Young Democrats' dilemma

Asked about memorable moments from the last election, Kaitlin Addison, co-coordinator of IU Students for President Obama, shared two stories.

When she was canvassing lower income housing in Bloomington, an older woman taking care of a crying baby answered the door of a small home and asked Addison to step inside. Addison said the house was littered with trash bags, and the older woman was living with her daughter and her daughter’s children. The family claimed to be “huge Republicans.”

After what she said felt like a 45-minute discussion, the family told Addison they were turning for now-President Barack Obama.

“I know a lot of people who have stories like that, but that was my awesome moment,” Addison said.

Later in the campaign, even when canvassers were pretty confident they knew which houses leaned Democrat, she tried a house that clearly had people in it. Addison said she could see the people in the house and hear them talking, but no one came to the door.

Then the garage door of the house opened up just enough to unleash a giant dog on Addison and the other volunteer she was with.

That election ended with Obama becoming the first Democrat to win Indiana in four decades with the highest percentage of the popular vote since President George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988.

But now, Democrats have recently lost gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and Obama’s approval rating has slipped. Student volunteers looking to canvass in support of Obama on issues like health care reform might be more likely to get the dog than a fulfilling conversation.

After a string of electoral victories, student Democrats face a lot of challenges, from attracting supporters to keeping Democrats in office honest. It is a lot easier to elect a president than to support one.

The pendulum always swings back
At the beginning of the fall 2007 semester, Rep. Baron Hill, D-9th District, which includes Bloomington, spoke at the call-out meeting for the IU College Democrats.

This was right after the 2006 midterm elections that had given Democrats a majority in both chambers of Congress and Hill his own seat in the House of Representatives back.

Soon after, a heated presidential primary helped liberal activists build up their organization. Candidates Obama and Hillary Clinton both made trips to campus along with other major political figures such as former President Bill Clinton. Obama even stopped by the Women’s Little 500 race.

The festive atmosphere continued during the 2008 elections. Obama’s campaign headquarters constantly bustled. Student volunteers tabled everywhere to boost turnout and get students registered to vote. Addison even joked about the energy Obama voters showed on campus when talking about community service projects IU Students for Barack Obama recently put on.

“We are not always just really pushy political junkies,” Addison said.

Election Day saw turnout among IU voters up 287 percent from 2004, and when the results came in students yelled wildly down Kirkwood Avenue.

Obama’s actual Presidency has been less dramatic, and student enthusiasm has predictably suffered.

Addison and Laura Carlson, the other co-coordinator for IU Students for Barack Obama, talked about how they wanted their group to have a policy side and a service side.

The policy side looks like the students at the Indiana Memorial Union Commons Literature Desk trying to get students to support Obama’s health care reform proposals.

The service side was supposed to be for people who supported Obama more broadly and wanted to take the energy from the campaign and give to the community by volunteering with organizations such as Hoosier Hills Food Bank.

But Addison admits most of the members of IU Students for Barack Obama this semester are through-and-through liberals, and the meeting last Wednesday, admittedly at a busy time of the semester, didn’t attract many members.

She isn’t exactly sure what happened to the sort of students who might have voted for Obama while also voting for Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels in the last election.

Some probably don’t show up because it’s not an election year. Others who projected their own expectations into some of Obama’s more vague campaign promises are probably disillusioned.

Many no doubt found they had real policy differences with the President.

Next semester, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Hill will both start gearing up their re-election campaigns.

To do well again in 2010, Democrats need those voters who don’t always vote straight ticket.

Big tent challenges
The IU College Democrats meet in the Maple Room of the IMU every Wednesday.

AnnElyse Gibbons, an IU senior who initially came to Bloomington to be on the rowing team but got hooked on politics after an internship with Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan, just finished a semester as the group’s president.

She said the group tries to foster and encourage debate by providing feedback about student opinion to politicians like Bayh. Gibbons said the group’s relationship with Hill is especially close and candid.

Keeping the group open to different ideas is important but difficult as Obama makes decisions that could annoy both the middle and his base. Balancing openness to different ideas with support for good policy is even harder.

How successful anyone finds the group depends on his or her political views. The IU College Democrats will inevitably lean left.

At one meeting the group talked about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prevents openly gay men and women from serving in the military.

The arguments for excluding the openly gay didn’t deserve to be taken very seriously, and the discussion often turned sarcastic. One member pointed out that if “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is justified on the basis that gay people in the military would be sexually distracting, then lesbians should be allowed to serve openly with straight men.

Expanding gay rights is an issue on which Obama needs to put more pressure, and young people are in a strong position to apply it.

On health care, however, young liberals should acknowledge that the President largely failed to live up to his promise of a bipartisan approach. It was disappointing to see such enthusiastic support for the public option from the group at a health care debate between the IU College Republicans and Democrats.

The plan to have the federal government sell its own insurance plans would do little to lower costs compared to other competition enhancing policies. Its inclusion in reform bills drives Republicans and some Democrats mad for little reason.

It was also disappointing to see Jim Lowe, a senior field representative with the AFL-CIO, come to a meeting to argue that reform must not tax benefits and should make employers more responsible for their employees’ health care coverage. Both are lousy ideas that are more about the special interest of unions than improving health care.

Fortunately, Scott Williamson, the administrative vice president of the IU College Democrats, defended during the debate a tax on more expensive insurance plans as a way to cut costs.

Global warming is another serious problem on which students generally support action. But young liberals should be more worried about bribes for farmers and energy companies being stuffed into cap-and-trade legislation than sustainability at IU.

Trust in hard times
“It’s a weird feeling,” Gibbons said when asked about Obama’s failure to act on some issues important to her. “I trust this man’s judgment ... I finally trust our President.”
Her sentiment was echoed at the IU Students for Barack Obama meeting.

Many young liberals are disappointed Obama hasn’t done more for gay rights or his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. But most seem to trust that he is doing the best he can.

Voters are less trusting and tend to show a lot of skepticism toward incumbents during rough times. When Hill gave a town hall meeting at Bloomington High School North, he encountered a lot of discontent from the right even in this liberal college town.

Student volunteers played a big role in electing Obama, the better candidate, and Obama has in turn helped improve the economy by supporting a needed stimulus and continuing to shore up battered banks.

If liberal students want to make the rest of his presidency as successful, they will have to campaign for Obama without being able to blame Republicans for the country’s problems. They will also have to put more pressure on the President for whom they have worked hard.

Even then, there are few guarantees. The road to economic recovery is long.

If unemployment stays high, there might be little liberal students can do to temper voter anger in 2010 and 2012.