Election 2009: Where have all the young voters gone?

The tale of the tape is in the turnout.

In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie pulled out a surprisingly comfortable victory over a better-financed incumbent. In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell won an impressive victory touting what he could do to create more jobs. 

In both cases, the key to victory was in who showed up. Put another way, the young people who fueled Barack Obama's historic presidential victory last year stayed home.

In New Jersey in 2008, the under-30 vote made up 22% of the electorate. One year later, the tally dropped to 8%.

And in Virginia, the under-30s made up 10% of this year's election, down from 21% when Obama was at the top of the ticket.

All of which may be another way of saying that Obama had enough charisma to overcome the historic apathy of the youth vote.

The issue for Democrats this morning: how to get the vote folks back before the 2010 elections.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo:  Bob McDonnell  greets supporters during a campaign rally on Monday in Alexandria, Va. Credit: Getty Images

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Laura Bush, Newt Gingrich endorse Obama's school talk to kids. Gee, indoctrination must be working.

President Obama's back-to-school speech -- derided by conservative critics as an attempt to impart socialism to the nation's impressionable youngsters -- is (finally) winning some high-profile endorsements from the right.

Former First Lady Laura Bush told CNN, "There's a place for the president of the United States to talk to schoolchildren and encourage schoolchildren" to stay in school.

Embedded video from CNN Video

In an interview with CNN from Paris, where she is part of a U.N. mission on global literacy, Bush praised Obama for doing a good job but faulted the Education Department for issuing lesson plans suggesting that kids write letters on how they could help Obama, guidance since rescinded.

The former schoolteacher and librarian also said she hopes parents will echo the president and "encourage their own children to stay in school and to study hard and to try to achieve the dream that they have."

Even more telling, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- a conservative running for president who initially called Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor a racist -- has come round on this one.

In interviews on Fox News and on the "Today" show, Gingrich called the White House "smart" for releasing the transcript Monday (see earlier Ticket post) and called on students everywhere to listen up.

Obama, for his part, may welcome the dust-up. After all, it may be easier to deflect conspiratorialists who see socialism in stay-in-school messages than those who see death panels in healthcare reform.

As he tells the kids today, "Being successful is hard. Don't let failures define you."

-- Johanna Neuman

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Does Twitter favor conservatives?

The White House announced with some fanfare over the weekend that its Twitter account had passed the 1 million mark.

“A million followers – nice,” the White House @whitehouse wrote in a tweet sent out Sunday afternoon. “What would you like to see more of from this feed? Photos? Quotes? Cowbell? Tell us @whitehouse.”

Big deal. 

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 election, passed the 1 million mark six weeks ago. He declared that tweeting, which for him was novel, was "a phenomenal way of communicating."

Like most things that come out of Silicon Valley, Twitter was assumed to be in a purview of the left, another tool for tech-savvy liberal netroots to use as they besieged the political system in the name of progressive change, in 140-character bites.

But the left has usually used Twitter to promote ideas, according to Alan Rosenblatt, of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "We have a lot of amazing progressives on Twitter," he told Maine's online news source, the Exception.  But, he added, there had been "nothing that brings everyone together."

By contrast, he said, the right has been using Twitter to create new pressure points in politics. Conservatives have a website, Top Conservatives on Twitter, that ranks various right-wing tweeters (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich currently rides on top), and offers pointers on how to organize.

Liberals are fighting back -- Rosenblatt has created a rival website, TopProg.org -- but it's in its infancy.

Meanwhile conservatives seem to be having more fun with Twitter.

When Republicans staged a protest last summer and refused to leave for summer recess, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi simply adjourned the session and turned out the lights, effectively turning off the C-SPAN cameras. So several GOP stalwarts started tweeting an account of what was going on from the House floor. They developed a following and prompted conservative commentator Michelle Malkin to call Twitter "the new gathering place for conservative activism.”

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: California Democratic State Senate candidate Edward Paul Reyes works with a colleague on his Twitter page recently at a Los Angeles Starbucks. Credit: Associated Press

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Sixty-four years after Hiroshima, opinion of the bombings is mixed

Around the world today, people are commemorating the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan.

The legacy of that act, which is credited with bringing about a swift end to World War II, is still unsettled: The nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and, three days later, in Nagasaki left a many as 220,000 Japanese dead, but by ending the war (Japan surrendered soon after), they may have spared more casualties.

Quinnipiac University recently asked more than 2,400 registered voters, "Do you think the United States did the right thing or the wrong thing by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"

Sixty-one percent of those polled said they believed the bomb was the right thing. Twenty-two percent called it wrong. Sixteen percent were undecided.

But here's where it gets interesting.

