Why Young People Like Obama

In the 2008 US Presidential Primary, Barack Obama became the candidate whom young generations of different ethnicities support consistently. This so-called “Obama Hotness”, in which the passion to vote from the apolitical younger generations is strongly inspired, is worth being analyzed.

So how much passion do the young people exactly have about Obama? To take the University of Maryland (UMD) as an example (where the author studied), when Obama went to give a presentation, 18 thousand people followed and stood in line for over six hours in freezing weather. Such a situation can only be seen in Hong Kong when top pop singers throw a concert at Hong-Can Stadium (The biggest stadium in Hong Kong). But just for a speech from a politician, 18 thousand sounds ridiculous. However, 18 thousand was not just an occasional number at UMD. It is always crowded like this in every state when Obama visits.

The content is what really matters

Obama’s speeches are seen to be inspirational and infective, but what really win people’s minds are the speeches content. Although Hilary Clinton and her staff continuously attack Obama for using his “fictitious” election slogan “Change” and express that Obama has not given a detailed plan on how he would lead all Americans to make change. However, if you listen to his speeches carefully, it is not hard to make an argument on what problems he is going to solve and how he is going to lead Americans on a certain track.

We can illustrate this idea with the help of his opinions on gay marriage.

1. He is not an advocate for gay marriage. He sees himself as a Christian. Marriage should be made between a man and a woman according to the biblical teachings. This point of view can be identified with the view that traditional conservatives hold.

2. On the other hand, he respects the basic rights that gays and lesbians have, and agrees to civil unions. Specifically, he points out some basic policies, such as medical and health care, conveyance rights, and even the respect that government needs to show to its ordinary citizens. He sees these as basic civil rights for everyone. He once even commented on this as a Christian. He said that it is inappropriate to make judgments on social policy issue if it is a “sin”. He quoted verses from the Bible when Jesus went up on a mountainside and spoke to the crowd. (The media thought that he might mean Matthew 7:12 – Do to others what you would have them do to you.) What perspective should Americans see of gay marriages, from his point of view, based on basic civil rights?

3. More importantly, he emphasized that this is an issue which causes disagreement in society. But for him, compared with his goal to unite Americans, this issue is much smaller. It also can be estimated that if Obama became the President, he will not make divisions among Americans by pushing any policies which are either pro-gay marriage or against it. This point implicitly shows that he will not follow Bush to push any gay marriage policies based on his own perceptions. That is why he voted against the constitution amendment on the marriage issue in 2006.

It is not hard to understand Obama’s standpoint here. The second point is often seen as a “typical liberal view” by observers. But what makes him unique from anyone else is that he does not want any of these social issues to make divisions in society. Whether it is a legitimate marriage or civil union, which civil rights the government should give to gay people are not some simple problems that can be solved immediately. Each citizen has his/her own understanding on these social policies. Instead of pushing any biased proposals, there can be possible solutions by long-term discussions and experiment.

However, we saw that Americans were divided in past years by simply claiming these issues right or wrong. And the fights went on and on. It directly led to the failure of the Democratic Party in 2004 in which John Kerry was portrayed as a “freak”.

And also, this is why the young generation support Obama right now. Probably not all of them agree that he is okay with giving gays and lesbians their right to marry. But there are a great number of them who do not want to see a divided United States because of this disagreement. Many young people do not care whether you are left/right or liberal/conservative. And it seems ridiculous for them to mess up country by maximizing these policy divergences.

He captures the doubts of the young generation

Barack Obama seems to capture the young generation’s doubts. He wants to “make changes” and he also calls on every American to have hope for the future. This are exactly what the young Americans are asking for. They do not want a “fierce revolution” but a united nation. We are not sure whether Obama can really fulfill all these goals, but at least he is more eligible compared to Hillary Clinton and other candidates who talk about bringing changes.