In an effort to recapture the youthful spirit of his first campaign, President Obama will tour three college campuses this week in the hopes of rallying the twenty-something troops.
The Hill reports:
Obama will visit three college campuses in swing states this week, where he’ll try to appeal to young voters by urging Congress to pass legislation to prevent interest rates on subsidized student loans from doubling to 6.8 percent this summer.
He’ll appear at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Iowa, where he’ll make his student loan pitch before large audiences of the country’s youngest voters. All three states were in Obama’s column in 2008.
Before leaving Chapel Hill on Tuesday, the president will aim for an even larger audience of young voters when he appears on NBC’s "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon."
But President Obama is failing to attract the enormous crowds of college students that he once did during the heyday of the 2008 campaign, signaling a major loss in a key constituency that once contributed to the president’s unprecedented popularity.
Though Obama’s speaking tour in North Carolina and Colorado has yet to get underway, there are already several signs that he could fail to attract large audiences.
On the 2008 campaign trail, for instance, Obama spoke at the University of North Carolina’s Dean Smith Center, which holds 22,000 people. This time around, the president will speak at 9,000-seat Carmichael Arena—a fact that led CNN’s Jessica Yellin to wonder via Twitter, "Where’s the luv?"
At the University of Iowa, where the president is scheduled to appear tomorrow, tickets are still available for Obama’s speech. And the venue Obama is to speak at this time around seats just 1,500—a far cry from the 15,500 seat stadium he packed last time he appeared at the university.