SAGE ADVICE

By MARK SAGE/Columnist

After Iowa everyone was going on about the youth vote. The youth were for Barack Obama, said all the people who are paid to say such things, and Obama and his hordes of young voters could not be stopped. Even folks who weren’t paid to say such things were saying that Clinton, the Hillary-flavored one, couldn’t possibly mount a comeback in the face of such a menacing group of young voters.
Now, with New Hampshire behind us, the people who are paid to say things like New Hampshire was late in officially proclaiming a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and therefore must be inherently racist and thus would naturally hand Obama a defeat despite their “correct” predictions to the contrary are saying maybe, just maybe, it’s not the youth vote. It’s the women. Those hordes of women voters cannot be stopped. When the Hillary variety of Clinton cried, they said, women got downright angry, wondering at the injustice of it all and getting miffed at the hard-heartedness of those young people, those sons and daughters of theirs, who would make a lady cry. But instead of grounding their sons and daughters, these women went to the ballot box and voted for Bill’s wife.
The problem with this analysis, aside from the fact that it comes from the keyboards of people paid to say such things, is that it takes for granted that no voter knows, much less cares, anything about any issues. Women, the logic goes, will vote for a woman just because she’s a woman. Young people will vote for a young, energetic and charismatic candidate prone to describing himself as “fired up” just because he is a young, energetic and charismatic candidate prone to describing himself as “fired up,” even if he was born in Honolulu, which, as any young potential voter will tell you, is nowhere near the United States.
The only candidate who could possibly be pleased by such rigid battle lines being drawn so early is John Edwards. The third-place candidate is making his appeal to the voters who aren’t women, young or rich. He may, if those people paid to say such things are correct, squeak out a plurality, even if those people didn’t say so.
The real problem for Obama isn’t the women, though. It’s the writers. Young would-be voters often, way too often, get most if not all of their current event news from Comedy Central. And since Jon Stewart’s satire depends so heavily on the words of people paid to write the things he says, Obama is faced with an ill-informed constituency. If Stewart isn’t able to make light of Clinton’s crying jag, Mike Huckabee’s political evolution or the fact that Mitt Romney would be an excellent name for a first basemen for the Michigan Mormons, Obama’s constituents tune out. They’re forced to get their news the old fashioned way, from listening to one of the big three network anchors. Once tuned in there they find that the information is far less entertaining, much less funny and slightly, if this is possible, less illuminating. So they do what any good would-be voter would do regardless of age. They don’t.
Note that I am not paid to say these sorts of things and, in fact, the people who love and care about me the most often ask me not to, so it stands to reason that I must be right. Right?
Contact Mark Sage at 228-6611 or .