The poll's findings suggest that Americans' opinion of the bombing depends on their age, gender, ethnicity and political groundings.

Seventy-three percent of voters older than 55 approved of the decision, and only 50% of voters ages 18 to 34 approved. Seventy-four percent of Republicans said the bombings were a good idea, and 49% of Democrats said so. Seventy-two percent of men approved and 51% of women agreed.

The poll found that only 34% of black voters and 44% of Latino voters supported the bombs, although pollsters cautioned that those numbers may not be representative because the polling sample was smaller for those groups.

What do you think?

We've put together our own (decidedly less scientific) survey. Vote in the box below and let us know.

-- Kate Linthicum

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Photo: With the gutted Atomic Bomb Dome as a backdrop, doves fly over the cenotaph of the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan. Hiroshima marks the 64th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack that devastated the city at the closing days of World War II. Credit: Shizuo Kambayashi / Associated Press

Swine flu hits Senate pages on Capitol Hill -- maybe

Senate pages -- those high school juniors who come to Washington every year to get a first-hand introduction to politics by serving as interns in the Senate while going to school -- are in the news again.

This time, it's not a scandal, like the one that drove Florida Republican Mark Foley from office after it was revealed that he had been sending sexual messages to male pages. Amid the ensuing controversy, which helped propel Democrats back into power in the House in 2006, Foley resigned from Congress and the page board -- which is supposed to monitor the kids' dorm living conditions, schooling and work hours -- was reorganized.

The problem now? Swine flu. At least they think it's a possibility.

Senate Sgt. at Arms Terry Gainer said today that six Senate pages are sick with flu symptoms that could be H1N1. The dreaded swine flu killed more than 150 people in Mexico during an epidemic in the spring. But in this case, two of the pages are already back at work.

Doctors are "not overly concerned" about an outbreak of the virus on Capitol Hill, Gainer told CNN, adding that all 53 students in the Senate page program were told "not to panic," to "wash their hands" and to stay home from work if they don't feel well. That's the official line from health officials as they brace for a possible onslaught of swine flu cases in the fall.

In the meantime, Gainer's assessment: "The sky is not falling."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Senate pages carry ballot boxes through Statuary Hall toward the House Chamber so electoral votes can be counted during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 8, 2009, to officially designate Barack Obama as president-elect. Credit: Getty Images

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Lady Gaga inspires new Republican Party attack on deficit spending

Lady Gaga (real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) is a singer, a former stripper who sometimes wears lingerie on stage and has admitted to being bisexual. Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but hardly fodder for the traditional-values-loving Republican Party.

So it came as something of a surprise Tuesday when Republican Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington state played a video for his colleagues at their weekly conference -- a parody of the pop performer's song "Just Dance."

Called "Just Tax," the video was the brainchild of Peter Cowman, a 23-year-old who just graduated from the University of Washington. In a song that rails against the debt foisted on his generation by President Obama and Congress (and includes a striking impression of Uncle Sam's voice, or what Uncle Sam's voice would sound like if we'd heard it back in the day), the chorus intones, "The government's broke, but they're spending our money."

Noting that his district is home to a lot of tech companies, Reichert told colleagues that the Republican Party needs to encourage young people like Cowman who can use new media to sway other young people to the cause.

Asked by CNN about the video, House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence laughed and admitted that very few Republicans in Congress are familiar with the original Lady Gaga song.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Lady Gaga performing in June at the MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto. Credit: Mark Blinch / Reuters

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Gates and Mullen talk Twittering, texting, the modern military and Iran

Here's a very good video that goes beyond the cliched old-guys-don't-know-anything-about-new-communication-technology-and-social-networking guff that we usually hear so much about.

The Ticket reported here on the Twitter and Iran phenomenon on Thursday.

But also Thursday, a reporter at a Pentagon news briefing asked both Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the effect of new personal communication technology and social networking, specifically concerning Iran.

Gates recalled the role that the Internet played in penetrating the old Iron Curtain, helping the Soviet Union to crumble and liberating Eastern Europe from Communist domination. And Gates noted, with apparent pleasure, that some unnamed countries around the world (can you say Iran and China?) can try to block these evolving communications but can no longer shut them all down.

But the questioning and conversation itself evolved into how the modern military, run by older personnel but manned and womanned by young people (average age 21) must use these new methods to both get its operational messages and philosophies out but also to get valuable feedback back.

Gates admitted he hasn't "a clue." Mullen says he's on Facebook and Twitter to be connected to the younger volunteer armed forces.

Well worth watching. And, as we so often say on The Ticket, thanks to C-SPAN.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Can Al Gore rescue two U.S. journalists sentenced to hard labor in North Korea?

