Last Call For The Fickle Finger Of Fate

Dana Milbank is convinced that either Millennials are suckers for counting on President Obama, or that President Obama is a sucker for counting on Millennials, he's not quite sure which.

What went wrong? The president and his aides failed to keep his youth movement engaged. But part of the problem also is the inability of the millennial generation to remain attached to a cause. The generation that brought Obama to power is connected online but has no loyalty to institutions — including, it turns out, the Obama White House.

Either way, when everything goes to hell in November, Milbank's got his bases covered on blame.  It's those damn kids, but also That Damn President.

Young voters, after playing a big role in the campaign, became little more than an e-mail list for the White House and Obama’s Organizing for Action group. Then came health-care reform. The millennials, very liberal overall, saw Obama’s plan as too timid; they were disillusioned by his failure to fight for the “public option” of government-run health plans.

This cost Obama the young activists he would need to rally enrollment in Obamacare. Polling by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that, while the generation looks more favorably on big-government solutions than do older generations, the millennials disapprove of Obamacare in the same proportion as the rest of the population.

Even if Obama had worked harder to keep his youth army engaged, it’s not entirely clear that the effort would have succeeded. As a group, the generation’s attachment is fickle.

We didn't get the public option, so apparently the Millennials have all turned into libertarian dudebros who will back the GOP now.  If they even vote at all, because CRUSHING ENNUI.

The millennials are at least as passionate as earlier generations and more entrepreneurial, but they lack ties to institutions — unions, political parties, churches — because of their online existence. “The organizational structure they’re growing up in is so weak,” Tufts’ Levine tells me. As a result, “there aren’t very many durable institutions that can capitalize on their enthusiasm. They’re being asked to do it themselves, online, and it’s a tall order.”

It's the internet's fault, really.

Running Terrified

The failure earlier this month of Senate Democrats to find even 50 votes for Debo Adegbile's nomination as the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division is apparently only the beginning of their cowardice.  Not only does defending someone accused of murder make you ineligible to serve in the DoJ, now being a doctor with the notion that guns may present a public health risk makes you history's greatest monster, unfit for Surgeon General.

Facing a possible defeat in the Senate, the White House is considering delaying a vote on President Obama’s choice for surgeon general or withdrawing the nomination altogether, an acknowledgment of its fraying relationship with Senate Democrats.

The nominee, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, an internist and political ally of the president’s, has come under criticism from the National Rifle Association, and opposition from the gun-rights group has grown so intense that it has placed Democrats from conservative states, several of whom are up for re-election this year, in a difficult spot.

Senate aides said Friday that as many as 10 Democrats are believed to be considering a vote against Dr. Murthy, who has voiced support for various gun control measures like an assault weapons ban, mandatory safety training and ammunition sales limits.

Nice to know the National Rifle Association runs the Democrats in the Senate and not the vast majority of Americans who support gun control measures who voted for the Democrats in the first place.

Your Night Of Moosed Have TV

In the age of streaming TV, why be a grifter with your own cable TV show, when you can get your own cable TV network?

Fox News contributor and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be launching her own digital video channel, tentatively called “Rogue TV,” a source familiar with the project told Capital.

The channel will be available through Tapp, the digital video service founded by former CNN chief Jon Klein and former NBC Universal entertainment executive Jeff Gaspin. Subscriptions will cost $10 per month.

Rogue is expected to launch in April or May, and it would be one of the first of the digital channels offered by Tapp.

Palin’s channel will feature video commentaries from the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, discussing current events and political issues.

“Think of it as a video version of her Facebook page,” the source said.

That said, Rogue is also expected to feature footage of Palin and her family in Alaska, much as the 2010 TLC reality series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” did. (TLC’s parent company, Discovery Communications, is an investor in Tapp.)

It will also have advice and guidance from Palin, such as tips for parents and recipes. There are also tentative plans to have subscribers engage in regular video chats with Palin.

All Palin, all day, for just $10 a month.  Why depend on news outlets with journalistic integrity or cable channels with agendas, when you can just stream your own permanent word salad infomercial 24/7?  It's a dream come true for her.  It's the 700 Club for people who own Mossy Oak and Carhartt.  She's going to make millions.

Which of course is the point.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• US officials are warning Americans in Russia to beware of possible violence ahead of Sunday's Crimea referendum to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
• Tennessee becomes the latest state ordered by a federal judge to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages under the Fifth Amendment's equal protection clause.
• Analysis of satellite information shows that missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 may have been hijacked thousands of miles off course and ran out of fuel over the Indian Ocean.
• The Obama administration says the United States will hand over control of internet naming domains to a non-governmental organization in 2015.
• Microsoft's Xbox One matched Sony's PlayStation 4 in sales for the first time in February, but still remains well behind Sony's console in US sales.