Remember when the name Barack Obama made the youth of America think, Ha, yeah right. Sounds great and all, but not if I know my country. And then remember slightly after that when the kids were all, Wait a second, we could really do this thing? Hope! Change! Skinny jeans! Silk-screened Shep Fairey T-shirts! Streaming viral videos! Well, someone does. At a fund-raising concert last night sponsored by the DNC’s youth-outreach arm, Gen44 — held at the underground hipster enclave DAR Constitution Hall — Obama told the sold-out crowd of 3,000, “I’m back here today just in case you’ve forgotten what it feels like to change the country.” Come to think of it, that feeling was starting to fade. Political engagement — that’s like hitting the “Like” button on Facebook, right? “It was always going to be hard,” Obama added. Yeah, that part sounds less familiar.
“I need you to be fired up, I need you to stay fired up, all the way to Nov. 2. … Because Nov. 2 is going to say a lot about your future.” Listen, we gave you November 4, 2008. This is going to be the last first Tuesday in November we hand over unless you guys can figure out what to do with it. We clear? “People are frustrated, they’re anxious, they’re scared about the future.” Go on. “And they have a right to be impatient about the pace of change. I’m impatient.” It is getting kind of late. “It took time to free the slaves.” Wait, what? Please tell us the slaves in that analogy aren’t the TARP recipients.
The young’uns seemed to eat it up. “When he spoke of the ‘pundits’ who were decreeing an ‘enthusiasm gap,’” reports the AP, “The crowd yelled uproariously, apparently wanting to prove there wasn’t one.”
The evening’s concert was a performance by rapper B.o.B. In case anyone forgot the words to his song “I’m Dat Nigga,” the Drudge Report was thoughtful enough to place a link to the breaking-news site eLyricsWorld.com on the top of its homepage.
Obama charges up young voters at concert/rally [Yahoo]
Obama: I’m “Impatient About The Pace Of Change” [RealClearPolitics]
