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Looking for evidence of young voters’ dissatisfaction with Obama? Look no further than MTV.
For decades the network’s election coverage has been titled “Choose or Lose.” Launched at the time of Bill Clinton’s 1992 run, the slogan reflected youth excitement around that candidacy, and encouraged the sense that young people had a personal stake in the outcome of the race.
MTV stuck with the slogan for five election cycles — through Gore and Kerry and their lackluster campaigns. It resonated particularly strongly in 2008, when a young, charismatic Barack Obama succeeded in building youth loyalty like no candidate since Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
But now it’s done. MTV is finished with “Choose or Lose,” and will introduce a new slogan for its election programming in 2012.
Here’s why, according to the New York Times: “While young people turned out in unusually high numbers to support Barack Obama in 2008, MTV’s research into ‘Choose or Lose’ found that many felt they had lost anyway.”
Youth voters haven’t abandoned Obama, not by a long shot. His approval ratings with young people are still consistently higher than any other age group, and a recent poll found them supporting the president over Mitt Romney by 26 points. But the enthusiasm of 2008 has been muted, and disappointment with Obama’s presidency is the primary cause.
When asked which president in their lifetime had “done the best job,” voters under 30 choose Democrats over Republicans by a 62-19 margin. But Bill Clinton is the choice of nearly half, with Obama getting the nod from just 14%. In fact, a higher percentage of young people now rank Bill Clinton as the greatest president of their lifetime than voted for him in 1992.
Obama has disappointed young voters again and again. Where the percentage of Americans who say they care strongly who is elected president next year has remained essentially stable since the last cycle, among young voters it’s dropped from 81% to 69%. And though, as noted above, Obama still retains relatively high approval ratings among young voters, his “very strongly approve” numbers among youth now match national averages exactly.
In the electorate as a whole, the percentage of voters saying they’re angry with Obama has risen by 21 points since the election. Among young voters, it’s risen by just 10 points. But where more than 80% of youth said Obama feel hopeful and proud in 2008, today fewer than half do, a far steeper decline than among other voters.
President Obama is going to sweep the youth vote in 2012, and that strength is going to be essential to his re-election victory if he wins. The values of the Republican establishment are simply alien to most young people, and that divergence is a serious and growing problem for the GOP.
But while young voters are still looking for dramatic change in how the country operates, their belief that an Obama presidency could be the vehicle for such change has evaporated. They’ll vote for him again, but they’re looking elsewhere for solutions.
A British court has ruled against Julian Assange in his bid to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual molestation charges against two women.
The two judges ruled on a variety of technical and jurisdictional issues, but the meat of their ruling addressed two questions: whether the complaints against Assange accurately described the behaviors alleged, and whether such acts, if proven, constituted criminal offenses in the jurisdiction in which they occurred.
Rejecting the Assange legal team’s attempt to portray his alleged actions as “disrespectful” or “disturbing” but not criminal, the judges declared (PDF) that the behavior described in each of the charges was criminal under the laws of England and Wales:
The first complaint described a situation in which Assange held down the arms of the woman known as AA, preventing her from reaching a condom as he attempted to pry her legs open with his own legs in order to penetrate her vaginally. AA’s subsequent consent to intercourse after he had agreed to put on a condom, they found, did not render Assange’s alleged initial use of force against her lawful.
With regard to the second complaint, Assange’s lawyers contended that it is not illegal under English law to penetrate a partner without a condom in circumstances in which she has only consented to sex if a condom is used. The court ruled that such deception would be a criminal act in England, given that AA’s complaint alleged that Assange intentionally sabotaged the condom he was using while they were having intercourse.
In the third complaint, AA alleged that Assange rubbed his erect naked penis against her body while they were sharing a bed under non-sexual circumstances. The judges ruled that AA’s consent to sleep in the same bed as Assange “was not a consent to him removing his clothes from the lower part of his body and deliberately pressing that part and his erect penis against her.”
