Former president Jimmy Carter listens during the 12th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Chicago, Illinois, April 23, 2012. Carter on Wednesday offered up a notably charitable assessment of President Obama's chief opponent, Mitt Romney. (Jeff Haynes/Reuters)

Jimmy Carter gives Mitt Romney an unexpected boost

By Liz Marlantes, Correspondent / 04.26.12

Former President Jimmy Carter hasn't been involved with electoral politics for some time now, so perhaps he didn't realize the significance of his remarks. 

Then again, maybe he'd finally had enough of Republicans saying over and over that "Obama is the worst president since Jimmy Carter" with Democrats essentially responding, "no, no, he's much better."  

Whatever the reason, Mr. Carter raised some eyebrows Wednesday by offering up a notably charitable assessment of President Obama's chief opponent, Mitt Romney.

Asked for his thoughts on a Romney presidency in an interview Wednesday with MSNBC, Carter said that while "he'd rather have a Democrat," he would be "comfortable" with Mr. Romney as president because, as he put it, "I think Romney has shown in the past – in his previous years as a moderate or progressive – that he was fairly competent as a governor and also running the Olympics." He also complimented Romney as "a good, solid family man."

We're sure (well, we think we're sure) that Carter meant all this as an above-the-partisan-fray commentary, befitting a former president. But it was not, shall we say, exactly on-message.

In fact, from the Obama campaign's perspective, Carter's remarks couldn't have been more poorly timed – since they came at a point when Democrats have been trying to move away from the "Mitt Romney is a flip-flopper" message in favor of a "Mitt Romney is waaaay to the right of most Americans" theme.

The reasons for this pivot are clear: While Romney's past moderate positions during his tenure as Massachusetts governor made for some rough going during the Republican primary battle, they're likely to be an asset in the general election, when candidates need to appeal to centrist swing voters. 

And the "flip-flopper" image – while it hurts Romney's overall likabability – could actually help inoculate him against charges that he's an extreme right-winger. If voters believe Romney's policy positions are formed out of political opportunism, rather than conviction, then it's not hard for them to believe that many of the stands he took during the primary fight weren't reflective of what he really believes.

Carter underscored this point exactly in the interview, saying Romney has "gone to the extreme right-wing positions on some very important issues in order to get the nomination." He then added: "What he'll do in the general election, what he'll do as president, I think, is different."

Ultimately, what made Carter's remarks so potentially damaging is that – like all good gaffes – they conveyed an essential truth. Many Democrats, throughout this campaign, have tended to view Romney as more "acceptable" than most of his GOP opponents. They don't particularly like him, but they don't find him truly scary. In fact, back when Texas Gov. Rick Perry first jumped into the race – and was leading in the polls – some Democrats openly talked about easing up on Romney, who seemed a far less frightening alternative to Mr. Perry, should the GOP eventually win the White House. (Of course, that's also how many Democrats felt about George W. Bush – who ran as a "compassionate conservative" – before he took office. And we all know how that turned out.)

The danger for Obama is that if Democrats aren't scared by Romney – and are feeling less enthused about Obama – they may not be motivated to turn out. 

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President Obama talks with Jimmy Fallon during a commercial break as he participates in a taping of the Jimmy Fallon Show, Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Carolyn Kaster/aP)

Backlash begins after Obama slow jams the news (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.26.12

President Obama got a lot of attention for slow jamming the news on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” Tuesday night. About 2 million people watched the show, during which Mr. Obama talked about the need to keep student-loan rates low over a beat laid down by house band The Roots.

That’s what slow jamming the news is: It’s kind of a combination of a Barry White song and a "PBS NewsHour" report. Mr. Fallon does this from time to time, though he’s never had the chance to do it with Obama, whom he referred to as “the Preezi of the United Steezi,” the Barack Ness Monster,” and “the POTUS with the mostest."

Well, not everyone enjoyed the bit. Two days on, the backlash is in full swing, with many Republicans grousing about the Fallon episode and complaining that Obama is just trying to distract Americans from his policy failures.

