The dust has settled from the 2012 presidential election, but analysts are still examining the demographics of the electorate in Barack Obama’s win. This week’s Youth Radio podcast reflects on the mantra of “hope” from Obama’s first bid for office, and how youth sentiment has changed during his first term.
by Remy Schwartz
The 2012 presidential race has been a leading news item for more than 22 months, and I’m ready for it to be over. The election has grown far beyond television ads and news articles. I can’t open my email without a plea for money at the top of my inbox, and nowhere is less safe than my Facebook or Twitter feeds. David Kaufman is the president of the College Republicans at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he’s experienced a similar onslaught of election-spam.
“There’s always something from Romney, always something from Paul Ryan. There’s always something sponsored on Twitter that he’s paying for, something trending. Believe it or not, a lot of people my age get information through memes,” Kaufman said. (more…)
It would be the perfect media narrative. Barack Obama, a candidate molded in the image of a technocratic Millennial’s fantasy who had a Facebook profile way back in 2006, is losing in the social media theater to William Mittens Romney, who is an actual grandfather. So shocking it has to be true. Cue the contrarian articles and arbitrary data-parsing. There’s only one problem: the debate is totally irrelevant. It makes us feel good to talk about the importance of social media in the presidential election, because it makes us and our Tweets feel important, and while social media is integral to the strategies of campaigns in 2012, that strategy has very little to do with what any of us actually say. (more…)
On the way into the office today I caught the back half of a discussion with game designer Ian Bogost of Persuasive Games on KPCC’s Take Two. The topic: video games and the election. Two things very dear to me, even if they both drive me crazy. Sadly the conversation hasn’t been archived yet, but I managed to take some mental notes while driving about some of the games. (more…)
It’s been difficult to be focused on anything but the slowly evolving news out of Libya today.
The first thoughts through my head when I learned that a state department staffer was killed as part of a riot at the consulate in Benghazi was of Tehran in 1979. The Iranian Hostage Crisis had a huge impact on American politics. Not only was it a fateful blow to the Carter Administration, it set the stage for both the Iran-Contra scandal and tension that continues between Iran and the United States to this day. Deja vu all over again.
How’d we get here? Read on…
Reporter Ike Sriskandarajah talks to Peter Levine of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University about trends among young Republicans in Florida, and nationally, as well as Ron Paul’s prospects for continuing to draw youth voters to his campaign.
On yesterday’s Patt Morrison show on KPCC, cartoonist and funny man Lalo Alcaraz revealed – sort of – that’s he’s “a hundred percent” behind the Mitt Romney twitter parody, @Mexican Mitt.
That meaning a hundred percent behind “Mexican Mitt” as a supporter, of course.
“I think we had a misunderstanding, Patt,” Alcaraz joked. “When I said I was the man behind Mexican Mitt, I meant I am behind him a hundred percent, as (are) all Latinos.”
Alcaraz, who recently relaunched the Pocho.com political satire site, was cagey about @Mexican Mitt when I asked him about it recently, too. But on air, his “Ajuua!!” does sound suspiciously like that of the charro suit-clad Romney parody, who has more than 3,000 followers.
For those not familiar with @MexicanMitt, the humor revolves around Republican presidential candidate Romney’s family roots in Mexico, something he’s only recently begun talking about on the campaign trail. He’s the descendant of Mormons who moved to Mexico from the U.S. in the late 1800s to avoid anti-polygamy laws. His grandfather and father were born in the northern state of Chihuahua. His father came to the U.S. with his parents at age five.
Read the rest of the entry and more at Multi-American’s blog from Southern California Public Radio.
An attack video on Republican candidate frontrunner Mitt Romney has been making the rounds (the short version embeded above). And the “super PAC” supporting rival presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has come under fire for creating it.
The 28-minute video depicts Romney as a greed-driven “corporate raider” making money at the expense of American workers. Romney and other members of the GOP have fired back, calling it an attack campaign better suited to have originated from the Democrats. But from Newt? A fellow Republican?
Given the amount of press this piece is getting, coupled with the fact that Romney may ultimately win the Republican nomination, Gingrich’s campaign could ultimately work against the GOP ticket altogether.
I wonder if the President is thanking Newt right now…
Exeter, New Hampshire — If campaigning for Republican Presidential candidates in New Hampshire sounds like hard work, try going door to door on primary weekend for Jesus.
