Hillary: Bashing the Youth Vote
Via psericks, this pisses me off:
In a jab at Obama’s efforts to encourage out-of-state students who attend college in Iowa to caucus, [Hillary] Clinton said the caucuses are only for people who live in this state.
“This is a process for Iowans. This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here,” she told the Clear Lake crowd.
It pisses me off not because she’s dissing my vote (the MI primary/caucus monstrosity, that big contest for delegates that have been taken away, has been pretty much called for Hillary already). It pisses me off because I’ve run the precinct organization for a county with two large universities (U Michigan and EMU). And I’m well aware of the way that HAVA laws in many states have affected college students’ ability to vote.
You see, in MI, you have to jump through flaming hoops to be able to vote absentee in your first election. So what happened in 2004 is that a bunch of MI college students who had first become eligible to vote just before or just after they left home to go to college at UM or EMU were faced with those flaming hoops as they contemplated voting for a Democratic President (remember how well Kerry did with the youth vote??). The best alternative to those flaming hoops we had to offer was massive voter registration drives on campus–basically re-registering the students where they lived so they could vote in person.
Even in 2006, I can remember a father and daughter who came to the polling station I was watching–you could tell she was absolutely thrilled to be able to vote. But she and dad had made two trips back and forth to Detroit, all evening long, to figure out where she could legally vote. Much as she was thrilled to be voting, she was damn near tears at facing the flaming hoops. And for students from further away, like Traverse City, driving back and forth just to be able to vote is not an option.
And Iowa is one of those places that is further away.
If there are any MI students in IA, caucusing in Iowa really is their best–and perhaps only–way of voting. But Hillary doesn’t think they should caucus because "this is a process for Iowans." (I guess if the Iowa caucus is a process exclusively for Iowans, then they won’t mind if someone else gets to go first next time around…?)
Moreover, what the fuck does Hillary think she’s doing by dissing the youth vote in the first place? If anything, we’re going to get even more of the youth vote than Kerry did in 2008. That is, if someone encourages them to vote and makes it easy as possible, so they acquire the habit at a young age. And why adopt a tactic the Republicans are using–trying to depress the youth vote with their stupid HAVA tricks?
I know you want to win in IA, Hillary, but beating up on a demographic Democrats are winning handily is not the way to do so.
Hillary’s blowing it.
HRC and company fear that the “youth” vote is strongly tending towards Obama, Edwards, and Kucinich. It is certainly not heading her way.
Voter suppression is a tool for losers to obstruct winners, and is the tool of choice for Repugs. HRC, are you still a Goldwater girl?
This is seriously dumb. The only proper thing a candidate should be saying is to encourage everybody who is qualified to participate. For the 2008 Iowa Democratic Party Precint Caucus, that means anybody who is a registered voter and a resident of the Iowa precinct where they show up. You have to register as a Democrat when you show up. Clinton’s stand is unnecessarily divisive (I’m all for necessary divisiveness).
I’ve never been a big fan of Hilary Clinton, but I’m really starting to be turned off by her attacks on Obama.
Beyond this little kerfluffle, she’s not particularly popular with younger voters (as my 23 year-old son is fond of reminding me). This is important because the voters in that age cohort overwhelmingly identify as Democrats. The past shows that you can pretty much lock-in a generational advantage if you get a group to go your way in their first 2 or 3 presidential elections. As a strategic matter, the Democrats really shouldn’t nominate her.
I am so tired of people putting down Hillary Clinton. Does anyone understand covert sexism, dmisogeny and red-bating?
What if she is right about Obama? Maybe he is seriously ambitious in an obnoxious way.
Good lord.
So you agree that she should be bashing the youth vote, and talking about excluding people from the process?
As someone who gets to have ZERO say in who the candidate is, because by the time it gets to me, it will be done, I’m a little disturbed that she seems to think that because this group might be drawn to Obama, they should be excluded. Not what I want in a leader.
WO has it right – this stand is unnecessarily divisive.
Voter suppression is not a form of gender bias. Should any other candidate undertake such abhorent activities, I stand ready to call a spade a shovel.
Hillary is my second favorite democratic candidate, tied with Edwards. Her political positioning and her policy positions keep on coming up wrong for me. Truth? I still have gotten over that flag-burning amendment to the Constitution.
She co-sponsored a law on flag burning, which helped take the steam out the the amendment movement.
This business of not encouraging the student vote looks like fear. She’s made a poor decision on this, for sure.
Loo Hoo,
Thanks for straightening me out on that. It’s a good article by Stoller and I agree with his pov. Still, to me its pandering – making herself more attractive to some of the center and the right.
