He’s One of Us Now

But while the figures make for catchy headlines, they don't tell the whole story. What's clear to me after three months of chasing the candidates from coast to coast for my Newsweek.com blog, Stumper, is that it's not so much the strength of Obama's youth support that's significant—it's how fully and seamlessly he embodies the attitudes, aspirations and shortcomings of the generation that's rallied around him. After all, not every Obamaniac is under 30 (sources say that some are even—gasp!—middle-aged). And Clinton tends to best her hipper rival among young voters in states like California and Massachusetts whose populations are too large and diverse for Obama to overwhelm with ground troops and captivating speeches (the Hispanic vote, which favors Clinton, may also contribute). In truth, to call the Democratic primary contest a battle between young and old would be reductive. Instead, Democrats are struggling to choose between different generational views of governance. On one side is Clinton, the consummate baby boomer. On the other is Obama—not a late boomer, as his birth date would suggest, but the first millennial to run for president. For better and for worse.

Summing up an entire generation with a few broad brush strokes is always hazardous, especially in politics. But as a millennial, some of the stereotypes ring true. According to Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, authors of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics," millennials "aren't confrontational or combative, the way Boomers (whose generational mantra was 'Don't trust anyone over 30') have been." Instead, millennials belong to what social scientist William Strauss calls a "civic generation," drawn to issues of "community, politics and deeds, whereas the boomers focused on issues of self, culture and morals." Reacting against the excesses of our parents—especially their efforts to advance moral causes through partisan politics—we prefer to address problems by reforming institutions from within. We're team players, say Winograd and Hais, conditioned through constant social interaction (often online) to "find consensus, 'win-win' solutions to any problem." We distrust traditional channels of information and prefer to learn from peers (again, often online). We are diverse. After George W. Bush, we believe, as Obama youth-vote director Hans Riemer puts it, "that it matters who's running the government—and that government is a powerful way to make this country a better place." And we're more optimistic than boomers about the possibility of change. According to a January survey by Frank N. Magid Associates, a plurality of boomers (43 percent) believe that the 2008 election will leave the United States unchanged or worse for wear. Only 32 percent of millennials agree—and a full 40 percent say that it will make America stronger.

Obama's message first struck me as essentially millennial three days after the Iowa victory party, on an unseasonably balmy Sunday in Manchester, N.H. When I arrived at 9 a.m. for a rally at the historic Palace Theatre, I found a line of anxious supporters stretching around the block. Hundreds never got seats. At the time, Obama led by at least 10 points in the New Hampshire polls, and when he swept onstage, the combination of rapturous applause and U2's "City of Blinding Lights" made the moment seem cinematically inspiring. It appeared obvious—at least to someone covering his first presidential election—that the Illinois senator was destined to repeat his Iowa rout. First, Obama thanked Kimberley, the young volunteer (and daughter of a Congolese immigrant) who introduced him. "Hope is an idea, it's a feeling, a belief, a revolution, a role, a possibility," she'd said. Then he gave a shout-out to regional field director Jack Shapiro, one of "the young people who are pouring their hearts and souls into this campaign." Finally, Obama gave a speech brimming with pure millennial uplift. "It's time for us to put aside the partisan food-fighting," he said. "If you know what you stand for, if you know what you believe in, if you know who you're fighting for, then you can afford to reach out to those who don't agree with you on everything. We can create the kind of working majority that we haven't seen in this country for a long, long time. If I've got the American people behind me, I fear no man. Nobody can stop us. We can do everything that we want to get done."

It was all there. The optimism. The diversity. The sense of community. The faith in government. The repudiation of partisanship and the call for consensus. Obama had delivered a plea for practicality, not a blazing boomer war cry. But the crowd, now on its feet, was thrilled nonetheless. "I wouldn't vote for Hillary," Charles Silva, 72, told me afterward (Obama's millennialism is not just for millennials). "Correctly or incorrectly, she has a lot of baggage with her. I think she represents looking back. And Obama represents looking forward." Even I was wobbly. "It's going to sound horribly uncynical," I wrote on Stumper a few minutes later, "but there's really no other way to say this: Obama's on fire."

That evening, I drove 45 minutes to the coastal town of Hampton for a Hillary event. The effect was hardly as electric. Ninety minutes after the scheduled start of her speech, Clinton had not yet arrived—and the audience in the Winnacunnet High School cafeteria was getting antsy. The preshow soundtrack had cycled through Sheryl Crow's "A Change Would Do You Good" (hint, hint) at least four times, and the staffer hurling HILLARY T shirts and quiz questions at the increasingly listless blue-collar crowd wasn't exactly connecting. By the time Clinton finally appeared, the cafeteria had partially emptied out. Unfazed, she delivered a punchy, pointed, 15-minute opening statement—"There's a difference between talk and action, rhetoric and reality"—that framed Obama as an ordinary politician with an extraordinary teleprompter. "She's fighting to stay in the game," I scribbled in my notebook. Obama is fond of saying that Clinton embodies the character and conflict of the baby boomers. "The battles between [Newt] Gingrich and [Bill] Clinton were battles that took place in dorm rooms ... 30 years ago," he said in December. "We're re-litigating sex, drugs, rock and roll, Vietnam." The premise of Hillary Clinton's presidency is that the combat will continue, and its promise is that only she knows Washington well enough to win. As adviser Sidney Blumenthal recently told The New Yorker, "it's not a question of transcending partisanship. It's a question of fulfilling it."

As I sat in the Winnacunnet cafeteria, I couldn't help but hear in Clinton's remarks an echo of that combative "us versus them" mind-set—instinctive, almost, after 20 years spent defending her most precious political values from assault by her peers. "You've got to have an understanding of how you bring about change that is rooted in reality," she said, listing the precise numbers of New Hampshire children her work had helped insure and vaccinate. "Wishing doesn't make it so." When Clinton, normally inaccessible, opened the floor for questions—34 in all, or two hours' worth—the reporters in the press pen cracked jokes about her desperation. My Stumper dispatch was no kinder. "If you ignored the Secret Service agents, the hordes of reporters and the fact that the candidate was wearing a dark pantsuit and a bright pink blouse, last night's Democratic campaign stop looked a lot like a Joe Biden event," I wrote. "The crowd was not young. The room was not full. And the guest of honor, Hillary Clinton, spoke for two straight hours." Joe Biden? Ouch.