Why young voters aren’t feeling Obama-mania this time

Four years ago, when I was 28, friends of mine were quitting their first jobs to work for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. I was getting invites to fundraise or phone-bank for the senator every few days. I spent election night hugging strangers in a bar in Brooklyn and met up with a dozen pals in Washington for Inauguration Day, all of us sleeping on couches and walking miles in the 20-degree weather.

In 2008, voters 18 to 29 went for Obama 2 to 1over John McCain; turnout among these young voters was the second-largestever recorded. But in 2012, that youthful Obama-mania seems to have faded. Alex Wirth of the Harvard Public Opinion Project has forecast that turnout for voters under 30 will be 34 to 40 percent, compared with 51 percent four years ago. Although the youngest voters greatly prefer Obama over Mitt Romney, according to survey data, they are far less enthusiastic, are more likely to call themselves independents than Democrats or Republicans, and rate themselves less interested in the news and less likely to vote compared with four years ago.

Over the past four years, the president and his young supporters have been buffeted by the Great Recession and by endless stalemates with Republicans in Congress. And of course, an incumbent is inherently less exciting than an underdog candidate promising hope and change. But I think the bigger reason for the dampened enthusiasm is that, in his four years in office, Obama has missed the chance to empower young people — and some of his policies have ended up infantilizing them instead.

Obama now seems less like the cool friend he was to young voters in 2008 and more like the worn-out father whose roof they’re still sleeping under. Among 18-to-24-year-olds, 53 percent have moved back in with Mom and Dad, at least temporarily, in the past few years. Half of college graduates are unemployed or underemployed — and the unemployment rate for those 24 and younger is more than 17 percent. Two-thirds of college grads take home an average of $26,600 in student loan debt, and almost 1 in 10 borrowers default on those loans within two years.

In my reporting on the future of education, I talk to a lot of young people, from 18-year-old vocational high school students to 23-year-old tech entrepreneurs to 29-year-old stay-at-home moms. Across the board, they’re sympathetic to Obama but disappointed in what he’s done.

“I’m still a believer in the things he wants to accomplish, but he’s made it clear he has virtually no intention of doing so and no longer has the opportunity he once did,” Ben Sacks, the 29-year-old co-founder of StableRenters.com, a tenant-advocacy site, told me.

Despite the tough realities they’re facing, this generation, the millennials, consistently polls as being confident, civic-minded, idealistic and determinedly optimistic, as well as collaborative and entrepreneurial. Ultimately, we want to decide our own fate, not to be in line for a handout. That’s why organizations such as Our Time, an advocacy and consumer group for Americans under 30 founded on the AARP model, and Mobilize.org, which invests in millennial-led volunteer projects, focus on young people coming up with and implementing solutions to public policy and economic problems.