Sometime between the banter about Georgia weather and a riveting discussion on the redeeming qualities of lettuce, it hit me. My grandmother and I were talking politics.
And not just the “our country is in a mess” rhetoric. We were analyzing candidates as this 80-year-old Southern woman articulately explained NAFTA to me. She even knew the nuances between the Clinton and Obama healthcare packages.
I’m supposed to be the politically informed one. I’m the “youth vote” that is spearheading Barack Obama’s primary victories. I’m that amorphous group of students and coffee-shop servers, Peace Core volunteers and elementary school teachers, corporate business executives and unemployed couch surfers. I’m part of this semi-labeled faction under 30 that has become the media’s focus in the upcoming presidential elections. I’m the group showing sudden interest in political change. Kind of like, well, my grandma.
Yes, a younger generation is becoming increasingly mobilized. My colleague’s boyfriend halted work on his PhD dissertation to drive up and down California’s coast in a “Get out the Vote” Obama campaign. A recent poll commissioned by Rock the Vote surveyed people 18-29 throughout the country and found nine in 10 saying they would likely vote in November.
But so is everyone in my grandmother’s choir, and few of them have heard of Obama Girl, let alone You Tube. Young people aren’t the only ones creating this rise in voter turnout, even if the attention is constantly on them.
Ohio’s’ heavy turnout was not just youth demanding change. The under 30 group was outnumbered two-to-one by those over age 65, according to the Associated Press. Just a month ago, New Hampshire saw its highest Democratic turnout ever, but only 18 percent of the 18-29 “youth” bracket voted, the smallest percentage for any voter age group.
I’d like to see my generation thoughtfully engaged in political discourse. But it’s not just the “youth” who will decide this election. It’s an entire nation that is swept up in this revision of America. It’s motivating, but just as much for me as for my grandma. And now we have something to talk about.
>> a slightly condensed version of this was published in the Insight section of the San Francisco Chronicle.