Rush Limbaugh, for one, said the whole thing wasn’t humorous.

Slow jamming the news “is supposed to be wildly funny if you have a low threshold for humor," Mr. Limbaugh said Wednesday on his show. "It’s also funny if you smoke certain controlled substances."

Conservative talk-show host Ann Coulter seconded Limbaugh during a Wednesday-night appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, saying Obama’s performance was “pretty pathetic” and an attempt to overshadow news coverage of scandals at the General Services Administration and the Secret Service.

“This whole week has been a government employee failure,” said Ms. Coulter.

Other right-leaning commentators noted that the subtext of Obama's appearance seemed to be an attempt to portray him as cool and hip, as opposed to Mitt Romney’s more stiff personality. The best way for the GOP to counteract this, they said, might be to embrace it and flip it around: Do you want a president who is hip or a president who is effective?

“The coolness issue is a trap for Obama, I’d suggest.... Not even actually cool people want a cool incompetent as president,” wrote conservative Jennifer Rubin on her Right Turn blog in The Washington Post.

The Republican National Committee, for its part, has already produced a two-minute Web ad titled “A Tale of Two Leaders.” It jumps from clips of presumptive nominee Mitt Romney making a speech to clips of Obama slow jamming, in an attempt to portray the former as more serious than the latter.

The ad ends by inviting viewers to tweet anti-Obama thoughts using the hashtag #NotFunny.

While Obama’s political opponents criticized the slow jam, so did one of Fallon’s ratings opponents. Funnyman Jon Stewart noted on "The Daily Show” that Obama at this point does not have to lower himself to connect with voters.

“Mr. President, you’re the president! You don’t have to do this [bleeped expletive] anymore. Although we’d love to have you back on the show,” said Mr. Stewart.

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Sarah Palin, during her term as governor of Alaska, pardons a Thanksgiving turkey at Triple D Farm and Hatchery in Wasilla, Alaska, in this file photo. (Robert DeBerry/The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman/AP/File)

Sarah Palin says Obama wants to ban kids from farm work. Is she right?

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.25.12

Sarah Palin says the Obama administration wants to ban kids from working on family farms. In a Facebook post Wednesday she charges that the Department of Labor is working on regulations that would stop children from doing agricultural chores that teach hard work and help feed America.

“This is more overreach of the federal government with many negative overtones,” the ex-Alaska governor writes.

Is she right? Are before-school milkings, after-school stall mucking, and summertime hay-bale hauling at risk?

Weeellll, it would have been better if Ms. Palin had gone to the source material before putting this up. Maybe.

It is true that the Labor Department is working up new regulations bearing on under-age-16 agricultural work. It has been working on them for some years now, with lots of input from farm groups, which are very much worried about that ending-farm-chores thing. So in that sense Palin is resounding a previously rung alarm.

However, “the proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents”, says the Labor Department press release from last August announcing publication of the proposed law revisions in the Federal Register.

Palin says in her Facebook post that the new regs “would prevent children from working on our own family farms.” This would not appear to be correct, unless there is some definition of "family farm" we nonfarm workers aren't familiar with.

What the regulations would do, according to the Labor Department, is update the list of farm jobs that children under age 16 cannot be hired to do by nonfamily farms.  Among the new tasks on the list: pesticide handling, timber operations, and work around manure pits and storage bins. Farm workers under 16 would no longer be able to cultivate, harvest, or cure tobacco, either.

Agricultural work accounts for 75 percent of the job-related fatalities for workers under 16, notes the Labor Department.

“Children employed in agriculture are some of the most vulnerable workers in America,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis last August.

Many farm-state lawmakers still believe the rules go too far. Sen. Jerry Moran (R) of Kansas earlier this month published an opinion piece on Politico that questioned whether those who drew up the regulations knew much about agriculture, and charged that the Labor Department originally had wanted to narrow the parental farm exemption.

