Youth of the Nation

Generation Y, or the Millennials, as they are sometimes referred to, is the one social group that has typically been quickly touched upon, or examined in the media. Virtually no light has been shed on this group from the primaries to this very moment, and there is little to no definition or analysis as to why these gen-y voters are resoundingly supporting Barack Obama. They are one of the largest groups of registered voters, yet they seem to have the least amount of data regarding their voting trends.

Conservatives have claimed it is because they are in awe of Barack Obama's celebrity, his "rock star" persona. They have even gone so far as to declare age discrimination, stating that young voters refuse to identify with John McCain, villanizing him as The Penguin to Obama's Batman.

Liberals have hypothesized that it is because Barack Obama speaks to their issues, albeit willingly admitting that they are not fully aware of what this generation’s issues are. Some even think that this is the sole group where it is socially acceptable to rage against the establishment, with the establishment being the Republican Party.

Being that I was born in 1982, I fall right outside of the Generation X timeline, thus making me a Millennial, and I have some theories of my own as to why young voters stand in support of Barack Obama.

This is the generation that grew up under the Clinton administration. Like me, many of them remember a time when they, or their parents, could fill a tank of gas with $20. This was the time where the middle class had the freedom to make daring investments, take more extravagant vacations, and freely explore the job market for a comfortable and enticing opportunity. That has been replaced by the Bush era, which entails waiting in long lines to pay $4.00/gal for gas, strictly budgeting to afford the bare essentials, and fighting to keep a job that they absolutely loath. While many consider the "Hope" mantra that Obama uses as a cliché, the Millennials are hoping that Barack Obama can bring back the days of the Clinton lifestyle that their parents lived and prospered in.

Generation Y has become the generation that, after struggling to find a low paying job in the Bush administration, has had a portion of their paycheck deducted for Social Security for their grandparents to retire off of. Thanks to the political tactics of George Bush, this generation has been forced to acknowledge and accept the fact that these funds will NOT be there when they get their grandparents' age, and will have to work an additional twenty to twenty-five years that their grandparents didn’t have to work before they can obtain the same, exact benefits.

This generation has kick-started their professional careers in a state of debt. Debt incurred from the seemingly endless war in Iraq, which obviously has no substantial benefit to them. This younger group of voters has been unfortunate enough to inherit a $700+ billion debt used to bailout fifty something businessmen who allowed greed and personal ambition to corrupt their ethics. They are also aware that they will acquire the crumbling national infrastructure and decimated social safety net thanks to George W. Bush, supported by the "Trickle-down Economics" of former President Ronald Reagan.

If you haven't noticed, these are three strikes that have taken the Bush administration out of the game, and the young voters this year have made it clear that they are ready for the next guy to have his turn at bat.

Innovator: Real People Doing Big Things

Deval Patrick is the current Governor of Massachusetts. He went from the Robert Taylor housing projects on the south side of Chicago, IL to Harvard University to the Governor's mansion. He's broken down doors by becoming the first African American governor elected in Massachusetts. He has also done the unthinkable as a politician: allowing personal experience to alter your political perspective. After years of serving as a lawyer for corporations that fought to deny domestic partnership benefits, he now states that "citizens come before their government as equals."

Flatliner

We are now less than a month from the election of the next President of the United States of America. Each candidate is springing into their final leg in campaigning and last night was finally the opportunity for John McCain to bring the game onto his playing field: the town hall. When asked about his negative campaigning, McCain somehow justified them by stating that he has invited Sen. Obama to do town hall meetings with him, in which Obama has obviously declined. I have to imagine that McCain was rubbing his hands together in utter delight because he was finally getting what he wanted, to take the young senator from Chicago on in a town hall and reveal that he is nothing more than charm and rhetoric. Well now, that moment has come and gone, and what did John McCain do? He flatlined.

Depending on what network you watched the debate on, you may have been privy to watch it on a network that had focus groups charting their responses throughout the debate. The premise is that the voter is given a dial, and if you strongly agree with what a candidate is saying at any given time, you dial it up to 100, but if you are in disagreement, you dial it down to zero. Each time that a response has been given and a new question is being asked, the dial is to be placed at 50 to represent a lack of enthusiasm in any direction. Now I'm not sure if you have ever been in a hospital, or seen an episode of ER or Grey's Anatomy, but when an individual dies, their heart rate monitor goes flat, hence the term, "flatlining". Theoretically, if John McCain's heart was dependant on the reactions of the focus groups, we would be mourning his legacy this very day.

What I noticed by watching the responses of these various focus groups are a few things:

• Voters, at least those undecided, have ceased to believe John McCain. When he made claims that keeping the tax plan of George Bush is best because it keeps small businesses running, therefore creating jobs, people didn't believe him. When he proposed that his healthcare plan is best because it would allow voters the opportunity to choose their own doctors and receive a $5,000 tax credit, people didn't believe him. What I felt was detrimental to him, is when he tried to paint Barack as being too naive to handle foreign threats, people didn't believe him. Now this is apparently his area of expertise, and his one obvious strength against Barack, so when you remove that, and people start to believe that Barack has a better foreign policy stance, John McCain, you have made yourself extremely vulnerable.


• Women voters trust Barack Obama. In terms of economic planning, health care and foreign policies, the women had Barack dialed up to the furthest rating possible. There was no sense that he was being dishonest, misleading, or misinformed.


• Contrary to what was initially believed, men did not respond well to John McCain's tough talk. Calling Barack "that one" and defending his "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" comment as a joke amongst friends lead to his ratings dipping the lowest of any candidate, at any point, the entire night.

Now that we are in the last leg of this Race to the White House, I am very interested to see if John McCain can, at the very least, salvage the rest of his political career, because it is obvious that he has become disenchanted with what the average American wants. If he cannot improve his performance at the upcoming final debate, it appears that his career will suffer a similar fate as that of his performance last night: flatlining.