Obama Campus Fervor Losing to Apathy as Students Sour on 2012

We were hoping/thinking we were going to get fundamental, radical change when Obama took office. He (Hartmann) says the country is ready for a revolution, but Obama hasn't delivered on the "revolutionary changes" we thought he was going to bring.

I agree, although I understand there's only so much a POTUS can do, and he's had to fight every inch of the way for what he has achieved. I realize now that my hopes were unrealistic, and I'm grateful for what he HAS accomplished.

But I understand Cassidy's statement that "I don't think anyone's satisfied". My goal now is to get Obama reelected, the changes he has implemented will begin to become more obvious, and the country will realize that he's done a good job so will elect a Dem in 2016. Also, I'm hopeful that in his second term, he'll be more inclined to kick some ass and say "fuck it" when it comes to trying to work with the Republicans.

So, we have to get Obama reelected, and we have to win back the House and get more seats in the Senate. Piece of cake.

NO one will be satisfied if a republican is put in unless you are a top 1%-The Ryan budget which Mittens likes will gut this country and we will be fighting over the scraps. This waive of conservatism that is sweeping the world has to stop.

vote for Obama, so be it. It IS! No matter how "bad" they may think it is now, a Republican regime would be the end of America -- and I don't think I'm exaggerating. This current crop of whacks have left Bush/Cheney in the dust.

Personally, I'm HAPPY to vote for Obama again. I really like him and feel he's doing a better job than most of us realize. But for those who are disenchanted, I only hope they put their personal feelings aside and look at the big picture.

One thing you can always count on every election cycle is people saying this election is the most important in our lifetime but this time it is true. These conservative nutters here, UK, Australia, Germany you name it. It is time to put a stop to this "movement" world wide.
If they were to get hold of power nothing will every be the same. Hold your nose if you have to but vote Obama.
Cheers!

If nothing else, it's time for the Democrats to push until they fuck up.

I agree with you, but I wish there were a way to make people more enthusiastic about Obama. Really, lesser of two evils is a major understatement. Obama is the lesser of two evils in the same proportion that stubbing your toe is the lesser of two evils compared with falling off of Pike's Peak. There are some big things that people have to realize. I know I can't prove these, but if you think about it a lot of people with think I am right.

If the Republicans win in November

1) Roe v Wade will be over-turned. It may be anyway, given the extent that the Republicans have already packed the court with right wing ideologues. But let them get one more right winger on the court and you can count on it. At least one appoint will come up during the next Presidential term, given the age of the many current justices. And the older ones are moderates or liberals.

2) Disenfranchisement of moderates and liberals will swing into high gear. The whole country will follow the path started by the red states to require forms of ID difficult for poor people to get. Felons will lose all hope of ever regaining their voting rights. Soon you will probably will need a preferred shopper card from Bloomindales in order to vote.

3) The recovery will be killed off by misguided attempts to slash the deficit. We will get a budget like the one that Ryan has put through the House. Important programs will go out of existence.

If people can't be enthusiastic for Obama, they should instead be scared of what the Republicans will bring. Perhaps driven by fear as much as enthusiasm, I am working for Obama in 2012 harder than I did for him in 2008.

It is my opinion that Barack Obama will walk into a second term. If Romney is the nominee, the turnout will stay low and the margin of victory will be slim enough to make him a "controversial" president.

If Santorum is nominated, the Republicans are throwing all their chips in, and will lose. THEN it will be time for a serious discussion of the Relevance Gap on Fox News.

I've always thought that once GHWB said last spring, he favored Romney, that was they tip off that the elite had decided on Romney, and the primaries were structured to his benefit - fixed, in other words. So there is no possible way Santorum will win but what Santorum & Newt do is make the FR type crowd THINK they have a choice; in the end their heroes (including RushBo) will tell them they HAVE to vote for Romney, and start saying how mavericky and (LOL) "not establishment" he is.

Hey if they can make them think that GWB - grandson of a Senator, son of Vice President/President was a "Washington outsider" they can make them believe anything!

