The New Anti-Youth Narrative?

Over at The Nation's Campaign Blog, Cora Courrier picks up on something important - the potential development of a new anti-youth narrative in the mainstream media:

Obama's young supporters are the main targets of the cult claim. Young people make up one of his main bastions of support, and the campaign has successfully marketed itself as the younger, fresher option. The flipside of this is that statements about Obama's supporters being cult-like are automatically pointed at young voters. Covering what it called the "Obama-mania backlash," CNN panned over a group of college-age Obama supporters as the question "Creepy?" appeared on the screen. John Dickerson asked in Slate whether there was "a natural limit to our enthusiasm for to this kind of sweeping phenomenon? Isn't the generation that Obama has so successfully courted usually the first to toss overhyped products, even the overhyped products with which they were at first so enthralled?"

This needs to be pushed back against. Hard. Not only is it the height of hypocrisy (apparently we're damned if we don't turnout, and damned when we show too much enthusiasm), but it's also just plain wrong.

As Jane notes in her post below, and as I describe in my book, young voters have been turning out in higher numbers since 2004. Higher youth turnout isn't only about Obama and it isn't a fad. Obama has merely tapped into a growing trend and a new progressive youth movement that has been developing since early 2003.