That is in Madison, Wisconsin.....did I get you?
His Countdown for Change event is sold out in Madison, WI.
Moving the event to a larger venue.
But let us talk about the "youth vote". Which is becoming an element in itself.
Much has been written about Barack Obama and the youth vote. Many are writing this segment off, but I am not. I see my niece, 17, a senior in high school in Minnesota, registering to caucus on Feb 5th that is impressive.
Why?
Because we were all teens and young (well I still am) at one time, in our lives. And guess what? Do you think we cared about politics? I didn't. I came from a very pro-political home; mother was precinct captain, so I know all about it. But when you are a teen/young adult, the world is all about "me". Which does make me wonder, are these kids waking up and beginning to realize that they do count in the political process? Well, my niece has. She has a gang of gals and they are all registered to caucus. This is just amazing to me.
Which brings me to the Newsweek article and how the Obama Campaign is counting on the young.
Rob Sand says he's learned his lesson. In 2004, the 25-year-old native of Decorah, Iowa, backed Howard Dean for president. He was exactly the kind of kid that the feisty, youthful Dean campaign was counting on to help win the Hawkeye State’s make-or-break caucus. In high school, Sand spent two years lobbying local politicians to build a public skate park. At Brown University, he led spring break service trips, developed a course on conservative political thought and even donated $50 to Dean, his first contribution to a presidential campaign. But on Jan. 19, 2004, Sand wasn’t caucusing in Decorah—he was modeling menswear in Milan. "It had to be one or the other," says the typically overscheduled twentysomething. "And I chose to go to Europe." Dean, of course, finished a disappointing third; his bid never recovered. Now Sand supports Barack Obama—and says that, this time, he’s sticking around to caucus. "I’m more excited about Obama than I was about Dean," he says. "Dean was polarizing. Obama brings people together."
Again. He said he is going to caucus for Dean but did not. This is the main argument the "other side" says about Barack Obama. Those young people will never come out. That is why this segment is being dismissed. Yes, dismissed even as the engines have started for the primaries.
So, if the average voter is 53, how will Obama overcome this? More importantly, how will he not make the same mistakes as Dean?
How can Obama possibly expect to defy such dire CW? The key, aides say, is organization—and not repeating Dean’s mistakes. In the first six months of 2003, Dean spent $177,402 in Iowa and hired about 25 staffers. According to the latest numbers, Obama had hired four times as many people and invested five times as much, opening an unprecedented 31 offices throughout the state. Dean's pre-caucus tally of 50,000 committed supporters never materialized; Obama calls every two weeks to make sure his backers are still on board. While Dean flooded the precincts at the last minute with thousands of out-of-state volunteers, a move that did more to alienate Iowans than attract them, Obama’s volunteers, say aides, are "almost exclusively" young locals. "I think the Dean campaign made a pretty big mistake there," says media consultant Jim Margolis. "They didn’t feel like Iowans, and they weren’t even relating to other kids."
I can remember many complaining about the out-of-towners and the orange hats, running amuck. That is not going to be repeated.
To connect, the Obama camp is relying in part on Barack Stars, a novel effort to target high-school seniors, who only have to be 18 by Election Day in November 2008 (not caucus night) to caucus. Launched in May, the program has active chapters in a third of Iowa's 375 high schools, where underage (and previously ignored) supporters have built floats for their homecoming parades, visited nursing homes to talk about Social Security, organized cross-state trips and even participated in a conference call last Tuesday with the candidate himself. "They’re a tremendous volunteer force for us," says Hildebrand. "And the other campaigns have done nothing to try to take this territory away." The math, says Hildebrand, is simple: even though there are about 40,000 high school seniors spread across Iowa’s 99 counties (unlike college students, who are concentrated on a few campuses), only a few hundred participated in 2004. Obama staffers claim that raising the number could "absolutely" alter caucus calculus.
Ok, did I read that right? You only have to be 18 by November, 2008 to caucus? Wow. If the number comes out, as the Obama Campaign anticipates, this can change the matrix. And if they do, watch for many campaigns down the road to perform an outreach of this magnitude.
Bottomline. For the Iowa caucus, you must get your base out. You must know your target audience and get them out. And they must be excited, revved up and ready to caucus on that cold wintry Iowa night. If not, then any candidate thinking they can rely on a potential caucus goer to say, "I will caucus for you", will have a very rude awakening.
If my niece, who is an average teen-ager, and is in the club of "all about me", can register to caucus in Minnesota for Obama, who is to say this cannot happen in Iowa?