Obama's youth registration drive

Knowing of my interest in Barack Obama's appeal to young voters, his S.C. campaign brought this to my attention:

Obama Campaign Launches
Youth Voter Registration Drive

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Beginning tomorrow, Barack Obama’s South Carolina campaign will launch a week-long effort to register 1,000 new voters on college and high school campuses across the state.
    In addition to the registration drives, the campaign will hold events in Orangeburg and Greenville next week focused on registering and organizing young people. (Details on the events will be announced next week.)
    “Barack Obama’s message about fundamentally changing our politics has energized and inspired young people,” Obama South Carolina Youth Vote Director Elizabeth Wilkins said. “Now we have to make sure they’re registered to vote and get them to the polls.”
    The campaign will have a presence on at least 40 high school, college and university campuses across the state next week, registering young people to vote. In its drive to engage and mobilize high school and college students, the campaign held a public rally at Coastal Carolina University in Conway last week where Obama attracted nearly 2,000 people.

As it happens, I'm not the only one who has been impressed by the way the freshness Obama's message seems a natural for the idealistic young. Of course, some of those who are thus impressed are less than impartial. Moss Blachman, whose son Max I mentioned in connection with the campaign in my recent column, said he spent a day with the Obama kids and found the phenomenon rather inspiring.

And Phil Noble from down Charleston way has urged me to revisit the subject, going so far as to give me the names and/or contact info on 10 impressive young Obama supporters. I had to smile when I saw the names, because it brings up the old editorial board joke, "Who's his daddy?" (The joke is both on us and on South Carolina. We've been doing this so long, and South Carolina is a sufficiently small state, that whenever somebody news breaks onto to the political scene, it seems that as often as not, we know his or her parents.) He mentioned Max (although as "Moss and Penny Blackman's son," not by name), and our own Laurin -- but we know them, right? Both reformed bloggers.

He also listed Anton Gunn, who I thought was a particularly impressive legislative candidate, and three others who had very familiar last names -- such as Bakari Sellers, son of Cleveland.

So yeah, I probably will get back to the subject -- or maybe I just did.