...which is the best the GOP can hope for this time around.

I voted for Bush 41 in '00 and '04. I sat out '08 because I had been told for my entire politically active life that McCain was a RINO.

I'm voting for Obama in '12 because it's the conservative thing to do. Allow me to differentiate between "conservative" and "right-wing."

CONSERVATIVE: Our duty is to prevent shit from flying apart at the seams. Same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, and other issues that we can compromise on while still keeping Camp Paul where it needs to be are up for negotiation (and in this conservative's opinion, should have been horse-traded a long time ago) and should be compromised as quickly and publicly as possible.

Or else we are doomed.

RIGHT-WING: This is where shit gets stupid. This is where same-sex marriage becomes an existential question, in spite of the right not being able to come up with a convincing argument against it in the nine years since Lawrence v. Texas.

All of the Republican candidates are on the "doomed" side of the ideological divide. It's obvious to me that the Republicans want Romney as the nominee because he will bring about an honorable defeat in which the Republicans are still in the game, and not the full-blown ideological smackdown that would result from a Santorum nomination.

Left wing, I am the wall against which all your frustrations are thrown. I am the Nixon which can go to China or declare war on it. I have a bias against bodies dropping, and I recognize the necessity of listening to you guys, if on nothing other than the principle of keeping the back channels open.

My name on Free Republic was Gordongekko909. There, I fought for ground that we are now trying to map out as the middle. May this not turn into a Verdun.

...it's gonna be Kerry (Romney) against Bush 41 (Obama).

As it so often happens in the event of a Democratic president that moves to the center, the smart money is on the incumbent.

Obama, like, Bush 41, is dealing with the insane aftermath of a two-term Republican presidency. He is dealing with the echo wave of a lesson that we should have learned the first time around.

I still consider myself a conservative. I am not right-wing, but I am a conservative, and I think we have common ground or I wouldn't be here.

Obama, if nothing else, is perfectly safe for conservatives to vote for. You see him as vaccilating, as weak, as too willing to compromise. The way I see it, he sees the game the same way I do and there is no reason for me to be afraid to vote for him.

Like I said, I see my primary goal as preventing shit from flying apart at the seams. That goal has led me MUCH farther to the left than I originally thought it would.

And if I'm going to talk specifics, we'll start with the debt crisis back in '10. That exactly the kind of crisis that conservatives should be working AGAINST, not TOWARDS as it were.

I'm not saying you all are right. It's just that if my side is as wrong as I think they are, I might as well be here.

Or Obama was playing 5 level chess.

He's playing tight in a messy situation... which is what I SHOULD have been able to trust the Republicans to do, but that went the way it went.

If his plan was to govern responsibly while the Republicans threw tantrums and feces in order to peel the top layer of moderates off the GOP, I think he's succeeded. I can't think of any reason not to vote for him.

I couldn't resist the April 1st comment even though you posted before the 1st.

It's that time of year.

I honestly do think we have some common ground, and it's productive when we can get together and focus on those issues/aspects.

Don't take it personally when we dis the Republicans. It's just the other side of the coin of the Freepers dissing the Dems. When we're not on our tangents, we're actually reasonable people. But the tangents will remain, I've no doubt.

It's become alarming to me that the big money (Koch Bros, dontcha know) is backing so many wild ass/extremist issues. I fear that they (and not only the Brothers, but ALL big business) are engaging in the tried and true "Look over here!" and getting the masses riled so that many if the CRUCIAL issues aren't even on our radars. We REALLY need to focus on where the country is headed. Naturally, we believe that more tax incentives for the wealthy and corporations is not the correct route to take -- otherwise we wouldn't be sitting where we are right now. That and a pesky little War Against Terror that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld decided to keep off the books. What were they thinking?!?!?!

Anyway, hope you enjoy it here and please DO read the rules and regulations so you know what is and is not permitted in the discussions, okay? Don't want to see you tossed out on your ear by mistake.

Lord knows I do.

I was only over there for about a year, and I was a well-behaved little Freeper, if I may say so. Ran three ping lists and everything.

