Last Tuesday’s announcement that Barack Obama won the presidency triggered reactions ranging from the ecstatic to the irate.
Depending on who you talked to in the days that followed, America’s now on the path to rehabilitation or complete destruction.
Regardless of your stance on Senator Obama, one aspect of this election that no one can dispute is the influence new and young voters had on the results.
George Mason University professor Michael McDonald calculated that 24 million of the 133.3 million voters who hit the polls on Election Day were in the 18-to 29-years-old age bracket.
That’s four million more voters from that category than in 2004. It’s also the third consecutive election in which that total has increased.
It’s popular perception that each generation gets increasingly more complacent. I won’t dispute each generation has been relieved of more responsibilities than its predecessors. But these post-election statistics serve as a counterargument to the idea that today’s youth aren’t interested in anything but Facebook, text messaging, and Busch Light.
Even so, the stats show those good-for-nothing young people were heavily represented at the polls.
Yet even after all the bemoaning about how young people aren’t concerned with “real” issues in this country, plenty of people still aren’t happy with this age group.
Why? Because they voted for the wrong guy, of course!
Since Tuesday night, I’ve heard criticisms from people my age and older that the youth were too heavily influenced by the wrong sources. They were subsequently not capable of supporting the allegedly superior ticket (McCain and everyone’s favorite wolf-slaying hockey mom, Sarah Palin).
No doubt plenty of young voters let the MTVs, BETs, and celebrities of the world influence who they cast their vote for. But how is this any different from voters of other age brackets letting media outlets such as CNN and FOX News affect who they voted for?
The reality is many people who voted for Obama – the young, middle-aged, and the old – did so because of his ability to sincerely connect with demographics across the board.
While his detractors claim Obama’s nothing more than a polished orator, his campaign still focused on improving the quality of life for everyone in the country.
Obama avoided responding to allusions from his opponents that stopped short of suggesting his Christmas card list is chock-full of radicals, terrorists, and folks with weird, un-American names.
The night following Election Day, CNN’s Roland Martin recollected the reaction of his young nephews and nieces to news that Obama had won the presidency.
His five-year-old nephew was so excited that he went and got his suit out of the closet because he was under the impression his family was going to see Obama that night.
At that age, my only interest in politics was that being president strongly increased your chances of getting your face on money after you died.
We can damn who our country’s youngest voters supported last Tuesday. But that focus ignores the bigger picture.
Our youth – those allegedly selfish, oh-so-complacent freeloaders – took an interest in this country’s direction and exercised their right to have a say in its future.
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