Finally, in the case of the fourth complaint, the judges rejected the Assange lawyers’ contention that the behavior described would not constitute rape under English law. Under that law, they found, the behavior alleged constituted rape in two separate ways: First, that Assange is said to have penetrated SW without a condom when she had only consented to intercourse if a condom was present, and second that he penetrated her while she slept. “It is difficult to see,” they said, “how a person could reasonably have believed in consent if the complainant alleges a state of sleep or half sleep,” and “there is nothing in the statement from which it could be inferred that he reasonably expected that she would have consented to sex without a condom.”
One important note as to that last charge. Assange’s attorneys contended that SW’s consent to the continuation of unprotected intercourse after she awoke to find Assange penetrating her rendered the entire encounter consensual. The judges rejected that argument, declaring that “the fact that she allowed it to continue once she was aware of what was happening cannot go to his state of mind or its reasonableness when he initially penetrated her.” It was his alleged initial penetration, they ruled, that constituted rape, and consent to non-consensual intercourse cannot be obtained retroactively.
Today’s ruling is not Assange’s final appeal, and it is not a finding of fact by the court. But it is a wholesale rejection of the Assange legal team’s contention that the behavior alleged, even if proven, would not be unlawful in England. As such, it stands as a powerful endorsement of a robust and common-sensical approach to the question of consent in the law of rape and sexual assault.
In an op-ed in today’s Guardian, a British advocate for young criminal offenders reports that after August’s UK riots protocols for youth justice were tossed out the window:
“About a quarter of participants in London were under the age of 17, yet all protocol regarding youth justice was ignored. Youth services have worked hard over recent years to establish a rulebook for young offenders, designed to keep them away from the dangerous chasm of the adult justice system. Youth courts, specially trained magistrates, targeted assistance by youth offending teams, triage and assessment, social worker involvement – all have been slanted towards rehabilitation and welfare. This good work was overturned when young people were “herded” – another brave word from Greany – from police cells into the adult courts. Long sentences were imposed. Young people who might have been helped to live differently are now in jails, dispersed all over the country to rub shoulders with career criminals and murderers.”
Last Wedenesday students from dozens of campuses across the country participated in walkouts in support of Occupy Wall Street. After a hurried set of discussions over the weekend, organizers of those events called a second day of action for today.
Some 144 colleges in thirty states have announced plans for actions on the Occupy Colleges website, with more than fifty of them providing links to their protests’ Facebook pages. This may not be, as one widely-circulated prediction called it, “biggest student protest on US soil since 1970,” but it’s looking pretty big.
The official call to action slated 4:30 ET as the kickoff for today’s events, but a number of campuses are planning to start earlier. Check back here for updates as the day rolls on.
I’m mulling a (nother) longer post on the question of demands and clarity of mission as it applies to activist movements, but in the meantime, check this out:
“We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our belief, and the manner of our action.
“Nonviolence, as it grows from the Judeo-Christian tradition, seeks a social order of justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor represents the crucial first step towards such a society.
“Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear. Love transcends hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair. Faith reconciles doubt. Peace dominates war. Mutual regards cancel enmity. Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive community supersedes immoral social systems.
“By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities.
“Although each local group in this movement must diligently work out the clear meaning of this statement of purpose, each act or phase of our corporate effort must reflect a genuine spirit of love and good-will.”
Weak, no?
Other than a commitment to “nonviolence,” which is itself more than a little fuzzy as a strategy, it’s completely vacuous. “A social order of justice permeated by love.” What the hell does that mean? That “the redemptive community supersedes immoral social systems.” Well, okay, but how? “By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence.” Seriously?
And then, of course, the last paragraph is a total punt. “Each local group in this movement must diligently work out the clear meaning of this purpose.” Come on.
Movements need demands. Movements need clear and specific goals. Otherwise they’ll never amount to anything.
studentactivism.net 
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