The Zot came down the day after the '06 elections, and the reason why should give you an idea of how far to the right I was at the time: I got banned for expressing sympathy for the impeachment movement after the President accepted Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

Note of historical context: Donald Rumsfeld has himself stated that he attempted to resign after Abu Ghraib, but Bush told him to stay on.

After that, it was just a matter of watching the Republicans saw their feet off at the ankles with a pair of machine guns.

I think a lot of people on both sides have blurred the two entities gradually ever since Nixon's Southern Strategy, and it has been a thorn in my side for some time. The biggest downside with this is that the positive, constructive tenets of true conservatism (such as a realist approach to fiscal responsibility and limitations of government, both of which I am heavily in favor of) have been pushed aside by the GOP establishment in favor of pandering outwardly to modern-day John Birchers and to "special interest" groups (banking/oil industry) behind closed doors. As someone who considers himself somewhat "conservative-classic" fiscally and fairly center-left socially, I have no voice or place in the GOP. This is the party that has prioritized winning over being of service to constituents to any measurable extent. In their desperation to court what has today manifested as the Tea Party, they have edged out classic conservatism in favor of shameless right-wing posturing, and in the process, yielded control of their public facade to the "cars-on-the-lawn" crowd.

A very legitimate conservative argument could be made for legalization of marijuana. William F. Buckley Jr. eloquently made this point years ago. Our federal government is squandering an absurd amount of money on an unwinnable "War On Drugs". Instead of all the money spent on enforcement, incarceration, propaganda, etc., and ultimately doing nothing to curtail use but instead ruining countless lives of victimless criminals with felony records, we could be legalizing, regulating, and TAXING pot. Unlike personal tax, of course, this is a sales tax, and therefore, an elective tax that anyone opposed to it on principal doesn't necessarily have to pay. As with the current regulation of alcohol and tobacco (the world's two deadliest drugs), the taxation of the relatively nonlethal drug marijuana would reap remarkable revenue, as well as reducing residual deficits caused by burdens on law enforcement (domestic abuse, drunk driving, public intoxication) and healthcare (treating the aforementioned, as well as lung/throat/oral cancers, emphysema, etc.).

It's just one small example of many where our politicians are putting pander-posturing ahead of public service. And in this age of the 24-hour news cycle and digital media where people prefer everything watered down to sound bytes, it is unfortunately a trend that will continue to make civil, rational discussion of complex political issues increasingly rare.

Welcome to DU, GOPrefugee. It's a relief to hear from someone not necessarily bound to toe their party lines.

This wasn't a Road to Damascus conversion for me. I've spent the last six years in sort of a slow meander to right about where it seems you are now.

...then the Democrats may find themselves with a brand new conservative wing soon while the GOP finds itself all alone with the far right.

That's IF my assessment of the current situation as a decoupling of political conservatism from the political right is accurate. Whatever conservatism is (and I stick the "ism" on the end with a grain of salt, because it's NOT supposed to be an ideology is the traditional sense of an "ism", it isn't radical.

And the Democrats seem to be less radical than the Republicans nowadays, so over I go.

Since the beginning of the 2008 election season, I have known a great number of people who run the gamut from "bleeding heart liberals" to self-professed staunch Republicans, who have lined up behind Paul for basically the same reasons. They all seem to agree with his core message of fiscal responsibility, but perhaps more so in that he is willing to expound on practical approaches to the specifics, as opposed to the lofty, stump-speech idealistic generalities we've become so accustomed to from our candidates. I feel that there is a large contingency out there who are rational enough to be able to set aside their ideological pie-in-the-sky dreams (on both sides) enough to concede that, within the scope of realistic expectations of the function of federal government, these are the areas that direly need the undivided attention of our elected officials. True that the Democrats have become far more of a centrist party since the days of Carter, but their media sales pitch is still "hope and progress" as counterpoint to the Republicans' "return to the good ol' days". This tends to leave little room for an appeal to logic for either party. I guess a structural review of the Department of Agriculture makes for less sellable copy than Tea Party v. Occupy Wall Street.