“The future of agriculture, and our individual rights, depends on stopping this vast overreach of executive authority,” wrote Senator Moran.

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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, April 25, 2012, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Secret Service prostitution scandal. (Susan Walsh/AP)

No pattern of partying, skirt-chasing in Secret Service, Napolitano says (+video)

By David Grant, Staff writer / 04.25.12

If there's a culture of hard partying and womanizing in the Secret Service, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano isn't seeing it.

"Every mother of a teenager knows a common defense is 'everybody else was doing it,' " said Ms. Napolitano at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. "Well, not everybody else was doing it."

The Secret Service prostitution scandal that originated in Cartagena, Colombia, ahead of President Obama's visit there for the Summit of the Americas, was the subject of another hearing on Capitol Hill as Napolitano, whose department oversees the Secret Service, went before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Over the past 2-1/2 years, Napolitano told the concerned senators, the Secret Service office responsible for tracking agent indiscretions had not received any similar complaints – a period that covered 900 foreign trips and 13,000 domestic trips.

"From that standpoint, there was nothing in the record to suggest that this behavior would happen," she said. "It really was, I think, a huge disappointment to the men and women of the Secret Service."

Of the 12 Secret Service agents implicated in the scandal, eight were fired or forced to resign, one received a permanent revocation of his security clearance (requiring the agent to leave the service without a successful appeal), and three were cleared of serious misconduct but will still face "appropriate administrative action," Napolitano said.

She fielded questions about the Secret Service among queries about other matters for which her department bears responsibility, such as immigration and cybersecurity. She also noted that she and President Obama have "full confidence" in Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan.

Senators asked whether the service could put in place better training or policing procedures and wondered whether the prostitution incident was part of a systemic problem of "wheels up, rings off," but they appeared to be mostly assuaged by Napolitano's promise that the agency's investigation "will leave no stone unturned" and that the problems probably don't run deeper.

"Nobody wants to see the president's security compromised; nobody wants to see the United States of America embarrassed," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, the committee's chairman. "I can't think of anything, aside from the personal tragedy, that would look worse to the rest of the world if something happened to either President Obama or Governor Romney."

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President Obama laughs with Jimmy Fallon during a commercial break as he participates in a taping of the 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,' Tuesday, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Obama on Jimmy Fallon show: How did it go? (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.25.12

President Obama was on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” on Tuesday. OK, OK, technically it was Wednesday in Washington, as NBC broadcasts the show at 12:35 a.m. Eastern time. Anyway, the appearance seems to have worked up quite a bit of buzz among the blognoscenti and twitterati. How did things go?

We’d say the president’s political advisers think it went pretty well. Mr. Obama is making a big push this week to get Congress to act to prevent an automatic rise in student loan interest rates, and the Fallon show gave him a stage upon which to make that point with great emphasis. Let’s hope that for the sake of his blood pressure House Speaker John Boehner (R) was already asleep.

First off, there was the slow jam of the news. If you haven’t heard about this, it’s a recurring Fallon bit in which he and a guest talk/croon about a serious topic over a beat laid down by house band The Roots. 

A Fallon slow jam resembles a mashup of a Barry White song and a Brian Williams special report. The Obama version was hilarious and partisan at the same time, allowing the president to poke at congressional Republicans for refusing to tax billionaires to help pay for cheaper student loans.

“Their position is that students just have to make this rate increase work. Frankly, I’m not buying it,” said Obama over the beat.

Then Fallon responded with “Ummm, umm, umm, the Barack Ness Monster ain’t buyin’ it.”

Just watch it – it’s funnier than it seems in print. Our favorite line was, “If Congress don’t act, it’s the students who pay, the right and left should join on this like Kim and Kanye.”

During their sit-down interview, Fallon also gave Obama plenty of time to go on about the importance of education to the young, and how the US needs to support it, and so on. Obama mentioned to the crowd the hashtag they could use in tweets if they supported him on the issue – #don’tdoublemyrates.

