The best time to listen to politicians? When they don't know you're listening.
Earlier this afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama became the second presidential candidate (John Edwards was first) to participate in an MTV/Myspace dialogue--a sort of live "town hall" Webcast that allowed online viewers (plus an audience of students from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa) to ask questions in real time and then vote on Obama's answers.
At first, I was disappointed. New co-host Sway Calloway, who replaced fellow MTV News correspondent Suchin Pak, did little more than occasionally exhort the audience to "make some noise"; his presence was pointless. Despite promising to pose "tough questions"--an MTV news report yesterday quoted campus-paper editor Andy Johnson saying, "I think everyone here will rise to the occasion... I'd personally like to see him get hit hard"--Obama's interrogators, whether online or in the room, largely refrained from challenging the candidate; like Edwards, Obama got away with simply reciting policy positions and portions of his stump speech. Finally--and most annoyingly--the live video player would not work on my Apple laptop, leaving me to listen to an audio-only feed that frequently stopped for several seconds at a time and twice crashed my browser. Most young, connected voters like me--many of whom, I should note, use Macs--would've logged off long ago. Not good for MTV, MySpace or Obama.
But I'm glad I stuck around. Why? Near the end of the event, Obama confirmed what I've long suspected (and even reported) about his make-or-break Iowa campaign: that it's largely relying on (notoriously unreliable) young voters for a come-from-behind caucus victory.
In conversation, Obama aides like Steve Hildebrand (Deputy Campaign Manager in charge of early states) or Gordon Fischer (former Iowa Democratic Party chairman who's now supporting the Illinois senator) are reluctant to emphasize the youth vote for fear, it seems, of sounding naive. "We're careful not to slice and dice electorate that way," Hildebrand told me earlier this month.
But today Obama--speaking to young voters and not reporters like me--was unapologetic. "If you're going to be 17 by Nov. 4, you can caucus," he said. "If just the Coe student body turns out"--that'd be 1,300 people--"you'd be a huge block of support... That's a pretty heady thing."
Sure, Obama's said as much before, especially to college audiences. But then a funny thing happened. The event ended--and MySpace forgot to turn off the feed. After a few minutes of audience murmuring, Obama returned to the quad for an encore that, in all likelihood, he assumed would stay between him and the students at Coe. No such luck--Stumper was eavesdropping. Exclusive excerpts:
When these opportunities come, we've got to seize them. And we're in one of these moments right now... The only way that we seize that opportunity is if young people get involved, get engaged. Because throughout our history, change always happens because young people somehow have gotten activated. In America, change doesn't happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up. And it's young people who have led change. It was young people who decided that slavery was wrong. It was young people who decided that segregation was wrong. It was young people who ensured that women had the right to vote. It was young people who protested against the Vietnam war. It will be young people who will help bring an end to the Iraq war. It is you who are ultimately going to make a difference. So as I said... the most important thing I hope you come away with is a sense of your own power... Take an hour out of your night in January and make sure you're going out and having an influence.
What about young people and the moon landing? All joking aside, that's much further than labor-and-old-folks-friendly Edwards went in September's MTV/MySpace forum and further, I think, than Obama, by explicitly linking young voters with "change," has ever gone before. His off-camera candor at Coe is one more clue to how central the youth vote is to his Iowa campaign--regardless of his advisers' on-the-record reticence.
Thank goodness for technical difficulties.
