As of Tuesday Barack Obama will have been in office for two years. At the begining of his term President Obama seemed to be very connected with the youth of America making promises to help pay for education and lower taxes for the youth. Obama seems to be losing the votes of the younger crowd more and more as his term goes on. early on in the 2008 election Obama turned his sights on the youth realizing that there is not a big voter turnout, this was a very smart idea because by gaining the support of the youth Obama gained many votes that helped him win the election. He recieved sixty-six percent of the vote in the US for ages 18-29 which was a historic proportion. There were the most americans under the age of 30 who helped work on campaigns at a greater rate than the general population for the first time since 1952. It is safe to say that in the beginning of Barack Obama's presidency that he had the youth vote on his side.
The youth voters who supported Obama have seem to been on a decline since his election in 2008. Many of the youth who supported Obama was saying that they would have liked to be more involved with the Obama agenda. They were hoping to train and work in the campaign office once Obama was elected. Much of the youth supporting Obama, they seemed to be the faces for the campaign in college campuses and little towns who would turn undecided voters into Obama voters. In Miama alone they got 2000 new voters.
The youth helped Obama more than just asking people to vote for him but they got the word out about Obama every way they knew how, through facebook,twitter and even the Great Shelp which was run by Sarah Silverman trying to get young Jewish kids to have their grandparents vote for Obama. Most of the younger voters felt that they were being used by Obama because he was all about the youth in his campaigns then when he got elected into office he mainly focuse on health care and the older crowd and forget about the youth. In the past few weeks before the midterm election Obama seemd to be trying to reach the youth again, by going on the daily show and having a conference call with the College Democrats around the country. Lynda Tran a Spokeswomen for Organizing for America said that President Obama " was busy digging us out and making sure we didn't fall into another great depression.
I happen to agree with Lynda Tran, Obama has a lot of things on his plate. He can't do everything he promises right away he is more worried about our economy,trying to get it back on the right track. I can understand why he is dealing with this first because the economy affects all of us. Obama has started getting back to the youth in recent months by having conference calls and going on younger talk shows. I can understand why some people are losing faith in President Obama but I feel like he stepped into a position that had multiple problems with it and he is trying to fix them the best way he can. It is just going to have to take time, it can't all be solved over night. So I feel that Obama has not forgotten about the youth, he had to deal with some big issues but now is getting back to the youth and hopefully will make the changes he set out to make.
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/us/politics/01generation0.html
www.prx.org/.../27147-barack-obama-addresses-youth-issues
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