The Obama Generation, Revisited: The Nation

Quoted via The Nation:

Not everyone at President Obama's healthcare rally at the University of Maryland on September 17 was as "fired up and ready to go" as he was. There were frat boys clowning around, students excited to see a president--any president--young men in matching T-shirts who were there solely because of their sheet metal workers union and one antiabortion activist with remarkable lungs. But it's safe to say that on that drizzly day, the Comcast Center was packed with 12,000 mostly young people who supported the president and his healthcare plan. As the marching band played "Copacabana" not once, not twice, but three times, student volunteers made sure the spectators--some of whom had lined up at 5:30 am--stayed within the cordoned areas. Young women in Healthcare '09 T-shirts craned to catch a glimpse of Obama, and after he finally emerged there was a cacophony of "I love you, Barack!"

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won 66 percent of voters under 30, increasing the Democratic share of the youth vote by 12 percent over 2004. Young people were among Obama's earliest and most important supporters; people under 30, for example, represented Obama's margin of victory in Iowa, the crucial first caucus. Rallies like this one, with thousands of young people putting their hands in the air for healthcare reform, are the most obvious indication of continuing youth enthusiasm for the president. Plenty in the crowd had volunteered for his campaign, including Eric Stehmer, 28, a University of Maryland graduate who has been unemployed for a year and has only catastrophic health coverage; Mouhamad Diabate, 21, a U of M student who canvassed for Obama and has several thousand dollars in medical bills that he's trying to ignore; and Chrisi West, 30, an enthusiastic Virginia "supervolunteer" whose parents lost their home when she was a child after her father got sick, and who seemed to know all the student volunteers from their work together on the campaign. more