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21 January 2010

Headlines you don't want to see

"Youth Vote Collapsed in Massachusetts"

Interesting--and by "interesting," yes, I mean "pretty damn terrible"--tidbit in the aftermath of the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts on Tuesday (courtesy firedoglake):
About 15% of Massachusetts citizens between the ages of 18-29 turned out to vote. For citizens age 30 and older, turnout was about 57%.

For comparison: 25% of young citizens (age 18-29) voted in the 2008 Massachusetts presidential primaries, and 47.8% of young Massachusetts citizens voted in the 2008 presidential elections, according to CIRCLE’s analysis. Seventy-eight percent of under-30 voters in Massachusetts chose Barack Obama in the 2008 general election; 20% chose John McCain.

Funny thing about younger voters: a lot of them still labor under the delusion that the people for whom they cast ballots will actually do the things they talked about while asking for those votes.

They'll let you off the hook for not changing the world overnight; after all, they're young, not stupid. (Anyone who didn't think this was going to be an uphill climb desperately needs some reality to intrude on them). But what you cannot get away with is being seen as not willing to fight for what you want public option ...and that's when you're not too busy explicitly embracing the status quo on things you campaigned against, e.g. unadjudicated detention, drug price negotiation/reimportation, etc.

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