Young Voters

DeJanee Fennell hears the excuses. Young people are apathetic. Young people are sick of politics. Young people have given up. But Fennell doesn't buy that. The 20-year-old junior at Morgan State University knows President Barack Obama needs the youth vote to win re-election in November, and she intends to help deliver that to him. "I still believe in Barack Obama," she says. "I think he has my best interest at heart. " Compared with 2008, young, motivated voters like Fennell are becoming a rare commodity.

I predict that the Nov. 6, 2012 election will be a benchmark in American history. The re-election of a black president is a bugle call to the future to begin. The status quo is dying to make way for a new sense of democracy. The numbers showed that there are more of "us" then there are of "them. " The Republican Party could not muster enough of their camp to overtake those of us who want change. This alone is historical. Moreover, here are the historical reasons for my prediction: Since the nation re-elected Barack Obama, bigotry is in decay.

DeJanee Fennell hears the excuses. Young people are apathetic. Young people are sick of politics. Young people have given up. The thing is: Fennell doesn't buy that. The 20-year-old junior at Morgan State knows President Barack Obama needs the youth vote to win re-election in November, and she intends to help deliver that to him. "I still believe in Barack Obama," she says. "I think he has my best interest at heart. " Compared with 2008, statements like Fennell's are growing increasingly rare.

Despite a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz from one challenger and an aggressive grassroots campaign from another, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland remains among the safest incumbents in the nation as he runs for a second term, according to a new poll. Potomac businessman Rob Sobhani, running as an independent, has not cut significantly into Cardin's lead though he has pumped millions of dollars of his own money into the race. He may be helping the Democratic incumbent by siphoning some voters away from Republican challenger Daniel Bongino.

When Mitch Case began his undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, he was surprised to learn the college Democratic club had all but disappeared - just two years after Barack Obama was elected president with overwhelming support from students. "It sort of faded out after the election," said Case, who is 23. And so Case set out to revive the club, and enthusiasm on campus for Obama's reelection with it. When he graduated in December, the group's meetings were regularly drawing crowds and speakers, including the director of Obama's campaign in Maryland.

President Barack Obama's re-election largely hinges on his ability to play young voters for suckers -- again -- and whether Mitt Romneywill let him. In 2008, Mr. Obama won the youth vote by better than a 2-1 margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. Even more impressive, he actually expanded the share of young voters going to the polls by some 3 million. Those extra voters helped tip several swing states. Mr. Obama owed his success to being a charming political unknown onto whom young people could project their hopes.

It was a Democratic pep rally for Gov. Martin O'Malley, with President Barack Obama as cheerleader in chief. Calling Martin O'Malley "one of the best governors in the United States of America," President Barack Obama spoke Thursday to about 5,000 students and supporters on the grounds of Bowie State University, a historically black college in Prince George's County. "Here is a man who made tough choices in tough times to move Maryland forward," Obama said, echoing a favorite line of the governor's.

Baltimore's municipal election this year will be a unique and interesting test of the power of younger voters in a city long controlled by the political machines of the Democratic Party. Traditionally, younger voters are not active in the electoral process. They are not as inclined to participate, as they are often busy building careers, raising families or just trying to make ends meet. In a place like Baltimore, those issues are compounded by the single-sided nature of the electoral process.

AMERICA'S LEADERS hold a dangerous, false and widely held assumption that young people's issues are vastly different from those of older adults. On the contrary, polls show that the top issues among all voters are the top issues among young adults. With that in mind, if Sen. John Kerry and President Bush are interested in mobilizing a few million extra young voters, the message isn't very complicated: It's the economy for us, too, stupid. The key factor in appealing to young Americans, however, is recognizing the need for new approaches to old economic debates.

The name of Towson State University student Shawndre' Jones was misspelled in an article yesterday about first-time voters.The Sun regrets the error.Marc Baine is the kind of Republican President Bush could do without.A Republican by birth -- his father is active in South Florida GOP circles -- Mr. Baine cast his first-ever vote this year -- an absentee ballot for Democrat Bill Clinton."I think Clinton is more in tune with America," the 21-year-old Morgan State University junior said yesterday.

