I teach high school civics and history to 11th and 12th graders in central Washington State. For those of you who aren't familiar with Washington politics east of the Cascade Mountains, that's the red half.
Yes, this is the home of red wine and red state viewpoints here in my beloved 4th District, which has been run by none other than Doc "Rubber Stamp" Hastings since 1992. He ran the Ethics Committee in the House for some time, or rather, he sat in a chair on the Ethics Committee and did nothing while his pals ransacked the country. Unfortunately, he doesn't have to work that hard to keep his job, and every Democrat that runs against him gets a solid 40% of the vote and nothing more. The DCCC abandoned us years ago, and great guy that George Fearing is, even in an Obama-mania year, I again have to look forward to this balding blowhard hypocrite of a man being my "representative" for another term.
But I digress. I'm a teacher, remember? In the last two days of my American Government courses, I showed first Barack's acceptance speech, then McSame's, asking them to score the speeches one point for every issue statement that the students agreed with, and one point for every compelling or convincing argument even if they didn't agree. Despite my raging liberal tendencies on this site (and in life), I work hard at maintaining my neutrality in the classroom, to the point of putting an Obama sticker only on the car I don't drive to work every day, and trying very hard to come across neutral in presentation, letting the students make up their own mind while pointing them towards facts.
I've also been registering them to vote, in numbers I haven't seen in 15 years of teaching, and after they watched the McSame speech today, the early preference from their scorecards came in. Of 102 students, 64% would vote Obama if the election were held today. 25% are McCain supporters, and 11% are still undecided. Yes, you heard that right. Deep in the middle of one of the reddest districts in the western states, the one that voted for Bush over Kerry by 2 to 1 in 2004, Barack Obama is kicking ass with the youth vote.
What's more, these are all first time voters, like many of the college students around the state, and the pollsters who tell us what a tight race it is have no way of measuring that vote accurately. These students have cellphones and Blackberries and wouldn't know a landline if they tripped over it. This, I believe, will be one of Obama's greatest trump cards come election day: a large and energized demographic in the youth vote that isn't on anyone's radar screens that will turn the election his way in swing states and key congressional districts.
I know, I know. Young people have been counted on before, like in 2004, and then they didn't show up. But this isn't 2004, and with all due respect, Obama is not Kerry. Not by a long shot.
He's going to win, I can feel that clearly and confidently. But if this election is to turn from simple victory into a genuine landslide, and our majorities in Congress are to turn into supermajorities, it will be because of a record setting youth vote that no one in the press and punditry saw coming.