YOUNG VOTERS AND NON-VOTERS – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time fretting over the deep political opinions of the young.   It turns out that the young don't vote all that much and have a generally low opinion of the political climate.  When they protest, they seem most animated against commencement speakers they don't like.  From The Politico: 

Students across the country are protesting commencement speakers of all political varieties. Rutgers students balked at Condoleezza Rice and her ties to the Iraq War. Smith College kids and professors threatened to jeer IMF director Christine Lagarde’s monetary policies. And Robert Birgeneau faced protests at Haverford College over an incident involving campus police and batons. All the high-profile speakers are taking a pass.

The dispassionate protest represents a certain irony: The under-30 set is deeply dissatisfied with politics and institutions of government — an attitude emerging ahead of an election year when Senate Democrats could use some first-term Barack Obama-style enthusiasm from the young.

But a recent national poll of 18- to 29-year-olds conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that few intend to vote in the midterms. Less than one in four said they “definitely” planned to vote in November. Young Republicans showed more enthusiasm than young Democrats for participating in the midterms.

Another Harvard poll showed that post-election partisanship on a number of issues is deepening. Young adults are losing their faith in government.

COMMENT:  Why shouldn't they lose that faith?  They're also losing faith in their own future, which was supposed to be safeguarded by Obama, come to save us.  Notice how effectively the demigod has been in the five years of his presidency. 

Winston Churchill once said that if you're not a liberal at 18 you have no heart, but if you're not a conservative by 30 you have no head.  It's an exaggeration, of course, but the spirit of youth is often tempered by the reality of experience. 

The jury verdict on every generation is out until that generation is tested.  I fear that the young generation of today will be severely tested by by the legacy handed it by the sixties generation, which has proved as empty and immature as many of us thought when it made its first appearance. 

May 18, 2014