Obama's Victory in Iowa

By now, it's common knowledge that Barrack Obama was the big winner in Iowa. What I find interesting is that the criticism AGAINST him is his so-called lack of experience. Yet as a Gen Xer who is very skeptical of the political system, I find the fact that he hasn't spent the last 20 years kissing Democratic booty kind of refreshing. If we keep electing the same kind of politicos over and over, how would we ever see change in America?

At the same time, as someone who lived in Iowa for two years (two years of my life I'll never get back), I'm not sure that the vote there is indicative of what the entire country wants. I covered the 1996 caucuses as a journalist. What happens at them is that whoever wants to show up to the caucus in their district does, they have a meeting, and then they take an ad-hoc vote on what recommendations they will send to Des Moines. People who vote don't necessary want to sit around and talk issues with their neighbors, though. Gen Xers, in particular, often don't feel they can change someone else's opinion, while Boomers often feel that a well-crafted argument can persuade anyone. Therefore, the attendance at the caucuses, from a generational perspective, is probably not representative of the actual voting population.

Politics and Generation X

I read the most fascinating article in The Atlantic recently about Barack Obama and how he's the man who can pull the American political system out of the grips of the Babyboomers. I posted it to this site, because this article was the first that I have ever read that actually changed my mind about a presidential race.

While Obama is a Boomer, he's actually a trailing-edge Boomer (born 1958-1964), which really makes him more of an Xer. 1958 was the first year of declining birth rates in the U.S. and those born in the last years of the boom had a very similar formative cohort experience to Generation X ) - they don't really remember that pre-Kennedy assassination era when "girls were girls and men were men."