Fallon insisted that on his show they’re not political or partisan, but he did not challenge Obama on the student loan thing. Yes, it was a college crowd. But he could have asked whether kids at Ivy League schools should get cheap student loans – that would have gone down well with the University of North Carolina state school audience.

As to other stuff, Obama said people send him Web links to dancing bears and cute cats. It’s good to know that even presidents have friends eager to waste their time. Also, one of his favorite movies is “Groundhog Day,” which, Obama acknowledged, came out before many students in the crowd were born.

Also, Obama said he and Mitt Romney are not friends, but he did not appear to mean that in a bad way. He said because Romney had been a governor, their paths hadn’t crossed much in the course of political business, whereas he’d gotten to know last opponent John McCain in the Senate.

Also, Obama said Romney’s “wife is lovely,” though that reference almost got swallowed up in crowd noise.

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President Obama laughs with Jimmy Fallon during a commercial break as he participates in a taping of 'Late Night with Jimmy Fallon' on Tuesday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Obama slow jams the news with Jimmy Fallon. How does that work? (+video)

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.24.12

President Obama slow jammed the news Tuesday. He did fine, though he seemed a little ... academic. Of course, he was discussing student loans, which is not an easy topic to croon about over a beat laid down by Jimmy Fallon’s house band, The Roots.

OK, we will back up here and explain this to people who have no idea what we’re talking about, which included us until very lately. Mr. Obama on Tuesday afternoon taped an appearance for Tuesday night’s episode of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” in front of a live college audience at the University of North Carolina. As part of this, he participated in a recurring Fallon bit called “slow jamming the news,” where the funnyman’s band produces a slow R&B rhythm, while Fallon or a guest talks earnestly about something serious, like taxes. Then they build it into a tune via clever lyrics from backup singers.

A slow jam is like those bits of Barry White songs where he’s talking while the band plays in the background, then he rumbles into song about a subject that requires multiple repetitions of the word “baby."

On Tuesday, Obama looked into the camera and said, “Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people,” while the band played behind him.

Then Fallon swung into action. “Ohhhh yeah. You should listen to the president,” he crooned, punching up the song.

Last year Fallon did a classic slow jam with NBC News anchor Brian Williams about partisan budget bickering. It was maybe a fuller example of the slow-jamming-the-news genre.

As The Roots played, Mr. Williams said, “With the deadline to reach a deal looming this Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans find themselves at a stalemate over the nation’s debt ceiling.”

Fallon provided bass-voice counterpoint. “Aahhh yeah, I can’t get to sleep this night cuz all that moanin’ and groanin’ on Capitol Hill.”

Then the band swung into the vocals, singing, “Plan after plan keeps gettin’ defeated, the crisis is growing bigger than, uh, we tweeted....“

When we type that, it doesn’t seem as funny as it sounded. Take a look.

Anyway, the obvious point to make here is that Obama is trying his best to appeal to young voters, and to appear hipper and younger in general than Mitt Romney.

What will the Romney camp do in response? Hmmm. Doing a Letterman “Top 10” list would only partially counter the current hipster imbalance. Maybe he’ll get into a push-up contest with the folks on “Fox & Friends."

As for Obama, after the slow jam he traded light quips with Fallon. Fallon suggested that the president trip getting onto Air Force One to get attention. Obama replied “I don’t find that funny." Then Fallon showed college pictures of Obama with an Afro and a fur collar, which the president did find funny.

Material from Associated Press was used in this report.

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Former presidential candidate and US Sen. John Edwards leaves a federal court with his daughter Cate, in Greensboro, N.C., Monday, April 23. (Chuck Burton/AP)

John Edwards's trial: a cad, or a cad and a felon?

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / 04.24.12

The criminal trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards continues Tuesday in North Carolina. Key prosecution witness Andrew Young, a former aide to Mr. Edwards, resumes testifying as the government attempts to convince jurors that Edwards knew that nearly $1 million in secret cash from rich donors was meant to help hide his pregnant mistress during the 2008 election campaign.