I also agree with the parallel you'd drawn to 2004, with Romney/Kerry being the unrelatable Massachusetts stiff going up against an incumbent who has failed to unite the parties contrary to his campaign pledges. I would add further that Ron Paul could be regarded as 2012's Dennis Kucinich, the candidate making too much sense for his party to support.

...Donald Trump, not Ron Paul, is the kind of Perot torpedo most likely to sink him. Romney and Paul have been tight for years, and Santorum has even accused the two of cooperating against him. As an avid Diplomacy player, I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't. XD

Paul has his own ideological baggage, namely the very views on fiscal (monetary, really) "conservatism" (reactionary-ism, really) that my cohort (border of Gen-X and Gen-Y, recently pushed onto the fence from the right) finds so attractive. Rather than merely vomit up thirty years' of Kool-Aid (that's "vomit up" in the "un-swallow" sense rather than the "regurgitate" sense), though, he's advocating a return to the Nineteenth Century. He's pushing the question back before most of the available evidence, and hoping for faith in the free market to carry him.

But of course, he's only doing that because he doesn't want to ask anyone to trust government. Consistent with that, along with his highly questionable economic policy comes the most sensible set of social policy positions the GOP has produced in decades. This is where his appeal to younger Republicans lies: they KNOW he's right on this, but they're still free-market absolutists. I've actually taken to referring to Paul supporters as the Objectivist wing of the Republican Party.

The best thing that I can say about Ron Paul is that his heart is in the right place. If I were as ideological as I used to be, I'd probably be openly supporting him for President. As it stands, though, I think that his greatest potential is in leading a reform of the GOP, not so much the whole country.

Like you, my views have changed somewhat as time has passed. I was a strong Reagan supporter, especially in his first election against Carter. A lot of what Reagan did needed doing...back then. He said that government was the problem. It certainly can be when it gets oppressive. But he didn't really hate the government It's a question of balance. There is a limited range during which the Laffler curve works. If taxes are oppressively high, they kill off business. But they can also be too low. There is a point beyond which you get very little stimulus by further cutting taxes. Private enterprise does many things better than government, but certainly not everything. The right wingers are saying that everyone who supports any other government function aside from the military is a socialist. That's ridiculous. I've been called a socialist by right wingers for supporting positions that almost certainly would have been supported by Reagan. I've been a free enterprise supporter all my life. If Reagan came back they would probably call him a socialist.

I think that Barack Obama is, in many ways, a conservative...at least by your definition. He tries to find a win-win solution that preserves the good parts of both sides of a debate without causing destruction. But this works best when the other side actually is interested in negotiating with you rather than in destroying you. Initially he gave his opponents far too much credit and they took advantage of his generosity. But I think he has made a strong comeback and he is doing pretty well now.

I am hoping and praying that Obama wins a second term. If we also can give him a Democratic majority in both Houses, I believe he will use it more effectively this time.

I think Obama is going to walk into a second term. The Congressional elections are where the rubber is really going to meet the road.

And while I'm generally in favor of free enterprise, I've got that attitude firmly in the "pragmatism" category now, where it needs to be. That's as opposed to it being in the "ideology" category, where it used to be.

Besides, being conservative means your ideology category is empty anyway. Even when we're in the middle-left, we shoot the Prozium into our necks so that everyone else doesn't have to.

To me, part of the problem is that we all had our own individual vision of what we thought things would be like..however
unrealistic. It was naive of us to think the whole world would change. It hit me very soon after the election
that it was naive to assume that bigotry, hatred, and partisanship would suddenly disappear. He has fundamentally
changed the way a president acts and does...all he can do.

he has done a great deal but once your president passions seem to cool as you have to make decisions that not everybody will like and you can't wave a wand and conditons will automatically be better. It takes time and young people a lot of times don't grasp that. On the other hand many people are still enthusiastic about Obama.

Yet, his approval by young voters is at 55%. Not too shabby and can always be improved on.

