Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds
by Meteor Blades
Wed May 07, 2008 at 10:39:56 PM PDT
The upsurge in the youth vote this primary season has been nothing short of phenomenal. This sharp rise in turnout has been widely chalked up to two factors: the war in Iraq and the presence of Barack Obama in the field of candidates.
In Iowa, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas, the youth vote tripled over 2004. In Tennessee, it quadrupled. In Louisiana and Massachusetts, it doubled. Other states also saw large increases. It appears not just possible but likely that this year will break the record for the youth vote, a record set in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential contest. That year, 52% of eligible 18-to-24-year-olds showed up at the polls (compared with 68% of those 25 and older).
After '72, until 2004, the youth vote plunged downward except for the uptick in 1992 - which was in great part accounted for by the youthful casualness of a candidate named Bill Clinton, who was a year younger when he took the oath of office than Barack Obama will be when and if he does.
The primary turnout is a heartening prospect for Democrats and those who lean Democratic because young voters have picked Democrats over Republicans by close to a 2:1 margin overall in the primaries. And that fits into a whole range of other good news for Democrats that has been partly obscured by the acerbic nature of the Obama-Clinton battle since Super Tuesday. Among them the facts that fewer people self-identify as Republicans since 2004, and that both Obama and Clinton have (personal loans notwithstanding) raised more cash, recruited more volunteers and generated more turnout than anybody could have imagined even a year ago. This is now backed up by Senator Obama's 50-state voter registration drive.
What all this seems to presage, the youth vote certainly, but all the other positive factors as well, is the very real possibility of what Paul Rosenberg at Open Left has been harping on for some time: realignment. A shift in partisan power and political outlook and approach as striking as that of 1932, as DHinMI has written about here, here, and here.
In short, not only would the Democrats win the White House, but they might even better their 2006 net gain in the House of Representatives with 30-40 more seats, add three or four seats to their Senate majority, and continue the gains they made in state legislatures two years ago. That wouldn't be a mere blowout. It would put the Democrats in position to shape the political landscape for the next decade or two.
Whether they would actually do so should they turn all the good news into success at the polls in November - or whether the change they would usher in could legitimately be labeled "progressive" - remains, of course, to be seen. Realignment is about a lot more than who controls Congress, indeed, about a lot more than electoral politics in general. But first things first.
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