Edwards's defense intends to counter that Mr. Young himself grabbed much of that money to fund his own dream home. It’s true that the former US senator from North Carolina and accomplished trial lawyer fathered a child with a campaign videographer and conspired to hide that fact from his ailing wife, conceded his own lawyers. That’s wrong, but it’s not a federal offense, they argued.

“John Edwards is a man who committed many sins, but no crime,” said defense attorney Allison Van Laningham.

Is Edwards a cad, or a cad and a felon? That’s the decision jurors will make in a trial that’s expected to last six weeks.

Perhaps the central question the 12 men and women will have to consider is this: Was the $1 million from heiress Bunny Mellon and another wealthy donor a campaign contribution? If so, it broke the law – there are strict limits on how much an individual can give a politician, and the amounts involved surpass those limits by several orders of magnitude.

Prosecutors argue that the money was meant to keep the Edwards campaign viable, because Edwards would have quickly been electoral toast if the truth were to come out. Thus the money was a campaign contribution, they say.

However, a number of legal analysts contend that’s overreaching. The definition of a campaign contribution is narrow, they say, and this doesn’t necessarily fit.

“Prosecutors seem to be relying on the vague language that the payments to [mistress Rielle] Hunter were intended to ‘influence’ a campaign. But almost anybody who cares about politics at all does all kinds of things intended to influence campaigns, and they are not subject to campaign finance laws,” writes former Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith Tuesday in Politico.

Mr. Smith, a law professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, says that under the Federal Election Campaign Act the usual test as to whether something is a campaign expenditure is whether the obligation would have existed but for the campaign.

In other words, if Edwards hadn’t been running for president, would he have still spent wads of dough to cover up his affair, given that his wife was diagnosed with cancer and that he had other children, plus a reputation to uphold?

A juror might well believe the answer to that would be “yes.” In this legal context even the motives of Edwards and the donors are not really that relevant, argued Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University, in a lengthy analysis of the issue posted on the Election Law Blog last June.

“The money spent here is almost certainly not a ‘contribution’ within the meaning of the election laws, at least for criminal-law purposes. I believe at least nine out of ten election-law experts would have been of that view before this prosecution was announced,” wrote Mr. Pildes.

On the stand on Tuesday, Young testified that Edwards's aides sought help from a number of people to help finance an effort to stash the pregnant Ms. Hunter far from the media-rich environment of the campaign. Young said Edwards had assured him that the contributions were legal.

Young was once the most devoted of Edwards's followers. At the behest of Edwards, Young had even claimed that he was the father of Hunter’s child.

If convicted, Edwards faces up to 30 years in prison and fines of more than $1 million.

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In this August 2011 file photo, Students attend graduation ceremonies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. President Obama can take credit for putting the national spotlight on the issue of federally subsidized student loans, while Mitt Romney says that he, too, supports extending the 3.4 percent interest rate, set to increase at the beginning of July. (Butch Dill/AP/File)

Student loans: Romney, congressional GOP race to embrace students (+video)

By David Grant, Staff writer / 04.24.12

College students may not have quite joined motherhood and apple pie in the pantheon of bulletproof American icons quite yet – but the speed at which Republicans raced to join Democrats in talking about college education (and young voters) suggests that the political apotheosis of the college student is well on its way.

Democrats can take credit for putting the national spotlight on the issue of federally subsidized student loans, whose interest rates are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent at the beginning of July. President Obama’s campaign has been shining its bright light on the issue since last Friday, an emphasis that coincides with the president’s trips to universities in North Carolina and Colorado Tuesday and a college stop in Iowa Wednesday.

Republicans, who may sense a chance to chip away at Mr. Obama’s massive advantage among young voters from 2008, weren’t going to be left behind. On Monday, GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said he supported an extension of the lower loan rates.

