“Young people finding Obama way cooler than McCain,” reports the Associated Press, based on a few cool-kid-on-the-street interviews (prompted, it seems, by a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showing “Obama has a 2-to-1 lead over McCain among 18-to-34-year-olds.”)
Emily Goulding, a 25-year-old from Los Angeles, tells the AP:
Obama is a tad cooler than McCain on probably 57 fronts. Obama’s better looking than McCain, Obama’s more stylish than McCain, Obama’s more fit than McCain. He refers to better music than McCain.
(Could — “racial subtext” flag! — Obama’s coolness be a liability?)
A “Boston-based image consultant,” Evangalia Souris, helps the AP speculate on what might be hurting McCain’s cool quotient. “One way McCain could improve his image among young voters would be to choose a younger running mate, Souris said.” Or… even a younger mate.
McCain’s wife, Cindy, “has a very conservative image, and that doesn’t really help him either,” Souris said. “She’s not the type like Obama’s wife, who can get down and dirty with younger people and really relate to them.”
But back to which candidate is winning what. Let’s recap. Polling (whether “formal” or youth-on-the-street) has shown that Obama is “way cooler” than McCain, that more people would prefer to carpool and vacation and barbecue with Obama than with McCain. And McCain is favored by pet-owners (dog-owners in particular).
Which candidate would young dogs prefer to vacation with? Can we poll that next?
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.