The kids stayed home in droves during 2010.
So it's no wonder - no one is "satisfied" Ms. Cassidy.

not give everybody exactly everything that they may want. If that's the standard by which we hold our leaders, then nobody will ever be good enough. And if people like Cassidy are dissatisfied now, well, she should just wait and see how another 4-8 years of Republican (mis-)rule will make her feel.

You're trying to hard to put blame on Cassidy. Maybe you should take off the blinders for half a second and look at your leader. Maybe it's partly his fault.

For Heavens sake, don't you trolls even try anymore?

I imagine with the pathetic options you're dealing with things are pretty scary
for you right now and you obviously like hanging with us sane people. But, time
for you to go back to that batshit crazy cave you come from and be sure to tell
them all howdy Buh bye.

...have a Goldman Sachs administration. Also, it doesn't help that the prez hasn't led on marijuana legalization - so many young people's lives have been ruined by ridiculous laws and the admin. has cracked down even on medical use. I don't blame young people for giving up on this corrupt system.

I love pot and I will be very happy when it's legal someday but expecting anyone to run on a platform for POTUS that includes legalizing it and expect to win is just out there.

...and this president has cracked down harder - which is not how he campaigned.

He's also been a total cop-out on gay marriage, which young people care about.

Put these things together with an economy that has hurt them most (and a pro Wall Street admin.), I can see why they might not bother.

first term issues for anyone who expects to get re-elected for another term. I would imagine jobs and student loans are a lot more important to your average college student than pot and gay marriage.

fast enough. This president was handed a HUGE file of shit! And yes, the economy still sucks but we are starting to see signs of progress. You need to hold the Republicans accountable who did everything they could to block ALL jobs bills that the Dems put forth. They are rooting for the economy to fail and hoping that naive people who don't know any better will blame the president and the Democrats. Please don't fall into this trap. Hold the Republicans accountable, not the people who are trying to do all they can to turn things around.

...to have a Goldman Sachs administration when young people have been hit so hard.

(Nowhere did I blame this president for the economy - read more carefully.)

they are too apathetic to get out the vote. Some people deserve what they might get.

Kids have huge student loan debt and no real job prospects beside working as a waitress/waiter. They hate war and they see their parents digging into their retirement to pay their mortgages.

Not everyone pays attention like we do. Apathy makes sense; even though many of us don't like.

Keep in mind that after 4 years, most of the "kids" from 2008 are gone and replaced with a new batch. Time marches on.

That is my personal opinion. They definitely like Ron Paul, though, but Paul is not going to be the Republican nominee.

The voters are not hot for Obama, but Romney is some dog food they are not going to eat.

Anecdotally, I can confirm the point of the OP. My daughter is a college senior at an extremely liberal college. Obama's victory in 2008 set the place on fire. Now, 4 years later, no one on campus seems to even care about the election, except for the usual band of political junkies you find anywhere. My daughter will turn out and vote, but she has a commitment to civic duty (drilled into her by her parents) that I don't see in her peers. Kids staying home killed us in 2010, and it could really hurt in 2012; we can't be complacent about this just because Romney seems like such a lame candidate.

but I do hope she understands what will happen to people her age (and mine, incidentally) if the Republicans seize the White House.

I'm a college student. I interact with a ton of college kids. They're more engaged this year than I remember. Okay, that's not true. With the huge primary battle four years ago between Clinton & Obama, more people were following the election from what I remember. But that's not a surprise - there was something fascinating going on.

Even so, I've gone to frat parties, meetings and met with student leaders who are just as energized this time around as four years ago.

My friends are fired up and ready to work their butts off to get Obama reelected.

Is it the same as four years ago? No. But to suggest campuses are becoming more and more apathetic is an outright lie. I'm in conservative Utah and I see more support for Obama among my generation than Mitt Romney or any Republican.

But don't let the MSM know! That won't fit their narrative. Sure, they can go out and find a few people who support their claim that the younger kids are finally souring on Obama, but it's not true.

There is nothing more annoying than people in their 40s telling me I'm supposedly apathetic to Obama now.

