Moveon.org, an active liberally charged political action committee, has attempted to bridge the gap between youth and older support for Barack Obama. For this election, the organization created a website named “Partnership for a McCain-Free White House” to aid younger voters in convincing their parents to vote for Obama. The organization cites that 3 out of 5 parents may be voting for McCain, which, coupled with the greater ratio of youth support for Obama, means that many of young Obama supporter’s parents are potential McCain supporters. As such, Moveon.org is directly appealing to young Obama supporters through the internet to have “The Talk” with their parents about why they should support Barack Obama too.
By framing this situation colloquially as “The Talk”, MoveOn is connecting with the youth in a familiar internet medium using conversational language. Instead of using out-of-touch language focused on hard to understand topics, MoveOn is able to create a comfortable scenario for young voters to approach their parents. Specifically on their site, MoveOn provides clever, rather humorous indications of “warning signs” of parental support for McCain. Instead of using policy specifics, MoveOn concentrates on a more mocking tone towards McCain by claiming supporters of McCain may “not know the number of homes they own, cars they drive, or years the United States should stay in Iraq.” This statement was in reference to McCain’s ambiguity on his home and car ownership in addition to several different statements of how many years the country should stay in Iraq.
Even the Obama campaign itself is partaking in this sort of appeal through a webpage that urges the youth to “talk to [their] parents” to “change the world.” On this page, he uses the term “The Talk” accompanied by several talking points for young voters to convince their parents to vote for him. The campaign clearly is appealing to the youth who tend to connect with projections of a hopeful future. Similar to MoveOn, the Obama campaign does not request that young voters discuss specific policy details with their parents, instead requesting that they not “worry about knowing everything about policy issues.”
McCain’s youth operation seems to be much less prominent, especially on his website. While Obama has a Students for Obama page, the McCain campaign neglects to mention students or the youth as a coalition on their drop down menu of coalition groups. MoveOn is capitalizing on this by focusing on the youth population, one that McCain has not concentrated on as much as Obama. Under this premise, MoveOn can convince the youth to vote for Obama and simultaneously enter the minds of their parents, older votes, by having them talk with them.
While McCain does list one of his coalitions as “Future Leaders for McCain,” the designated age bracket of this coalition is 25-40, which leaves out college-aged students. This demonstrates McCain’s inaction in attempting to mobilize college campuses as Obama has. This particular video, therefore, is obviously making use of Obama’s emphasis on the youth since MoveOn is vesting a lot of interest in young voter’s ability to sway their parents and become involved in the political landscape. The video illuminates the stark contrast between Obama and McCain in terms of youth support. Since the youth in politics is considered to be voters aged 18-36, McCain is conveniently cutting out all voters less than 25, most of whom this video would resonate with. For this reason, a video directed at the youth to sway their parents for Obama could be extremely salient for MoveOn’s message of keeping McCain out of the White House.
The page on the Obama campaign’s website that MoveOn links young voters to has a section called “Know the Issues,” which provides general explanations for major policy issues. Therefore, both MoveOn and Obama are urging young voters to discuss the issues of “education, healthcare, jobs, Iraq and foreign affairs.” These issues are also very universal ones that transcend the issue of race. This idea plays into the deracialization of Obama’s campaign that creates one universal coalition of support instead of fractioned, racially charged ones.
MoveOn uses the video medium of communication to relate its message to the youth. In their main video, they feature several young voters in addition to stars of the hit show “Gossip Girls” to appeal to the youth. In the video, “Gossip Girls” stars Blake Lively and Penn Badgley “encourage [young voters] to talk to [their] parents about the risks of voting McCain.” This mandate from celebrities is MoveOn’s attempt at connecting with the youth so that they back their anti-McCain cause. These celebrities would be most familiar with high school and college-aged students, ones that are not included in McCain’s age bracket of “Future Leaders.” Also, the video does not only feature white young voters, but African American ones too, which contributes to the diverse feel of the advertisement. Once again, this appeals to young voters who are more open to and cognizant of diversity than prior generations.
In this election, it has been particularly convenient for candidates and political organizations to capitalize on the unprecedented levels of youth excitement to reach young voter’s parents. If this youth excitement remains, campaigns and political organizations will continue to make use of young voter’s potential influence over their parents to gain their support.
For Further Reading:
http://www.mccainfreewhitehouse.org/index.html
http://www.mccainfreewhitehouse.org/having-the-talk.html
http://www.mccainfreewhitehouse.org/warning-signs.html
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/thetalk
http://futureleaders.johnmccain.com/FutureLeaders.htm
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