Hey Guys, It Looks Like We’re Relevant Again
One of the factors of Thursday’s caucus that really excited me involved demographics: if Iowa is any indication, young people are voting again.
Both the 2004 and 2006 elections saw marked increases in turnout among voters aged 18-29. And this year, over three times more young people voted in the Iowa caucuses than in 2004. According to the latter article, the percentage of Iowa caucus-goers under 30 was about equal to the percentage of those over 65, challenging the perceived stranglehold of the elderly over elections. One of the biggest explanations given for this surge in young voting is the rise of instant mass communication, particularly through the internet, that exposes us to constant barrages of information and can be used by politicians and pundits alike to raise awareness and outrage over hot-button issues.
For decades, now, younger people have been pretty much ignored by most politicians due to their political apathy, and those who tried to rely on young voters tended to get screwed over by low turnout (ie: Howard Dean). This is a far cry from the 1960s, when college students were a nexus of political zeal and the focus of media attention. In comparison to that bygone era, college campuses today seem to be hotbeds of apathy. To quote a spoken-word track from the Dead Kennedys: “We’ve got our college kids so interested in beer, they don’t even care if we start manufacturing germ bombs again! Put a nuclear stockpile in their backyard, they wouldn’t even know what it looks like!” It seemed like the political passion faded with Vietnam and was rendered insignificant by the time of the “Reagan Revolution” (a friend of mine recently argued that college kids were only such crusaders during the 1960s because their asses were personally on the line with Vietnam and the draft, which may be partially accurate).
But now, young people are starting to creep back into the scene, and, as one would guess, we tend to be liberal. This is bad news not just for the Republicans, but also for the Democratic party’s old-guard establishment, as Iowa showed us: young people flocked disproportionally towards Barack Obama, largely skipping Hillary Clinton, who had practically been coronated by the old party faithful months ago. This, coupled with the almost entirely youth-based Ron Paul movement (I won’t get into it here, I feel like I talk too much about the guy already), suggest a demographic more concerned with ideals than traditional political credentials. People have been demanding “change” every election since…ever…but with the help of an energized youth vote, we may just see it happen in 2008; could a new, more powerful progressive voting bloc be in the cards for the future?
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I think you’re on to something with the idea that as Vietnam faded away, so did college kids’ involvement in politics.
With Vietnam, college kids had the prospect of personally being shot at by the VC if their protests failed. There’s wasn’t really anything like this in the late 70s, 80s or 90s. The biggest policy changes of that time would only result in your taxes being cut/hiked or welfare cut/hiked, which don’t usually tend to affect affluent, middle class people without jobs (i.e., college kid demographic). Even George W. Bush’s horrific violations of civil rights didn’t hit most of us (unless you were checking out “How To Make Bombs On Airplanes” or the Koran out of the library), even if they did offend our sense of democracy.
(In contrast, old people always have stuff at stake in elections, like Medicare & Social Security, so they always participate. Plus, they’re unpleasant and don’t really have anything better to do.)
I think the reason for the increased college kid participation is that now it seems like stuff IS actually going to affect us. Between climate change destroying the world, Social Security and Medicare hitting the fan, globalization eating our economy alive, and everyone in the world wanting to murder us, it’s concievable (and probably likely) that the US might not be the most powerful nation on the world in 15 years.
That’s a pretty scary thought for those of us used to just eating hamburgers and playing guitars. This election finally seems like real stakes, and I think that’s why everyone’s getting involved.