Not Going Back...

Hello MiNdependents,

I was sitting in my apartment last night sort of stewing over this blog and our web campagn and the Grasstank and all that, at the same time as I was impressed with all the hard work and brilliant ideas that people are having it struck me that my two previous posts (at least) glossed over, or simply missed a very important point.

I'm fired up, and many of us are, because the people we know and love and deal with listen to us - and when we say what we feel, they respect it. We're also preaching to the choir here a bit. Everyone visiting this site, and all the people who will be affected by Grasstank and ForObama.org are peers. Contemporaries who speak the same jargon and are influenced by the New Media and Web 2.0.

What made me feel a little sheepish was that this is a very narrow band of voters. We may be "the youth" or the young Americans, but it's been 40 years since the young americans had mandate over older ones. Currently, the elderly and the baby boomers outnumber us 3 to 1. So just being energetic and having a brilliant web campaign are well and good, and I think it will be exceedingly possible to annihilate any competition against our hero in our own demographic (meaning, kick ass with voters of our generations).

But there are serious considerations that need to be made for reaching the techno-illiterate, the techno-removed, the baby boomers, and the elderly. Our clever turns of phrase or fancy web sites will be all but invisible to much (more than we'd like to admit I think) of the American Public.

This is why our Grasstank effort is so important, and why its necessary for each of us to consider how we can reach people who aren't just like us; who we wouldn't normally hang out with after work or school; who probably don't share a lot on the surface. We need to connect with these people and show them that just beneath the surface, we're much more similar and our needs more in line with one another's than we or they probably care to admit.

I'm looking forward to our event tomorrow and intend to say somethign along these lines. I'm fired up and I'm optimistic, but we need to wake up and realize the doughey eyed idealism of a lot of our campus protest groups and the Kerry supporters that I myself was so fed up with actually make real voters see our inability to look beyond our own generation's wants. They show others, much like the crazy right appears to us, that we will not comprimise, we're focused on one or two "hot button" issues and besides that, we have all anger and no substance. This "we can do it, don't bother me with details, so long as we oust the republicans" attitude drives a wedge between us. It says, "I'm not interested in what makes you a democrat/republican/what you are, just admit you're wrong and agree with me. I am after all 27 years old so...you should probably respect me" - its ridiculous and insulting and its not going to win any hearts. We as a young group of active people need to stop being so selfish and start thinking why this is good for everyone, not just our own ideals or ideas.

I don't think we are intentionally selfish or purposely self-centered, but I think the way I've been thinking about all that we can do, is. I think believing in the power of our generation and our energy alone is the problem every movement generated by the young has run up against. Young people have always had this myopic optimism that excludes the involvement, except to concede, of elder generations. Almost like we want them to hand us the torch just because we stapled some fliers to a telephone pole. It's this that isolated the peace movement, the Dean campaign and pretty much all the "web candidates" from recent elections. No one can match the energy and fighting spirit of the college activist or the concerned blogger, but to think that we have enough influence without looking for other ways to involve the rest of the country, we'll doom ourselves to the fates of those campaigns and movements I just mentioned, along with countless others. Movements that have succeeded, campaigns that succeed, must reach beyond those who fit our personal mental diagrams of what an Obama supporter should believe in.

In summation, we need to find Obama supporters who don't believe in Abortion, who think tax cuts to the wealthy spur the economy, who think the war in Iraq is necessary; we need Obama supporters who believe absolutely in the rights of women, who believe the government's job is to steer the economy by investing and supporting R&D, who think we need out of Iraq right now. We need Republicans who are simply sick of "The Religion of Conservatism", and Democrats who are sick of the all-or-nothing Liberal Defeatism. Its not the issues that we need to press this election, its the way the issues are approached and the way our lawmakers do business. This is something anyone from any side of the aisle can see needs fixing. We dont' have to agree on how, just that it needs to be done and Obama is someone who can start us down that narrow path.

Thanks MiNdependents for putting up with my stream of thought essays here. I just think that even if I made some good points about why we can win with young, tech savvy voters in previous posts, we need to be thinking of a much broader spectrum than I was earlier.

Keep hoping Amigos.