By As the economy sputters and the war in Iraq continues through the end of the year, many young Americans appear to be losing hope in the president they helped elect.
Some students at Cal State Long Beach, however, are holding on to the hope roused in President Barack Obama’s campaign, and want to see him return for another four years.
“I think he’s done a pretty good job,” said Alejandro Guerrera, freshman pre-business major. “I think he should be re-elected and given more time, because he’s done some pretty good things. With Medicare, he’s helping people out, and he wants to raise taxes for the rich. People think it’s pretty simple, but a lot of policies get stopped in the House.”
Annel Estrada, journalism and Chicana/Latino studies major, has mixed feelings regarding Obama’s policy.
“As a student struggling and feeling the effects of the recession, I think there are things he could have handled better,” she said. “I think he’s done a good job [but] there are things he’s done that I disagree with … given the fact that he’s had to pick up the pieces from the last presidency, I think he’s good.”
Other students are more critical of his performance.
“We elected him as a liberal voice for this nation and I feel like he’s not holding up his end,” education major Rooz Moridzadeh said. “I would like to see him use his influence to pass more laws and not reform some of the ones he’s already passed, like the health care law. I want to see not so much bipartisan, compromise with the right and more putting his foot down and help pass some policies that will help grow this nation.”
With elections looming, the young voter is a demographic Obama would be hard-pressed to lose.
The 2008 election saw 3.4 million more young people vote than in 2004, the most ever in a presidential election. More than 65 percent of voters, aged 18 to 24, chose Obama, as did 69 percent of voters, aged 25 to 29.
But with an approval rating of 44 percent, there are some students on campus who are soured by what seems to be a different party engaging in the same politics.
“Both parties were paid by the same lobbyists,” said Ryan Hashi, a graduate student working on his master’s in physics. “He had a significant part of his funding from Wall Street, and, if you just take that fact alone, you could kind of predict what would happen. To me, it was obvious he wasn’t going to keep any of his promises.”
Obama, Hashi said, has engaged in the same foreign policies as Bush, using airstrikes in Pakistan, rushing to military action in Libya, and ordering the killing of Osama Bin Laden without due process in a court of law.
“I don’t hear anything from liberals about that,” Hashi said. “Just because he’s a Democrat, it’s OK now?”
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