Primaries in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC are tomorrow, February 12. We’re holding primaries 1 week after Super Tuesday. And for the first time that I can remember, our primary is actually kind of a big deal. Clinton and Obama are pretty much neck and neck, and Huckabee’s still putting up a fair fight against McCain. So, the university has become a pretty important place to visit for the campaigns, especially over this past weekend. (Check out the cover of today’s Diamondback!)
On Friday, actor Kal Penn (that’s Kumar, of Harold & Kumar fame, currently on House and, last I heard, a visiting professor in the film department of UPenn—how cool would it be to take a class from Kumar?!) made a stop on campus to speak in support of Obama.
On Saturday, something like a thousand people turned up at the Union to attend a rally for Mike Huckabee, a pretty impressive turnout for a Republican at a traditionally leftist campus. I saw a lot of “I Like Mike” signs all day—even at the basketball game Saturday night (yeah Terps!).
Sunday saw Chelsea Clinton (who had all but disappeared from the public eye until relatively recently) stopping by Stamp to hold a relatively small Q & A session for her mom. Hillary herself was out in Manassas, VA on Sunday morning, and spoke at a rally of about a thousand supporters up at Bowie State the same night.
And, of course, today saw the biggest event of them all. Barack Obama turned up on campus to speak at 12:30 this afternoon, and found an essentially full Comcast Center. Comcast seats 17,950 –I looked it up on the facilities website –and there were also people standing on the court, so I’d say there were over 18,000 people who turned up for this particular gem of a rally.
All in all, I’d say this is a HUGE amount of attention being paid to the University of Maryland this weekend in preparation for the “Potomac Primaries” tomorrow. And that’s awesome. Just, absolutely great. And even better than the fact that campaigns are reaching out to us is the fact that people are showing up for these events. It shows that young people are interested in this election, and that’s awesome.
I really wish I could have attended all four of these events, because I think it would have been very interesting to see what each of them had to say. Unfortunately, I was only able to make it to the Obama event today. But one thing that he said today really jumped out at me.
He mentioned how his campaign has been able to get young people involved. Then he said that the political pundits have been like, “so what? Howard Dean did the same thing, but it didn’t mean anything, because the young people didn’t show up to vote.” Now, Obama’s point in bringing this up was to point out that this year, young people ARE showing up to vote (because they are. Not always for Obama, but young people are voting more this year than in the past, pretty much across the board—check out CIRCLE at civicyouth.org for some fact sheets on the topic). But what concerns me more is what these political pundits are saying. Now, I don’t know specifically who Obama was referring to, or when those people were saying such things, or even if this is true. But, let’s say for a minute that it is. I really think this puts us, as young people, in a really terrible position. People don’t have trust in us, in our abilities to stand by what we believe in and take action where we can. For any figure in politics to discount the impact of mobilizing young people simply perpetuates this cycle. We’ve seen this discussion before. Which came first—young people not caring about politics, or politicians not caring about young people? (Chicken or egg much?) Why can we not break free of this trap?
So here’s what I think. I think that we, as young people, need stay involved in this election process. We need to show that we are a force to be reckoned with. We need to prove those pundits wrong. Be it tomorrow, the next few months, this November, or any time for the rest of our lives: we need to be the generation that changes everyone’s minds. We need to show up at the polls and vote.
-Supraja
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