Weiner Suggests To "Be Like Barack" To Win Young Voters

While the FM crew was attending Netroots Nation 2009, an op-ed glorifying the role of young voters in the Obama campaign ran in the Des Moines Register. Obama may not be in a race in 2010, but that doesn't make the youth vote a wild card. Like any other demographic, you have to earn their vote, by asking for it and demonstrating that your ideas are better than your opponents. Robert Weiner is quick to point out the positives, and gets it mostly right.

In Iowa, Obama built his base around 17-29 year olds, meeting with high school student-government leaders, speaking at colleges and choosing a hip-hop event sponsored by Usher over one by AARP. Among people under 25 in the 2008 Democratic caucus, Obama claimed 17,000 votes (he only won by 20,000) and was preferred 4 to 1.

His personality and youthful habits (playing basketball) charmed young Americans. He made politics "cool" again as seen by T-shirts at trendy shops with his face on them and his fist bump with his wife.

Yet what won him the most was concentrating on issues important to young people. A poll conducted by the Center for Information on Civic Learning found that among young Obama voters, the top issues were the Iraq war, economy and health care.

Great - recognizing that he does have an appealing personality, but more importantly, he reached out to young voters on the issues they cared most about during the election.

Now the author turns to the "be like Mike" tagline that worked so well for Gatorade. The problem with this is that while politicians have become brands, they are still elected officials.

Thirty-nine election seats for governor will be open in 2010 in addition to the 435 House seats and 36 Senate seats. Candidates can win the youth vote by concentrating on areas of interest to young people and by modeling their campaigns after Obama.

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Young Americans were criticized for political apathy. The 2008 elections proved that teens and twenties can make a difference; but whether this is a one-time phenomenon is an open question. Pretending "I'm Obama," will only take a politician so far; it is going to have to be more, "I'm like Barack," and mean it.

When he says to be like Barack, I assume he means to encourage citizen participation, to throw aside bitter partisanship for cooperation and to not overlook any voting demographic. Candidates should be themselves, instead of invoking the names and personalities of the past. To a certain degree, candidate Obama drew parallels to President Kennedy, but that seems to me to be an appeal to the generation that was young when Kennedy was around. Candidate Obama campaigned on change and a break from the politics of old; he's taken a step in that direction, but future candidates will have to go even further.