Political engagement: It’s up to us

| Forum Editor

The hype of 2008 is officially dead. The faddish adulation of President Obama, which promised permanently to draw millions of disengaged, apathetic young voters into the political process, has collapsed in the death throes of 2010’s low turnout.

Or, at least, so the story goes.

The low turnout is an undisputed fact. Youth voting basically returned to pre-2006 midterm levels, completely bypassing the slight increase in the 2006 midterms and the dramatic rise in 2008. According to an analysis conducted by researchers at the Center for American Progress, voters between the ages of 18-29 years old dropped to 11 percent of the electorate, down from 18 percent in 2008 and 13 percent in 2006. For an age cohort that, according to the Census Bureau, represents about 18 percent of the total population, such regression is disappointing.

And really, anyone who was on campus in both 2008 and 2010 doesn’t need numbers to know that participation dropped radically. I feel a strange mix of nostalgia and regret at the idea that younger readers won’t understand this and that we collectively failed to provide them with the same enthusiastic political climate that we managed to create in 2008. So I suppose you’ll just have to trust that, to upperclassmen, the engagement gap is painfully obvious.

Yet the permanence of this assertion is not yet determined. The truth is that this story is still being written, and we are its authors. Our generation is at a crossroads for political involvement—make the 2010 elections an aberration by engaging ourselves or let others write our political future instead.

If senior citizens remain this country’s most reliable voting bloc, we’ll continue funding Social Security and Medicare at levels that support this generation of elderly but bankrupt the system before we can benefit. We’ll ignore climate change because most voters won’t be around to experience its consequences. Funding for higher education will languish because college students don’t show up. In short, we’ll keep kicking our country’s problems down the generational road for us to deal with once it’s basically too late. I’m sure you love your grandparents, but that doesn’t mean you should let them vote for you.

So back to the atmosphere of 2008. I think what truly disappoints me most about the turnout patterns and results of last week’s election is that I so badly want us to hold onto the hope we felt then. And yeah, I know plenty of you voted for John McCain. But for those who voted for Obama, I believe we had a real sense that our votes represented a turning point, a moment when we were able to take control of our political system and set the country on the course we wanted.

To become disillusioned now would mean to surrender. It would mean admitting that we are powerless to create change and that we were not, after all, the ones we were waiting for. I know that the vitriol and frustration of the past two years has encouraged this feeling. And yet, I don’t want disillusionment to win. Belief is a much more agreeable state of mind. I also think it’s more realistic.

Maybe it’s hard for a generation accustomed to high-speed Internet and its ensuing lightening-fast results to grasp the idea of gradual progress. But even though it now takes 15 seconds to look up the definition of change online, implementation still takes time. And in politics, nothing happens quickly.

The choice is ours. Let’s make sure the book on millennial political involvement is not finished yet.

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