For two families campaigning for the release of U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, today's news that they were found guilty of unspecified "hostilities against the Korean nation" and sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean labor camp was a blow, to say the least.

Now, U.S. efforts to win their release are escalating, both inside the Obama administration and outside the Beltway.

The two women were arrested in March while working on a story about the trafficking of women along the North Korean border with China for Current TV, the cable television network launched by former Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. The station features three- to seven-minute "pods," or short programs, some created by viewers, in an interactive format targeted to 18- to 34-year-olds.

So the White House is considering sending Al Gore to Pyongyang as a personal envoy to intercede on the journalists' behalf. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly did not rule out the possibility. "This is such a sensitive issue," he said, "I'm just not going to go into those kinds of discussions that we may or may not have had."

Another possibility is sending New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who has had success in the past in freeing Americans held by North Korea. In 1996, a 26-year-old American whose mother was Korean, Evan C. Hunziker, was accused of spying after he swam across the Yalu River from the Chinese border. Richardson, then a congressman, negotiated his release. (Hunziker later committed suicide.)

But would Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appoint Richardson as a special envoy after the political tussles of the 2008 presidential campaign? After dropping out of the race, Richardson stunned....

White House translates Obama's speech into 13 languages (full text, complete video here, in English)

In a speech that took almost an hour and gracefully highlighted the major tensions between Muslim countries and the West, President Obama reached out for what he called "a new beginning" with Islamic countries.

And the White House made sure that the speech was widely disseminated -- sent out via text message in four languages, translated into 13 languages, and broadcast on social media sites from Google's Orkut to Facebook, which has 20 million users in Muslim countries. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called it a "far broader" than any past effort by a White House much touted for its tech savvy, including live streaming at www.whitehouse.gov.

One fascinating aspect of the speech was the president's outreach to young Muslims, urging them to shed the old prejudices of their cultures. "There's so much fear, so much mistrust that has built up over the years," he said. "But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward.  And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country -- you, more than anyone, have the ability to reimagine the world, to remake this world." 

Take a look and listen here, in English.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

-- Johanna Neuman

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Actor Kal Penn credits Gandhi as he leaves Hollywood for Obama's Washington

President Obama, for all his charms, could not persuade CNN's medical wonder Sanjay Gupta to give up his network salary and private-sector lifestyle and seek to become the new U.S. surgeon general.

But this week Team Obama did manage to pull off a major medical coup in that nexus between television and politics that might be called Hollywood on the Potomac.

As the Ticket reported earlier, actor Kal Penn, who gained fame as the costar of the raucous and profane cult favorite "Harold and Kumar" stoner comedies, and is seen above playing a doctor on Fox TV's popular "House" with actor Hugh Laurie, is heading to Washington to work from what he calls "the front door" of Obama's White House.

To pave the way for Penn's departure from the cast of "House," a medical wonder of its own, producers decided to have his character commit suicide on Monday night's show. The buzz helped lift the show's ratings past ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."

Penn, 31, campaigned for Barack Obama last year. Word is the Indian American actor was a big hit on college campuses. Now Penn will become associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison, an envoy to the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, to Hollywood and to young people.

Unlike Gupta, who turned down the Obama job citing family considerations, Penn had the decency to acknowledge to Entertainment Weekly that leaving Hollywood for Washington does entail a pay cut. In fact, no manse for Penn -- he said he's shopping for an apartment.

"There's not a lot of financial reward in these jobs," he said. "But, obviously, the opportunity to serve in a capacity like this is an incredible honor."

Penn said he loves the "House" crew of actors, and hesitated before leaving the hit show. But he said he was drawn to Washington by his grandparents' history -- and values -- in marching with Mahatma Gandhi.

I love what I do as an actor. I couldn't love it more. But probably from the time I was a kid, I really enjoyed that balance between the arts and public service. I went to a performing arts high school, but I still took a bunch of those dorky political science classes. It's probably because of the value system my grandparents instilled in me. They marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement, and that was always in the back of my head. So the past couple of years I thought about it a little more. And in '06 I started this international studies program at Stanford, where they actually let you do most of the course work online. So it was something I could do while I was acting. And I thought this might be the right time to go off and do something else. The ultimate irony, of course, is that I love being on "House." There's not a smarter group of people that I've been surrounded by in television. So I thought about it for a very long time.

The New Jersey-born actor has had some experience working with Washington types. In "Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay," he smoked pot with a fictional George W. Bush.

-- Johanna Neuman

[For the record: An earlier version of this post misspelled the name Gandhi as Ghandi.]

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Photo credit: Adam Taylor/Fox TV