Um, if his campaign had tried to get all those lazy young voters out like this in 2008, we’d still be talking about Senator Barack Obama. The White House is calling it a Youth Town Hall, and it’s airing on MTV, BET and CMT on October 14. Something tells me the kids are going to need more than an hour of tweeted questions to go vote for candidates whose names they don’t know. 

You can’t blame the White House for trying. And I’m sure there’s plenty going on besides youth TV and the odd Rolling Stone interview. But I don’t see the sustained effort that carried new voters and infrequent voters to the polls two years ago. It’s always hard in a midterm year to reach those voters. But that’s all the more reason to sustain the effort.

David Plouffe likes to say that the 2008 election would have been a 50/50 result if the electorate looked like it did in 2004. Instead, they changed the make-up of the voters and won by a huge six-point margin.

What happens when the electorate looks like it always does in these elections? My guess is an unhappy result for Democrats, who will only have themselves to blame for staying at home.