Idiotic articles about Susan Q who used to this and now feels that.

Right.

We are almost 40% into the Republican Primary selection process and Romney has 23% of the votes that Obama or Clinton had.

These primaries are the ultimate Ptomkin villages of political activity. Lots of TV ads and nothing happening in the communities.

In any case comparing Obama 2012 with Obama 2008 is pretty irrelevent unless the Republicans are going to go back into their time machine and get Obama 2008 to try and unseat Obama 2012, which right now is their only real chance of victory.

The Republicans are about to nominate Bob Dole.

Well not exactly.

Bob Dole without the Humor, the courage, the political acumen, the politica experience, and a lifetime of political IOUs. Now if you take all of those things away from Bob Dole what in the hell do you have?

and hope college kids continue believing that voting matters (because it does!)

It's still too early for this.

But yes, you're right. If the youngsters don't vote, we're screwed!

If Romney is picking Supremes after 2012, she might find herself unable to pick who she marries, or if she can use birth control, or if she is allowed to work outside the home.

That is where the GOP is headed.

Expect more of this kind of article from Republican sources. It's bullshit.

http://theobamadiary.com/2012/03/30/the-maine-event/

http://theobamadiary.com/2012/03/30/vermont/

http://eclectablog.com/2012/01/thousands-in-line-by-8-am-in-january.html

I hear tales of much love for Obama on campus from both kids. Much mocking and disdain for the anti-sex Republicans. I guess many of them credit Obama for being able to get on parents' health care. My daughter's roomie has a mom who finally got surgery for breast cancer, I've heard they are pleased about the pre-existing conditions thing being done away with re: health insurance.

Rumor has it that kids are getting active in Congressional races to give Obama a big majority.

But hey, that's Michigan college kids for ya! Not sophisticated enough to realize those things they've been appreciating do not count and the man responsible CERTAINLY doesn't deserve re-election! Try and tell those crazy kids that though!

Julie

It's still early, but I expect he will be re-elected simply because there are no sane alternatives. The crazies will vote for anybody but the President, while those he has ignored won't be voting at all. Is that really a legacy we/he wants?

and discuss them almost every day. Now, I do live in one of the three worst places in the U.S. (we've been vying with Detroit & parts of FL since the collapse), so it might be that the attitudes are exaggerated. Here in Harry country the prevailing attitudes are (Batshit crazy racists, you can fill in the words), and I really just don't give a crap anymore.

Neither of which is remotely reflective of mine.

And we were looking for a charismatic magician.

Obama couldn't afford shout out too loudly that he was not a magician. He wasn't elected yet.
He wasn't going to get a chance to accomplish anything if McCain was in the White House and Palin was
in the headlines. So he did nothing to discourage the myth. I don't blame his campaign for that. I never expected
miracles anyway.

I see presidential campaigns more as damage control than anything else, cynical as that may be. I am concerned
with two things above all, really. One is foreign policy. I'm looking for a president who has a grasp on reality when
dealing with the leaders of Russia, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, Canada, the EU. Having our head of state grasp
the shoulders of the German Chancellor from behind on worldwide TV makes us all look like buffoons, as, indeed,
our last president did, and was. The other is the Supreme Court. Bush (i.e. Cheney) gave us Roberts and Alito.
They, in turn, gave us Citizens United, the teabagger House of Representatives. Obama gave us Sotomayor and
Kagan--just as smart as Roberts and Alito, but without the evilness of purpose or the allegiance to the money
of the party that nominated them.

None of the above seems spectacular, looks good on a 5 word banner, or sounds good in thirty seconds on Thom
Hartmann's show. But it's reality, and it's necessary stuff for our country to survive.

I was 21 once. Nixon was president. It was horrible. If I didn't give up then, I sure as hell am not giving up now.

They haven't woken up on a cold November morning asking themselves, "If I'd just done more... that moron Republican wouldn't be moving into the White House."

They haven't lived as adults under four or eight or twelve years of oppressive Republican rule.

Everyone experiences that dark sense of regret at least once - on a local, state or national level. Unfortunately it also comes with years of backward policies that affect them.

