Old Pol, Please Learn New Tricks
David Broder, over at the Washington Post, wrote an article today on young voters…my response to his take that young people are apathetic is below. His article is not all bad–in fact I like some of what he says–but his premise for starting the article out is all wrong which is why not only me, but Mike Connery over at the Future Majority blog, wrote responses to Broder’s article.
Old Pol, Please Learn New Tricks
By: Jane Fleming Kleeb
We have all heard it before—young people don’t vote, they are apathetic.
David Broder’s latest article “Breaking Through to Voters” starts with this false claim and old political thinking. Seven years ago it would have been right. Then we were in the middle of a period when young people did not connect politics and their everyday lives, and consequently, didn’t vote.
Thankfully, he counters his own argument by describing young people’s increasingly active role in local Montana government. But I have to ask, why does Broder have to rely first on old stereotypes about young people nationally so as to then act shocked that young people in Montana care about politics?
Young people broke voting records for their age group in the last two elections, in 2004 and 2006, even though the media largely ignored the voting surge and even falsely reported that we didn’t come out in large numbers for Kerry in 2004. In fact, Rock the Vote’s latest polling report shows young people are paying attention to and engaged in politics at record levels, that they are optimistic, enthusiastic about civics and service, and increasingly self-identifying as Democrats.
But why should this surprise any of us, David Broder included? Especially when we realize that young people care about the same issues that any of us do—we want access to quality healthcare, we don’t want to go bankrupt in order to go to college or improve ourselves, we want good neighborhood schools for our children, and we think our nation’s security depends as much on supporting our troops at Walter Reed as it does supporting our children with SCHIP.
Most critically we worry, like Hawaii state representative Marcus Oshiro whom Broder quotes in his article, that some of our peers may be losing trust in our government. Amazingly enough though, young people continue to have faith that government can do good in our everyday lives and that, more than any other factor, continues to motivate and inspire us to stay involved – or at least keep voting.
In the end, Broder gets it absolutely right when he says “young people respond when they are treated seriously — and when their involvement in politics produces results that are real.” That is what we in the youth voting community have been arguing, and saying, and advocating for years against the dominate media message of “young people are apathetic.”
My contention with Broder comes not in his ultimate analysis that, contrary to what we the readers might think, young people do care but rather in his willingness to repeat the tired and old theme at the outset that young people do not. The bottom line is this: talk to us and we will vote; ignore us and don’t be surprised if we ignore you too.
Not surprising, this is true of all age groups, not just young people. And not surprising, this is true of all campaigns from logging in Montana to President of the United States because each of us believes, older and younger, that we still have it within us to help change the world.
