HEY, MAYBE WE CAN'T, MAN – AT 8:12 A.M. ET:   We wrote here a few days ago that the Obamans are playing the race card and the Hispanic card, and that they might soon have to play the youth card in order to try to rebuild their sagging 2008 coalition. 

The Quinnipiac poll we reported yesterday indicates that they'd better start taking that card out of the deck.  The young are not following the leader, as the script requires.  From the New York Post:

WASHINGTON -- Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama's "Yes, we can" message are now saying "Maybe not" -- and are backing away from the president in a worrisome new poll for the White House.

Obama is losing in a match-up against a generic Republican challenger by 37 percent to 34 percent among voters in the 18-34 age group, according to a stunning Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.

In March, voters in this group approved of Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent.

"The youngest age group may be the most impatient and the most easily disillusioned among all age groups," said Molly Andolina, a youth-vote expert and DePaul University political-science professor.

For many young voters in 2008, "it was the first time they'd been really been involved, really paying attention. This is someone telling them, 'Yes, you can,' " she said.

Two years later, with a prolonged Gulf oil spill, "watching how slow it is to respond may be a little disillusioning," she added.

Obama won an astounding 66 percent of the vote among the under-30 crowd, according to exit polls tracked by the Pew Research Center, the biggest winning percentage for a candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972.

What?  Who?  Nixon?  Nixon got the youth vote?  Yeah, he did.  And in 1960, against Kennedy, he got the women's vote. 

The youth vote is fickle.  The young 'uns fell for Obama in 2008, giving me the feeling – I've had it often – that we should raise the voting age to 25, or maybe 45.  This country is adolescent enough without allowing the adolescents to have the ultimate weapon.

How would the Obamans play the youth card?  Easy.  Young people are vulnerable to certain scare tactics.  The Dems could say 1) if you vote Republican they'll take away your Social Security, and you'll just be paying in for other people; 2) if you vote Republican they'll change the terms of your student loans; 3) if you vote Republican they'll take away your unemployment insurance, and we know that many of you have lost jobs.  Then, there's the streetsweeping scare tactic:  If you vote Republican, they'll bring back the draft.  You know those warmongers.

Some of that stuff could work.  It's worked before.

July 22, 2010