's the enthusiasm gap.

President Obama is gonna need a MAJOR GOTV effort with people manning phone banks, walking precincts, and all the rest.

The unions are already pissed off, so I'm not sure what level of help they are going to provide this time around, and the same goes for young voters, older voters, the Hispanic Caucus, and the GLBT folk.

But I will tell you this... if I start seeing some REAL fight in President Obama, if I start seeing him use the Bully-Pulpit to give voice to the poor and middle class, AND to name names and accuse the opposition of their political negligence... they might actually get somebody like me back out there again.

I'm not holding my breath.

:shrug:

where growth is anemic at best, and the economy falters under a number of coming financial calamities. In that future, we have a series of five one-term Presidents, with control whipsawing back and forth between the Dems and the GOP as both parties are unable to stop the bleeding.

:shrug:

To the crazies.

What happened to people's sense of self preservation?

"......a young woman in Indiana, reached out to President Obama for a sign of hope in tough economic times, and was initially thrilled to receive a handwritten reply from the president. Now, however, the same economic hardships that prompted her to write to Obama last November have prompted her to put up the letter for sale on an auction website--marking the ninth such sale of an Obama letter that the online auction service has handled.

Mathis, a single mother of three from Indiana, wrote to the president that even though she graduated at the top of her college class and worked for years as a surgical technologist, she had lost her job in January after complications with her pregnancy. "I am so afraid this dreaded economy is going to have my family homeless," she wrote, according to NBC5, the Chicago network affiliate. Mathis is now weeks away from being evicted from her home.

The president wrote back a handwritten note on White House stationery. "Please know that things will get better for you and your family," he said. You can watch the NBC5 report on the letter's sale above.

The 26-year-old is now selling the note to Gary Zimet, who has sold eight other letters from the president so far for up to $20,000 on his site, Moments in Time. He's asking for $11,000......"


http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110615/us_yblog_thelookout/struggling-single-mom-sells-obama-letter

:evilfrown:

Man she needs more help than Obama could possible give her. For someone so smart, what is driving her life choices?