Barack Obama and the “Oooooh, Shiny!” Vote

It looks like Barack Obama’s relying on a certain amount of ignorance from his supporters in order to keep their report. Here are a few conversations Byron York has with some Obama supporters at a rally in West Virginia.

“We need change, that’s what I believe in,” a young woman named Melissa tells me.

“What about all the stuff with his pastor?” I ask.

“The what?”

“You know — the news about the controversial things his pastor said.”

“I haven’t heard much about it,” Melissa says. “That’s not a good question for me.”

“I don’t know much about it,” says a young man named Nick. “I’ve just been hearing about it from people who aren’t supporters, so I don’t have any idea.”

Others seem to have stronger opinions. “I don’t think everybody who goes to one church has the exact same views as everyone else who goes to that church,” a young man named Paul tells me. “He doesn’t have any control over what his former pastor said.”

By the way, I ask, what was your reaction when you saw those video clips of Rev. Wright’s sermons?

“I didn’t see what he said,” Paul answers. “What did he say?”

Jonah Goldberg has often said that he believes that the stories you hear around election time about “the youth vote” are bunk and I entirely agree with them. We never seem to see that amazing groundswell of youth stampeding to the polls like they do to political rallys. Much like the Obama Girl herself, they get caught up in the flash of elections and forget to do the stuff that requires more adult thinking, like voting. They’re like crows who will fly a mile for a chewing gum wrapper because it’s bright and shiny.

I suspect that if the Obama campaign gets to November, it’s goign to get there minus more than a few young supporters. The summer is a long boring march for any campaign. Surviving it requires more than a couple helium-inflated slogans and a creepy chant video. It’s not exciting and it’s not flashy. In other words, it’s exactly the opposite of what seems to draw people to Obama’s campaign. At some point, people are going to stop chanting “Change” and are going to start asking “Change to what?” Voters are going to start poking around at Obama’s issues and find that they stink of the 60s and are mostly crumbly plaster and dry rot.

Of course, it’s not impossible that Obama will ride the Young and Dumb vote to victory. Stranger things have happened. It’s just not terribly likely. At some point, politics does require that you engage your thinking brain instead of your feeling brain. Barack’s campaign isn’t ready for people to do that. I’m not sure, given the supporters they largely have now, that they ever will.

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Category: The Obamessiah