Does GOP Stand for Grampa's Old Politicians?

By Andy Kroll, The Nation. Posted August 8, 2008.

John McCain is, by his own admission, computer illiterate. Those boxes of motherboards, microprocessors, sound cards, video cards, disc drives and hard drives baffle him. Email? Barely a clue. Facebook? Don't even bother. Nevertheless, with just over two months until Election Day, McCain, technological deficiencies and all, is eyeing the votes of the estimated fifty million

Twittering, text messaging, iPod-toting young voters in this country. In doing so, McCain's "straight talking" campaign faces a daunting challenge: selling the senior senator from Arizona, a man born before the advent of cable television, VCRs and cell phones, to a technologically dependent generation with whom he has practically nothing in common.

It's an almost universally accepted fact that John McCain, who would be the oldest first-term president in US history, will not win a majority of the youth vote. Barack Obama has enjoyed impressive support from young people since entering the race, and the chances of those throngs of voters inexplicably switching their allegiance are about as good as McCain creating his own Second Life avatar. Numerous polls and surveys show Obama ahead by at least twenty percentage points or more among young voters, a lead the McCain campaign cannot expect to overcome by November.

On the other hand, they don't have to. McCain simply needs to chip away enough at Obama's lead among the young -- or simply discourage young first-time voters from making a trip to the polls -- to make a potentially close election more winnable. However, for Republicans another fear lurks beyond the loss of young Americans this November. As any advertiser knows, if you brand successfully among the young, you create potential customers for life. In politics, the same concept has historically proven to be true. If the GOP fails to bring a new generation into their ranks this election season, they may continue to lose the votes of that generation for years, even decades, to come, dooming the Republican Party to minority status well into the future.

Worse yet, for the McCain campaign and Republican Party veterans, the numbers do not look promising this year. Since forming his presidential exploratory committee in November 2006, the senator has consistently trailed his competitors -- both Republican and Democratic -- in youth support. Throughout the primaries, youth polls and surveys consistently showed McCain's support lagging behind that of his competitors. Since clinching the nomination in early March, it's only gotten worse. After all, he now faces a candidate who really excites young Americans, Barack Obama.

Of course, when it comes to the youth vote in this election, any Republican nominee would begin the race at a significant disadvantage. Young people are clearly skewing to the left this election year, identifying more with the Democratic Party and embracing more liberal positions on so-called wedge issues by sizeable majorities. They've supported more lenient approaches to dealing with illegal immigrants, agreed that all citizens should have health care (even if the government has to provide it to those who can't afford it) and supported either same-sex marriage or civil unions for homosexual couples. Meanwhile, John McCain has wavered on immigration, his health care plan has been described as "total "laissez-faire liberty" and he opposes both same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt.

Above all else, it's McCain's age -- and how voters perceive his age -- that works against him. In late August, McCain will turn 72, making him a quarter century older than Obama. A Pew Research Center for People and the Press survey in February found that "old" was the first word the majority of respondents offered when asked about John McCain. When asked about Obama, "inexperienced" topped the list.  A New York Times/CBS News poll from March 2007 reported that less than 1 percent of respondents believed the "best age for a president of the United States" was "in their 70s."

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Andy Kroll is a summer intern at The Nation. His writing has appeared at Campus Progress, CBSNews.com, and The Progressive Review. He can be reached at andykroll (at) gmail.com.

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