At 18, Ben Taber soaked up the stadium-size vibe of Barack Obama’s nomination with a sense of wonder as he joined an unprecedented wave of young voters that would help carry their candidate to the White House.
By the time he turned 20 this week, that emotional and philosophical bond with the president had been tempered by a steep learning curve about governance, and a stern reality check about the scope and pace of hope and change.
“For the most part, the general tenor of this administration is something I like,” says Taber, who worked as a U.S. Senate intern before returning to Colorado College. “My experience increased the timeline of my expectations. People are realizing that everything is not going to magically get better.”
One year after the inauguration, a collision between post-election exuberance and practical politics has prompted many of the president’s young supporters to separate Obama from the congressional hurdles he faces and the sometimes disappointing reality of his early agenda.
An estimated 23 million Americans under age 30 voted in the 2008 general election, and nearly two-thirds of them favored Obama. His campaign’s unprecedented use of emerging social media such as Twitter and Facebook not only aided fundraising efforts but also allowed young voters to feel engaged in the formulation of the progressive agenda.
With such pointed attention came high expectations. But with the nation in the throes of a recession, fighting wars on two fronts and wrangling over the president’s immediate priority — the complex, contentious debate over health care — some have grown frustrated.
For example, about 12,000 young people gathered in Washington, D.C., last March for a conference urging Obama to take a strong lead at the Copenhagen summit on climate change. But after the summit, many viewed the president’s carbon emissions reduction offer as painfully weak.
“That’s not the change we were looking for,” says Maegan Carberry of the Energy Action Coalition, which represents more than 50 groups.
“He’s stepping in the right direction. But we want to run.”
Supportive but frustrated
That dichotomy — support coexisting with discontent — found statistical confirmation in a poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.
In a November survey of voters ages 18 to 29, 58 percent approved of Obama’s job performance. But when asked how he’s handling five specific issues — health care, the economy, Iran, Afghanistan and the federal deficit — a majority disapproved in every case.
A recent Pew poll hints at a similar dynamic: 56 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds approve of the job Obama’s doing, but only 47 percent favor the health care bills being discussed in Congress — though there’s no accounting for whether that disapproval faults the president or the legislative process.
The same Pew poll charted Obama’s overall slide to a 49 percent approval rating and showed rising disapproval that hovers at 42 percent.
“Once you win and have to govern, it’s not just symbolic anymore, it’s not oratory anymore,” says Isaac Wood, editor of the political website Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You’re going to lose some supporters who are disenchanted with Washington and the way it has to operate.”
Campaigning vs. governing
The shift from campaign politics to legislative issues has been tough for many young voters, says Craig Berger, who writes a blog for FutureMajority .com, a website aimed at young progressives.
Obama the candidate mastered communication with young voters through social media, he says, but complex issues such as health care don’t lend themselves to “bullet-point, digestible material.”
Plus, he adds, Obama has tacked to the political center and, after an exhilarating run-up to the election, the familiar story of plodding backroom politics has been hard to accept.
“Maybe it is a reality check in that these are big issues,” Berger says. “In order to get it right, you have to play it out a little bit, make sure you’re getting it right. Maybe that is a little tough for our generation to handle.”
While it’s hard to quantify the level of issue-based activism generated by Obama supporters since the election, polling and anecdotal evidence suggest significant involvement.
The Harvard poll reported that 77 percent of Obama volunteers surveyed said they’d be either “very” or “somewhat” likely to engage in political issues on the president’s behalf between now and 2012.
Crisanta Duran has taken matters a step further, running for state representative in Colorado’s District 5.
“Obama inspired people to not wait for others to make decisions for them, but to be leaders in their own community and have a hands-on approach to issues facing communities,” says Duran, who’s also president of Colorado Young Democrats.
Questions arose in 2009 about the staying power of Obama’s young supporters when Democrats lost the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey.
But turnout drops across all demographics after a presidential election, says Erica Williams, policy and advocacy manager for Campus Progress, a youth arm of the Center for American Progress.
“I will say that a lot of the lessons on the part of organizers and campaigns that should have been learned in 2008 were abandoned,” Williams adds. “Many in 2009 thought they’d get this Obama carryover effect and didn’t put resources into targeting the youth vote. Their loss was the result of us not being spoken to.”
Jessie Lane Hunt, 30, served as special projects director for Obama’s Colorado campaign and, for the first time in her young political career, found herself on the winning team in 2008.
Hunt never felt Obama presented himself as a “super-progressive” candidate, but her opinion at this point tracks the Harvard poll — she’s happy he’s president but wishes he’d pursue a more progressive agenda.
She hasn’t seen reform on Wall Street. She’s disappointed that a public option on health insurance appears highly unlikely.
“It seems like we could have gotten a lot more with the current Congress and White House,” says Hunt, now a political organizer for a state employees union in San Diego. “They’re just not fighting for it.”
Health care not youth focus
Some point to Obama’s decision to tackle health care first as a choice that failed to resonate with young voters.
A year after the election, a group of national youth organizations issued an assessment of Obama’s first year in office — complete with “tweets” from several constituencies. The report countered the notion that young voters had become disengaged after the election, but it also registered a certain level of frustration.
“While we were still largely supportive of the administration and the president, we were a little disappointed in the compromises that had been made, the lack of engagement between the administration and young people,” says Campus Progress’ Williams. “But we’re optimistic that if we work hard, we’ll see the change we voted for.”
Still, she cautions that even after Obama moves on from the health care debate, he has other politically charged matters to address such as the economy, immigration reform and concerns of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community — all high on the to-do list of young progressives.
“If he doesn’t pick those up immediately and work on a second stimulus package, I don’t know what that relationship will look like,” Williams says.
Brett Abernathy senses an opening.
As chairman of the Colorado Federation of Young Republicans, he got used to celebrating victories — until November 2008. Now he sees a responsive surge of activism on the right, evidenced by the chartering of two new young Republican groups and another one aiming to launch next month.
“They did a great job of getting not just the youth vote, but all the different factions of liberal voting blocks, getting them excited,” Abernathy says of his Democratic opponents. “But now I see people realizing that the touchy-feely goes away.”
So the question remains whether Obama can maintain the loyalty of a huge cohort of young voters, says Karlyn Bowman, who studies public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. But she adds that it’s hard to predict which way this group ultimately will lean, noting that a “natural conservatizing with age” duels with the potential staying power of that first political loyalty.
Even Republicans’ 2009 gubernatorial gains in New Jersey and Virginia leave her wanting more data before predicting which way this young voting bloc will go.
“I don’t see Republicans gaining any ground with them,” Bowman says. “If you look at millennials, only the front end is beginning to vote. And that cohort is so large — larger than the baby boom — that it’s going to carry significant weight.”
As monumental as Obama’s election may have been in the lives of many young voters, one observer notes an even bigger event that could ultimately shape their political allegiances — the recession.
“That’s more of a formative experience than anything any politician is going to do,” says Peter Levine, director of the nonpartisan CIRCLE — the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “If it turns out that we’ve already seen the worst, that’s one story. If it lasts for years, it’ll also be very influential.
“And the recession,” he adds, “is a story without an ending.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com