But, as is the wont of both political parties, simply agreeing with one’s opponent is simply not enough. So the GOP knew what to do when the Associated Press published a report showing that nearly 50 percent of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that the piece revealed the “Sad reality of Obamanomics” –  that “young Americans are learning there aren’t jobs for them after graduation.” House majority leader Eric Cantor chimed in similarly. And Rep. Tom Graves (R) of Georgia took to Twitter to wonder, “will they vote for Obama in 2012?” given such poor employment figures.

Mr. Romney, too, jumped on the pile while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “When you look at 50 percent of the kids coming out of college today can’t find a job or can’t find a job which is consistent with their skills,” he said, “how in the world can you be supporting a president that’s led to that kind of an economy?”

Tuesday dawned with a Romney campaign conference call highlighting some of the party’s own young people – 30-year-old Rep. Aaron Schock (R) of Illinois and Alex Schriver, chairman of the College Republican National Committee – to discuss how poorly young Americans have fared under Obama.

That led the liberal "super political-action committee" American Bridge to splice together this highlight reel of Romney telling various college students all the ways they should either pay for college or choose a college, none of which involve his support for subsidized student loans.

“I know that it would be popular for me to stand up and say, ‘I’m going to give you government money to help pay for your college,’ ” Romney says in one clip. “But I’m not going to promise that.”

What remains to be seen, however, is whether congressional Republicans will make that promise. Senate majority leader Harry Reid said the upper chamber will take up legislation that would keep interest rates down in two weeks, when the Senate returns from its next scheduled home work period.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa told reporters on a conference call Monday that a key sticking point in the Senate was determining where to find the $6 billion necessary to continue lower rates for a year. Senator Harkin said he hoped to have a draft proposal for such a measure completed by Friday.

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In this February 2008 file photo, then Democratic-presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama greets supporters before a rally in Madison, Wisconsin. Last week, a new poll suggested that Mr. Obama's support among young people, who turned out for him in record numbers in 2008, is slipping. (Rick Bowmer/AP/File)

Obama slipping among young white voters

By Liz Marlantes, Correspondent / 04.23.12

Is President Obama in danger of losing young people?

Last week, a new poll suggested that Mr. Obama's support among young people, who turned out for him in record numbers in 2008, is slipping. Only 34 percent of young people between ages 18 and 24 said they were "satisfied" with the Obama presidency, and they indicated they would prefer Obama over a generic Republican by just seven percentage points, according to the poll, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University's Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Perhaps even more significant, only 46 percent said they were "certain" they will vote in November.

The polling picture is somewhat mixed: A Pew Research survey released last week found that Obama's current level support among 18- to 29-year-olds stands at 61 percent, compared with Mitt Romney's 33 percent – a spread that isn't all that different from the 66 percent Obama won in 2008 against Sen. John McCain's 32 percent. But among one specific subgroup of young voters – whites – Pew also shows a decline: Obama won this group by 10 points in 2008 but is beating Mr. Romney among young whites by just two points now.

The biggest factor behind this slippage is the jobs picture. According to a new report by the Associated Press, job prospects for young people with bachelor's degrees are at the lowest level in more than a decade – with more than half of all young college graduates either jobless or underemployed. Many are "increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans," the AP report said.

The White House is making a big push to address some of these concerns. Talking Points Memo notes that the president will head Tuesday to the University of North Carolina to highlight his push for legislation aimed at keeping interest rates on student loans low.

One potential saving grace for Obama in all this is that, while young voters may be souring on him, they like Romney even less. Even last week's Public Religion survey showed that, among young voters inclined to back a Republican, only 34 percent wanted Romney as the party's nominee (throughout the GOP primary fight, Romney typically garnered a much smaller share of the youth vote than did challengers such as Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, and Romney's strongest demographic cohort has been voters over age 65).

Still, the real danger for Obama isn't that he'll actually lose the youth vote to Romney (if he did, well, let's just say that would be a very bad sign for the president). It's that young people will be disenchanted enough that they simply won't turn out.

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