That’s what Elder Taylor Bayles is doing in Exeter, New Hampshire. “Elder” is a religious title the Mormon Church gives this missionary even though he’s just 20 years old. His canvassing partner is Elder Kyle Hodson, who’s 21. The two blonde, conservatively dressed young men acknowledge that they tend to attract attention when they go door to door. “Generally, walking around New Hampshire in a suit and tie with a name tag makes you in the spotlight,” said Bayles.
They keep a rigorous schedule, sometimes from 10 in the morning to nine at night, talking to people about the Mormon faith. But in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary, there’s something else people want to talk to them about: who they are voting for.
“It’s definitely a topic of conversation that comes up quite a bit,” said Hodson. “Two people within just a couple minutes of each other asked us the exact same question. They just yelled at us, ‘Huntsman or Romney?’”
It’s an obvious question to ask two Mormons, but the missionaries have no response. Despite the fact that presidential candidates Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney are both active Mormons, the Church won’t endorse a candidate.
“The Church has a longstanding policy of neutrality as far as candidates and all that, so, as representatives, we mimic that neutrality,” said Bayles. “But we are people. We have opinions. We just choose not to voice them during these two years that we serve.”
But a blue bumper sticker pasted on the back of Hodson’s day planner seemed to say otherwise.
Hodson explained that the Mitt Romney sticker was only ornamental. “It’s really not much of a preference,” he said. “It’s just more for fun.” Bayles agreed that it’s more an endorsement of stickers than the candidates they represent. “I’m looking for a Ron Paul sticker, a Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry… Whoever can give me a sticker, that’s what I’m looking for,” he laughed.
So a Romney sticker might just be decorative this year. But when Hodson does become politically active, he said he won’t necessarily vote his faith: “I wouldn’t consider myself smart if I chose to vote for a member of the church just because I’m a member.”
For now though, they’re in the political dark. During their mission, they won’t access newspapers or TV, and they keep their Internet to 30 minutes a week, and then only to one website: Mormon.org.
On a computer in the Exeter Public Library, Bayles opens the Church page and scrolls over a checkerboard of Mormon faces. “The guy we’re looking at now is an aboriginal guy from Australia and he works for a health campaign. There’s an opera singer, a mathematician, high school student, artist, cancer survivor.”
Mormon.org is the online host of the multi-million dollar “I’m a Mormon” campaign to show the diversity of the Church. And Bayles knows the story behind each face, as he and Hodson spend 30 minutes each Saturday reading the profiles.
The faith had a different face a generation ago when Huntsman and Romney were just boys carrying out their own missionary rites of passage.
Now those former missionaries are going door to door trying to persuade New Hampshire residents to believe in them as presidential candidates. So who has the harder job?
Bayles took a moment to answer. “I’d say it’s probably harder for us to do our work than it would be for a campaigner.”
Hodson added, “When we go to talk to people about Jesus Christ we not only help them develop a faith in Christ but help them act on it. And that usually involves making some changes in their lives. And a lot of times those changes can be hard.”
Probably harder than picking a presidential candidate.
Mitt Romney spent his Monday focusing vote-rich southern New Hampshire. He started at a chamber of commerce breakfast Nashua, where a comment he made about choice in health care,
“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,”
became a late-breaking flashpoint. Democrats and republicans rivals Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman all piled on. So much so that at Romney’s next stop in Hudson he called a press conference, his first since the Iowa caucuses, to defuse the matter.
“I know free enterprise is on trial and we have a president who really doesn’t believe in the rights of people to do that but I believe in the rights of people to get rid of an insurance company that they don’t want.”
Romney also clarified another comment that’s become an unwelcome headache as he looks to mobilize the vote he’s been working years to build, that during a business career that made him a millions he himself feared being fired.
“I think people imagine that I came in at the top of Bain and company the consulting firm or the Boston consulting group I started at the bottom, and like anybody who starts at the bottom, you wonder if you don’t do so well, whether you are going to be able to hang on to your job, you know, will you be one of those who is laid off?”
The question now is will Mitt Romney hang on to what every polls suggests remains a commanding lead in the state where he’s never been anything but the clear frontrunner.
Read the rest of the post and see full photo gallery at New Hampshire Public Radio