When Mitch Case began his undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, he was surprised to learn the college Democratic club had all but disappeared - just two years after Barack Obama was elected president with overwhelming support from students. "It sort of faded out after the election," said Case, who is 23. And so Case set out to revive the club, and enthusiasm on campus for Obama's reelection with it. When he graduated in December, the group's meetings were regularly drawing crowds and speakers, including the director of Obama's campaign in Maryland.

For many years I've considered myself to be among a minority in America. Not a racial or ethnic minority - I am a run-of-the-mill, middle-aged white guy - but a political minority. I am fiscally-conservative and socially-liberal, which results in my feeling orphaned by the two-party political establishment. Republicans appear increasingly adamant about insisting that government should dictate our society's mores and behaviors. They don't trust women to make their own reproductive decisions or want gays to enjoy the same rights that the balance of the populace does, and have generally evolved into a party of pompous, "thou shall do as I say" hypocrites.

In his efforts to energize young voters, President Barack Obama is depicting Republicans as obstacles to an affordable college education, which could be a crucial issue in his re-election campaign. Mr. Obama now wants Congress to extend a law that cut interest rates on a popular federal loan program for low- and middle-income undergraduates. If the law expires, the rates will double on July 1, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. For Mr. Obama, this is a question of values, as he said in a recent weekly radio and Internet address.

President Barack Obama's re-election largely hinges on his ability to play young voters for suckers -- again -- and whether Mitt Romneywill let him. In 2008, Mr. Obama won the youth vote by better than a 2-1 margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. Even more impressive, he actually expanded the share of young voters going to the polls by some 3 million. Those extra voters helped tip several swing states. Mr. Obama owed his success to being a charming political unknown onto whom young people could project their hopes.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul stormed through the University of Maryland on Wednesday, delivering his trademark libertarian message of noninterventionism and hands-off government to a wildly enthusiastic crowd of students who chanted his name. Paul told the 1,780 students who packed Ritchie Coliseum on the College Park campus that the government should get out of Afghanistan, repeal the Patriot Act, legalize marijuana and end the Selective Service system — ideas that repeatedly brought the students to their feet.

There's no disputing that Republicans are surly these days. With the exception of South Carolina, turnout among GOP voters has been tepid. Hordes of commentators, me included, have argued at length that this apathetic grumpiness reflects a deep dissatisfaction with the Republican field. Worse, many Republicans recognize that their cantankerousness over their choices makes things worse. It's a vicious cycle. As George Orwell once wrote: "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

WASHINGTON -- In the 1992 presidential campaign, a saxophone-blowing, star-shaded Bill Clinton managed to rouse a burst of political interest among the voters of Generation X, until then indelibly associated with apathy and alienation.The attention Candidate Clinton paid to young people and to the issues of youth -- his pioneering visits to MTV and Arsenio, the Clinton-Gore cross-country bus trek -- helped him garner 44 percent of the youth vote, making young people Mr. Clinton's second-largest voting bloc, after the 60-and-up crowd.

MADISON, Wis. - The Howard Dean for president placard on the wooden pole was bent like a taco as Mitchel Wallace, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin, struggled against a stiff wind and horizontal snow. "Drop Bush, not bombs," Wallace bellowed repeatedly one day last week as scores of students walked across the library mall, most of them ignoring the leaflets he and another Dean volunteer were passing out. Every four years, young people eagerly flock to presidential candidates, performing the campaign scut work and promoting an image of youthful exuberance for the cause.

DeJanee Fennell hears the excuses. Young people are apathetic. Young people are sick of politics. Young people have given up. But Fennell doesn't buy that. The 20-year-old junior at Morgan State University knows President Barack Obama needs the youth vote to win re-election in November, and she intends to help deliver that to him. "I still believe in Barack Obama," she says. "I think he has my best interest at heart. " Compared with 2008, young, motivated voters like Fennell are becoming a rare commodity.

DeJanee Fennell hears the excuses. Young people are apathetic. Young people are sick of politics. Young people have given up. The thing is: Fennell doesn't buy that. The 20-year-old junior at Morgan State knows President Barack Obama needs the youth vote to win re-election in November, and she intends to help deliver that to him. "I still believe in Barack Obama," she says. "I think he has my best interest at heart. " Compared with 2008, statements like Fennell's are growing increasingly rare.