Obama attempting to ‘get his groove back’ with young voters

posted at 12:46 pm on February 12, 2012 by Howard Portnoy

“The Obama cultural phenomenon four years ago lit up the youth vote like no campaign before,” writes Jennifer Epstein at Politico. ”His team,” she continues, “is looking to revive the cool appeal—and reignite the young voters who’ve strayed.”

The mere need to ask the question of whether the one-time Hope and Change candidate can rekindle the youth vote hints at how far his star has fallen. A Harvard IOP Youth Voter Survey from last December quantifies the damage:

President Obama’s job performance rating among America’s 18-29 year-olds is currently at the lowest point since IOP polling of the Obama administration began in the fall of 2009. Forty-six percent (46%) of Millennials approve of the job Obama is doing as president—a decrease of nine percentage points from Feb. 2011 IOP polling (55%).

Public policy analyst Stewart J. Lawrence adds for bad measure that Obama’s approval rating was at 84% in early 2009.

So what are the president’s supporters doing to reawaken the enthusiasm? Writes Epstein:

Last Tuesday’s pre-Fashion Week fundraiser was an early strike at recapturing the magic. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and actress Scarlett Johansson cohosted the event at Theory, a trendy clothing store in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, hawking pro-Obama T-shirts, scarves and tote bags designed by Marc Jacobs, Tory Burch and Beyoncé Knowles with a runway show for a well-dressed crowd.

But that seems to be the opposite of the direction in which his team should be heading. Selling overpriced T-shirts to a “well-dressed crowd” is not likely to resonate with Millennials, who believe by a margin of more than 4-1 that the country is headed in the wrong direction. The chief concern of the majority of young voters, moreover, is jobs. (A secondary question Obama’s re-election posse should be asking itself is whether Beyoncé is the best liaison with youth voters considering her very uncool decision to lock down an entire floor of a New York hospital following the birth of her daughter in January.)

And then of course there is Obama himself, who has had plenty of uncool moments, such as skipping a hole while golfing to avoid being photographed out on the links one time too many. And who can forget the incredibly dorky moment evidenced here? Or that he throws a baseball like a girl?

But Team Obama has the situation under control. Epstein reports:

The Obama 2008 campaign logo, a trendy graphic design ‘O’ rising over a red-and-white striped field, is back again this year with updates. It’s been modernized with matte colors replacing the glossy and more varied shades of red, white and blue. On BarackObama.com, the 2008 color palette and design has become more sophisticated, with bright blue replaced by navy blue, baby blue and white.

The changes, said Obama 2008 design director of new media Scott Thomas, are meant to allude to the cool while introducing the notion that Obama is now ‘more distinguished and more experienced’ than he was four years ago.

Yep, how can you get any cooler than that?

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