President Obamas excellent adventure: courting millennials

Forget Oval Office speeches or slickly-produced videos -- the White House has found a new way to communicate: through emoji.

The White House is making a pitch this week to millennials, the generation that is described as encompassing people born from about 1980 to 2004. And they're trying to be cool about it.

So in a graphic with the meta title "This is an infographic about millennials," the administration turned to the icons that are ubiquitous in text messages and on social media sites like Instagram to dish out some stats.

Obama's 2008 campaign was bolstered in large part by tech-savvy young people. But his popularity among that demographic has sunk to the lowest levels of his presidency. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, Obama's support sat at 43 percent, matching his all-time low among young people.

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In other words: Obama really, really needs millennials to come out and vote in the midterm elections next month. He's courting this group as he has others, including women and Latinos.

Obama penned a piece Thursday for the young-skewing website Medium: "Why I'm Betting On  You To Shape The New American Economy."

"You’re part of the first generation to grow up in the digital age," he wrote. "Some of you grew up with cell phones tucked into your book bags, while others can remember the early days of landline, dial-up internet. You’ve gone from renting movies on VHS tapes to purchasing and downloading them in a matter of minutes."

The White House also tried this week to appeal to the upper tier, age-wise, of the millennial generation, making reference to the late 1980s movie "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" ahead of the president's trip to San Dimas, Calif., Friday, where he'll designate the San Gabriel Mountains as a national monument. Earnest got the day wrong, but later corrected it.

The president's big-picture pitch to millennials centers around the economy, an area he publicly focused on all summer and returned to last week. At a co-working space in Santa Monica, Calif., Thursday Obama told a group of entrepreneurs, techies and others who looked to be in their 20s, 30s and 40s that "entrepreneurship is the DNA of this generation."

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"It’s happening in Kansas City, it’s happening in places in Colorado, it’s happening in towns in Ohio and everywhere you go, you see people turning great ideas into great companies,” he said.

Most of his economic pitches this summer took place in those cities, which are filled with young people and are trying to become innovation hubs: Denver, Kansas City, Austin, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

In Austin in July, Obama said the economy grows from the middle out, when "every young person in America is feeling hopeful and has a chance to do what they can with the God-given talents that they have." Millennials face a higher unemployment rate than other age groups, averaging 8.7 percent, according to a White House report. But more than 1 million jobs this year went to their generation. They have also been impacted by the Affordable Care Act, which allows people to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26.

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Groups that lean Democratic, including young people, historically don't show up for midterm elections at nearly the same rates they do during presidential years -- and particularly not in elections like these, at the low-key midpoint of a second-term presidency, when his message isn't widely resonating with voters.

"Democrats have many good qualities, but a congenital disease is, A, we get depressed too easily -- and, B, we’re terrible at paying attention to midterm elections," Obama said at a fundraiser at actress Gwyneth Paltrow's Los Angeles home Thursday. "When there’s not a president on the ballot, we tend to get complacent.  We can’t afford to get complacent right now."

Obama has put it another way in the past: Democrats don't think the midterms are "sexy enough."

It isn't just the president. Just about everyone, from first lady Michelle Obama -- who has been a campaign surrogate for her husband this midterm cycle -- to Democrats to Republicans are trying to make midterm voting look good. Rock the Vote released a video that's a voting-centered riff on Lil Jon and DJ Snake's hit "Durn Down for What." The video, titled "Turn Out for What," features celebrities including Lena Dunham and Natasha Lyonne.

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Republicans are also pitching to the demographic with a string of ads, including several aimed at young women that describe Obama as a bad boyfriend.

"I know I'm stuck with Barack for two more years, I get that," a young woman sitting on a couch said to the camera in one of the spots. "But I'm not stuck with his friends." 

Generation Opportunity, a Conservative non-profit aimed at young people, called Obama's emoji-driven graphic "desperate :("

"This administration genuinely seems to believe that young people can only understand policy if it’s written in terms of emojis," said Generation Opportunity spokeswoman Corie Whalen Stephens. "This clearly underestimates the intellect of my generation, which is the most creative, entrepreneurial, and innovative in American history."

But if Democrats are to hold onto the Senate, they'll need to do more than get young people to simply reject wooing by Republicans -- they'll need to rekindle and recapture the excitement that young voters felt in 2008 and 2012 when Obama was on the ballot. And in the home stretch of what both Obamas have described as the president's last campaign, no one is trying harder than the White House to make that happen.

"But for our young people, more than anyone else, this election is about you," Michelle Obama said at a campaign rally in Madison, Wisc., for Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. "It’s about your hopes and your dreams, and the world you want to pass onto your kids and your grandkids, truly."

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