Jeebuz, I thought this shit had been resolved decades ago. When I was in college in the early 70s in Kentucky we went through the vote at home of record versus vote in college town and I thought it was resolved in favor of registering and voting in college town. But then, administrators and mayors in college towns have never looked fondly on the student populations they couldn’t control.
Well, here in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor, they’re probably more worried about the aging hippies who’ve lived here since the 60s than they are about the college students, who tend to be more conservative than 3/4 of Ann Arborites anyway.
Having to deal with an electorate that isn’t ‘authentically Iowan’ (read: mostly white, mostly corn) means shaping the message in ways that would reflect a less tightly focused (and more easily focus-grouped) populace. That’s why Hillary doesn’t like it: it punctures the bullshit balloon of Iowa electioneering.
A few bits on Hilary I’ve picked up thru scanning/reading in the last few years:
* She is Karl’s favorite dem candidate.
* The Clinton marriage was for political advantage. (Idle speculation of course)
* Bill and Poppy traveled together as pals for a while – what was that all about?
* PTB have tired of Repubs for now – need to keep seat open for future, settle the angry masses; therefore Hilary has been selected. If not, why are there no credible Repub candidates?
* She voted to invade Iraq didn’t she? No, I mean she voted to give Dubya the power to invade.
* Has Hilary made any positive commitment to bring the troops home?
For these and other reasons I believe HRC has been set up to win in 08, retain the old imperialist system under a Democratic flag for the time being. A surprise upset by Obama or Edwards or ??? cannot be allowed to occur. And so we have…fear and drastic measures as discussed above.
I guess Hillary is going to add you to her “Enemies List.” It must be as long as all of the boxes of documents of her role in the Clinton White House stacked end-to-end that her and Bill are keeping on hold until after the election.
A sophomore going to college in Ames has spent more time in Iowa than Hillary Clinton spent in the state of New York before being elected Senator from New York. HRC is doing her best Hillary von Spakovsky imitation on this one.
Hang on a sec while I set my metaphorical irony stun gun to ‘eleven’ because…. on extreme…..
Didn’t a young Hilary Rodham once pledge to stay clean for Gene?
Ahhhhh yes, here it is:
She grew up as a Goldwater Republican, like her father, in the middle-class Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. By the time she was a freshman at Wellesley, when she was elected president of the College Republicans, her concern with civil rights and the war in Vietnam put her closer to the moderate-liberal wing of the GOP led by Nelson Rockefeller. By her junior year, she had to be talked by her professor into taking an internship with Rep. Gerald R. Ford and the House Republican Caucus. In her senior year, she was campaigning for the anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy.
Whew!
That was some jolt.
If this is a caucus, then I cast my vote for “stupid.” The young voters HRC is dissing now are also the group perhaps most likely to become footloose next November if they feel taken advantage of.
It’s pretty ugly in all the other ways people have mentioned, too, and suggests exactly the kind of working-out-well-for-them tin ear I’d expect a not fully-reconstructed Goldwater girl to have. Careful, there.
“Karl’s favorite Democratic candidate” is not Hillary, but Obama. For what that’s worth. I’m not supporting Hillary, but I think I see the direction this election is going to take, and it’s most disturbing. Hillary is going to falter in Iowa, Obama is going to win Iowa, and Edwards and the other candidates below Hillary are too far back already. We will thus end up with Obama as the Democratic nominee. The general electorate is going to look at Obama and say, too young, too inexperienced, and, eeeeiiikkkk–isn’t he black? (190K hate crimes reported last year I believe is the stat of importance.) Granted, the Rs still have the most rediculous, pathetic array of potential candidates ever. Granted, Bush is an anchor around the neck of the GOP. But–goddammit–Ronald Reagan was able to win a presidential election in this country. I do not think things are looking too great for us to escape this bunch of loonies who are augering us in from the stratosphere.
“augering us in from the stratusphere” …its more like from other galaxies Beel.
Another likely reason that there are no decent R candidates is that Cheneyco had plans for a world emergency that would “justify” keeping the presidency etc. Fortunately out generals and admirals have so far prevented this; Cheney’s stars are descending now but there is no telling what the neocons can do in desperation.
I think Obama can whip any of the current pack of Rs face-to-face, but Diebold is at the ready. IMO those pundits are right who declare that Hilary is not electable; she elicits hate from too many voters. Privately I am pleased that she does. It is true that young Obama would have a hella time as pres, up against a cadre of wrinkled lizards.