Oh Claire… So naive. Assuming that millions of young people will vote for the not ancient and doddering candidate. We NEED to be told what’s best for us. In fact, that’s the only reason I bother posting on these Badger Herald threads. You all NEED to be told what’s best for you, and let me tell you this - it’s not voting for some anti-American Muslim like this Claire girl is trying to convince you. For example - did you know that John McCain was a POW? How can you vote against that? And Sarah Palin has two X chromosomes! - Germain Q. Stemme

Miss,

If there is nothing I hate more, it’s the “ra-ra-ra” youth vote backers.

Never in my life have I found a more shallow group of individuals who tout a mere tendancy for idealism as their sole redeeming quality.

You poor deluded individuals always waste our time by suggesting that the youth vote will finally take charge when, in reality, you’ll just turn into what you hate.

If there is a massive youth turn out in which students and the like articulate a way forward rather than saying, “give us a chance to speak” when you’re already talking, then maybe I’ll recognize the power of this demographic.

But it won’t happen. Because empty individuals such as yourself go on and think that rhetoric has all the power inspire and run our country on pure momentum. That out of all your drive, people will finally wake up and “do the right thing.”

Well, I have news for you: There is no right thing. Every avenue is blocked now that the economy is tanking and your idea of change will have to wait some years. But you perpetuate this myth. And for that reason, you make me sick.

I’m voting for Obama this election season. But you and your kind make it harder everyday to believe in his message. Because while he may be a noble figure with some mixed up ideas, and John McCain is a noble figure with some mixed up ideas, McCain backers know what they want and know how they want to get it. You just want it delivered to you. Whatever “it” is.

Grow a backbone and carry the world on your collective shoulders for a change. Otherwise, you’ll be crushed by its burden in a few years. We all will be.

I think they should move the voting age back to 21. Eighteen year olds are just children who are just becoming accustomed to their newly formed pubic hair; how is one supposed to get up to speed on political ideologies, tax reform, foreign policy, and domestic issues when there is a whole lot of man-scaping to be done? I mean, Sarah Palin is in her 40’s and she thinks foreign policy experience is the ability to see Russia from her house.

I wonder if living so close to Russia makes you a communist too?

The youth vote is bunk. It’s a mirage. Fools gold. A Nietzschean vital lie. A will-o’-the-wisp. A media confabulation. Nonsense. Hooey. Baloney, bilge, hogwash, and hooey.

But let me put aside the Obamania for a moment and tell you what I really think.

The notion that young people are some vast, untapped pool of liberal or — even better! — leftist voters has never, ever, been proven true. For years, ’60s-radical types, liberals, and universal-suffrage fetishists insisted that the voting age should be dropped from 21 to 18. Their “non-partisan” argument was a legitimate one: If you can be drafted to fight and die for your country, you should able to vote.

The more sincere hope on the left was that these masses of idealistic, newly enfranchised youngsters would sweep liberal politicians into office and horrible, mean fogies like Richard Nixon out. This was perfectly consistent with the cult of youth that began with the French Revolution and extended through the first true modern youth movements of the 20th century: Italian and German fascism.

Anyway, when the United States dropped the voting age to 18 in 1972, young people did vote in record numbers, but not along strikingly partisan lines: 52 percent went for George McGovern and 48 percent for Richard Nixon. Nixon won reelection handily, of course, and McGovern went on to become synonymous with everything that was wrong with the Democratic party in the 1970s (and, to some extent, even today). Meanwhile, after 1972, turnout by young voters decreased steadily for decades.

The main reason youth politics fizzled is that once the draft was eliminated, young people stopped being politicized and started being commercialized. The ’60s “youth movement” became simply a self-indulgent consumer culture centered around sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But in their pampered and self-absorbed way, baby boomers continued to insist they were a vitally important political force, that being authentically young was being authentically political. And they’ve never gotten over that conceit.

Today, the self-proclaimed “youth movement” is simply a youth auxiliary of the Democratic party. Baby-boomer liberals still fall for the rhetoric of the young, partly because they fervently hope to exploit this huge, untapped reservoir of votes, and partly because nostalgia for their own radical salad days has corrupted their political analysis.

Most young people do not take any great pride in being young. Why should they? Being young requires no work and no investment in mental or physical resources. It says almost nothing about a person’s real beliefs. Youth politics is as deep as the paint on a can of Diet Pepsi and has about as much substance on the inside.

I can’t believe anyone would think youths are out of touch with politics today?

Afterall, didn’t we see Obama “activists” at the RNC last month smashing windows (krystalnaght-style), assaulting delegates and reporters, spitting on innocent bystanders, spraying the elderly in the face with Clorox, etc., ad nauseum.

Obama’s youth auxiliary obviously took a page from Obama pal William Ayers. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/08/the-left-has-ar.html

“… I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” —Senator Barry Soetoro (aka, the Obamessiah)—

Own it, Leftist-fascists.

It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Politicians don’t listen to voters, they listen to taxpayers. I call for a nationwide federal tax revolt. It’s the money, kids!

Every politician in the business needs a shakedown in the worst way. You are only fooling yourself if you think anybody running for public office actually cares about us. Let’s show them how much we care about them by cutting off the money. Next filing season, let’s all pay our federal taxes to our home states. We can keep the country up and running at the state and local levels while the jerkoffs who created the mess we’re in figure out how they’re gonna win back our trust. They can take their time on it. I’m in no hurry (giggle-giggle).

What are you all afraid of? Do you honestly think those jackasses in Washington are really gonna be able to do anything about it? 85,000 IRS employees will be the first to quit, so there will be no one to come after us. Our state governments will have no choice but to go along with it because they know it’s the last money they’ll ever get if they don’t.

It was fun for the citizens of the USSR, it’ll be fun for us. And the rest of the world will be watching. If you want to win back the respect of the world, this is how you do it. Screw protests. Screw elections. We all want change and our tax dollars are the only thing we have left to fight with.

I too am sick of the “ra-ra-ra” youth vote. Ever since Obama came to the Kohl Center in the spring, I have seen more and more dems that are Pro-Obama even though they haven’t the slightest idea of how he stands on important issues. They follow him like blind sheep. That said, I’m not saying all Obama supporters are like that, and most of them aren’t, but there is that small percentage that almost makes me vote for McCain out of spite.

Personally, I like Obama, but that doesn’t mean I think he would make a great president. I don’t think a lot of people get the fact that those two things don’t always go hand in hand with each other. That being said, I’m still torn between both parties but leaning more left. I’m waiting and seeing how the last couple months play out.

Honestly, I dont know whats worse, the article or the first two posts. All incredibly stupid. And Claire, your writing style is seriously flawed.

Also, the headline for this article does not match the content; Im noticing this as a trend in the BH opinion section.

Funny, I thought that financing a government bailout of over a trillion dollars counted as ‘carrying the world on our collective shoulders’. I suppose you’d like me to pay your social security too, Dad.

Why would it be best for the young to elect a ward heeler from the Chicago Machine as President?

Is the Chicago Way good for the young?

I know that the dead people of Cook County will vote for Obama, the graveyards there provided him with his popular vote lead in primaries. His thugs at the caucuses did the rest to ensure his nomination.

Ward healer or a 5-time jet crasher? That is a tough choice.

Is the “Chicago way” akin to the unbridled corruption of Alaskan politics?

I’ve been to Chicago, so I must be corrupt too.

You go to school in Wisconsin, so you have adjacent state “experience.”