Kansas City Star, MO
12-25-07
Kernels from Iowa: Clinton, Obama play to different generations
When Hillary Clinton’s volunteers and staffers stand at the back of their
candidate’s events, they sometimes play a game one observer called “count the
oxygen tanks and wheelchairs.”
Barack Obama’s Iowa troops have their own rituals in the days leading up to the
crucial Jan. 3 caucus — one of them is making sure that the high school kids
who swarm Obama’s appearances turn 18 in time to vote.
If the Clinton-Obama confrontation figured to be a clash of gender and racial
pathfinders, it has turned out in large measure to be a generational battle.
Obama is gunning for 80 percent of the under-21 vote, his advisers say, while
Clinton is banking on a bedrock of middle-age and elderly voters who make up
the majority of caucus-goers. It is a struggle, at least in a youth marketing sense,
that has taken on the generation-war vibe of the “Mac vs. PC“ commercials.
“Politicians are usually playing to the older people because they’re the ones who
vote, and we usually get shunted to the background,” said Bryan Carter, 22, one
of several Northwestern University undergrads who volunteered at an Obama
event in Waterloo earlier this month. “Barack Obama is the first politician to
speak to my generation. Hillary doesn’t speak to me.”
Each camp has its own age-related preoccupations. Clinton’s people are deeply
anxious about the weather — icy sidewalks can lead to broken hips, which mean
stay-at-home seniors. Obama’s staff is organizing a bus caravan from the
Chicago suburbs, where many University of Iowa students live, to caucus points
near the university’s main Iowa City campus, a school official said. The dorms at
Drake University, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa will
remain open during the first week of January, which could help Obama
compensate for a winter break that could seriously hamper his turnout.
Iowa law allows out-of-state students who spend nine months of the year in the
state to vote, but the Obama campaign’s push to squeeze every vote from their
ranks has sparked outrage from the Clinton camp, which accuses them of trying
to manipulate the outcome.
Clinton has tried to maximize her demographic strengths too, albeit in a quieter,
less controversial way, organizing vans and carpools to shuttle elderly Iowa
voters who might otherwise be shut in by bad weather.
“None of these candidates can afford to be a Johnny One-note. All of them are
appealing across-the-board, but they all have relative strengths, and they are
clearly targeting them,” said University of Iowa political science professor Cary
Covington.
Obama enjoys a more than 2-to-1 advantage, 41percent to 19 percent, over
Clinton among 18- to 44-year-old voters, according to a University of Iowa
Hawkeye State poll taken in late October. His performance among younger
voters was by far the best performance by any candidate in any age group.
Clinton’s lead among older voters is not as pronounced, but at 31 percent it’s the
highest of any candidate in the 45-and-older category.
John Edwards has staked out the generational middle, attracting a caucus-best
26 percent of 45- to 60-year-old Democrats.
If history is any guide, Clinton has an edge. In 2004, only 4 percent of 150,000
Democrats who caucused were younger than 21, and Howard Dean’s effort to
mobilize college and high school students fizzled for lack of a solid statewide
organization.