Obama to try again to energize young voters in Midwest

Washington Post:

President Obama will swoop into the heartland this week in a high-stakes bid to boost enthusiasm for Democrats by reigniting the coalition of young and minority voters who were critical to his success two years ago.

With polls showing independent voters swinging toward Republicans in Wisconsin and the nation's other battlegrounds, Democrats are turning elsewhere to make up ground. So on Tuesday in Madison, Obama will stage the first in a series of rallies on college campuses designed to convince his so-called surge voters - the roughly 15 million Americans who voted for the first time in 2008 - to return to the polls this fall.

But without Obama on the ballot this year, his grass-roots network is a shadow of its former self. And with just five weeks before the midterm elections, Obama's political advisers acknowledge that transferring the goodwill he cultivated over a historic presidential bid to an array of other Democrats has proved difficult.

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I don't think it would make much difference if Obama was on the ballot this year. He has alienated so many voters that his approval rating is hovering in the low 40s. His big problem is that liberalism is not working and neither are many of the young people he is trying to rally because they can't find jobs. If they are in college they are worried about finding one when they get out.