President Barack Obama’s spectacular Presidential victory is certainly one for the textbooks. Not only did Obama run a successful insurgent campaign against entrenched Democratic opposition, he managed to totally remake the American electoral landscape and bring a whole new generation of voters into American politics. Obama’s victory lacks a single cause, but the techniques pioneered by Howard Dean in 2004 and perfected by Obama in 2008 surely played a significant part in both his come-from-behind primary victory and his decisive win over John McCain. Obama effectively utilized the internet to raise an absurd amount of money, and reached out to young voters, creating an enthusiastic voting base that counterbalanced, and eventually eclipsed, the McCain voters. Of course, Obama was helped by several key factors, most notably the implosion of the US economy and George W. Bush’s almost-comical unpopularity. Obama did, however, powerfully demonstrate the internet’s power and fundamentally changed the political possibilities in American elections.

Obama’s campaign success, and the success of his new tactics, speak for themselves. During the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary, Obama defeated Hillary Clinton despite Clinton’s initially considerable cash-on-hand advantage and her near-universal name recognition. Clinton led every pre-primary poll until January 31^st, but received a rather rude-awakening during the January 3^rd Iowa Caucus. Not only did Obama defeat Clinton in the Iowa Caucus, Clinton came in a distant third and lost every major demographic. Clinton won the subsequent New Hampshire primary, but was unable to definitively crush Obama in any of the subsequent campaigns. Obama used a brilliant strategy targeting young voters and boosting the African-American turnout in normally “red states” like Alabama and North Carolina. After Super Tuesday, Obama trailed Clinton by a mere 100 delegates. Obama finally pulled off a campaign coup by winning twelve straight primaries, beating Clinton by 15% in North Carolina, and holding Clinton to less than a percent in Indiana. Utilizing the momentum from his new found delegate lead, Obama finally clinched the nomination on June 3^rd. After launching into the general election, Obama and McCain traded national poll leads until Lehman Brothers meltdown on September 15^th. Lehman’s failure, and the subsequent financial meltdown, dealt the McCain campaign a death blow from which it would not recover, and Obama led every nationwide opinion poll from September 15^th to the November 4^nd election. On November 4^th, Obama’s efforts to energize young voters paid off when he defeated John McCain 365-173 in the Electoral college and 53%-46% in the overall popular vote. Moreover, Obama managed to win election by winning Virginia and Indiana, each voting Democratic for the first time since LBJ’s 1964 landslide victory, and North Carolina, which voted Democratic for the first time since 1976. Obama also managed to improve on the 2004 election in almost all states; only Arkansas and Louisiana became more Republican in 2008.

Barack Obama’s victory proved not only that the internet was a viable fundraising tool, but that it completely remade the Democrat’s electoral map. Previously, both Democrats and Republicans pursued a 50%+1 strategy, dumping huge amounts of cash on a few swing states, such as Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. Solidly Republican states like Indiana received almost no attention from either side, while heavily Democratic states like Illinois were also ignored. Obama put hugely Republican states on the map and spent heavily in Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, and Indiana. By spending in normally Republican states, and locking down somewhat swingy Democratic states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Obama campaign forced the Republicans to spend their already stretched budgets defending usually safe states. Moreover, Obama completely abandoned the old Clinton-Era coalitions and made no attempts to woo any old-school southern Democrats. In fact, Obama was the first Democratic president to win the presidency without Arkansas’ electoral votes in American history. Instead, Obama dumped most of his money on so-called “Wired Workers” at the expense of the rural voters who supported the Clintons. By focusing his messages at urban and suburban voters, particularly white-collar/usually Republican voters, Obama swung places like Northern Virginia, North Carolina’s Research Triangle, and Indianapolis strongly in his favor and effectively drowned out the existing Republican coalition. His victories in Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina were only possible because he targeted a whole new demographic, specifically by targeting young, white-collar urban voters and making the campaign specifically dedicated to their hopes and aspirations.

Blue, the color of youth.

Historians will almost certainly view the 2008 election as a watershed moment on par with FDR’s election in 1932, LBJ’s election in 1964, and Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Each of these elections saw emerging new technology radically remake American politics and forever change how the American people view politics and their elected officials. Furthermore, each of these elections saw American voters set themselves in voting patterns that they would repeat for quite some time; people aged 18-25 during the 1980 election still tend to vote Republican. Considering that the 18-25 broke for Barack Obama and the Democrats nearly 2:1, young voters will be a major factor in nearly all future elections. Our current president built his political ambitions upon the hopes and desires of young people. If Obama sought to ignore youth voters, would have have made his anti-Iraq War stances the central focus of his campaign? Probably not. Would Obama have made college affordability an important plank of his post-primary campaign? Certainly not. Would he have put $55 billion into America’s education system and a further $15 billion into college loan relief if he didn’t care about youth voters? Definitely not. All of these provisions, promises, and declarations were made for a specific reason; Obama, like almost all politicians today, realized that the youth vote cannot be ignored. We are, in the Shakespearean words of our former president, The Deciders, and we make the decisions. We have nearly all the tools we need at our fingertips, and we need merely to muster the will to make our voices heard and to make our concerns felt.

The time to act is now. We, as the future voters and taxpayers of America, need to overcome our collective apathy, take charge of our own destinies, and make the decisions that will affect us and our fellow countrymen for the rest of our lives. I have no illusions that we will always make the right decisions, but choosing for ourselves is certainly a hell of a lot better than having someone choose for us.