Nice try.

Gingrich is Done.

Santurum is Done.

Paul is Done. Neo Nazis and Scientologists.

Romney is Done.

Obama 2012! :Cheer:

Raise her taxes? And change medicare in such a manner that when she is in her golden years she might have to learn to like catfood?

Is Meagan aware that Romney wants to start another war with Iran and that her and her friends might have to forget about that great college education they are receiving and go fight combat?
I mean - c'mon - one more war - who's going to fight it?


I think when people are paying more attention, they will be more motivated.

Meagan is the same age as my daughter, graduating in a month and planning for their future.
Their lives are about them....not politics right now.

Someone is just trying to give the gop hope. They have no hope.

America of this era. There simply is not a political mechanism to vote in sweeping progressive change like we saw in the New Deal/Great Society or European Social Democracy. There is simply is no mechanism to elect the kind of government that will institute those kinds of massive reforms. There does exist unfortunately a mechanism in today’s American body-politic to vote in the stark opposite – radical, right-wing reactionary policies lead by crazed war mongering demagogues who are apt to create a nightmarish future. Unless or until a mechanism is created that can actually be a vehicle in which it is possible to vote in the kind of reforms that the vast majority of Democrats and progressives of all sorts really do want - our political thrill is not going to come from voting in change that we can believe in. That simply is not going to happen - We simply have to settle for the thrill of voting against and defeating change that we abhor.

It's not like any of the other repubs can excite them...

Going from 8 years with Bush and then 4 years with Obama the necessity does not seem as great.

They may not be as involved as they were 4 years ago but the fact they were involved and voted will still have an impact on this election. One of the best things that has happened is getting the young folks to vote as they will tend to continue to vote.

The culture in Washington is too ingrained. Presidents don't change Washington, Washington changes them.

Something that those with a little more life experience than teenagers and college age kids would have known.

Cynical? Perhaps, but it's the reality of politics in DC.

supported him in the primaries?

Seriously, I want to know. Are you even physically capable?

Obama is a politician and said what he needed to say to get elected. What I still find surprising is the disappointment of so many who thought that somehow, just because he said so, that he could really change how Washington works. He's a smart man, so I don't think that he believed it himself.

I just watched 60 Minutes. They showed what happened to the people who worked in NASA and the community as a whole after the space shuttle pogram was shelved. Go sell those people on "hope and change". Platitudes are all good and well until reality hits you where it matters.

Even Bill Clinton, the dreamer, ran on 'Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow'.

So, I don't understand why you're so dismissive of Obama doing it when it's been done in every election since the beginning of time?

Every campaign is about idealism. Every campaign will make promises they have to eventually break when elected. Every campaign speaks in platitudes - as did Hillary Clinton and her husband and Reagan and Carter and Nixon and Kennedy and FDR.

That's the reality. Diminishing Obama for doing it is ridiculous.

The only difference between Obama & Clinton in '96 is that 16 years ago, none of us were posting on a political message board dissecting the voting patterns of every subgroup in America. So, those dreamers who cast their vote for him in '92 expecting radical change weren't parsed four years later.

Yet Obama's every move is critiques by millions if keyboard warriors - both from the right & the left.

Meh.

Yes, he had very little experience at the national level, but he had been a US senator for 2 years. As for the main difference between Clinton and Obama, Clinton had been governor for 12 years and Obama's previous job was as state senator.

And his campaign theme was no different than any non-incumbent before him.

when will it ever end?

Giving in to the propaganda machine who provides anecdotal evidence and cherry picked data...

One hopes people will think for themselves and stop dancing to the tunes of the wealthy elite.

The 2008 Dem primary was a bare-knuckle brawl until June. It rallied voters into a fever pitch. This time without a primary Dems are in idle-mode waiting until the bell rings and Election 2012 really begins.

Anyone there then should have graduated by now. Sorry, Meagan alone proves zilch.

A minority of the population can vote in senators who can and will do everything in their power to thwart the sweeping changes people want Obama to implement.