Students who volunteered for political campaigns for course credit at Occidental College are learning a hard lesson in defeat after every single one of them joined a Democratic candidate in 2014–and all of them lost. The sole survivor, Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, is widely expected to lose an upcoming runoff election to Republican Bill Cassidy. Now the school is attempting to console the students as they return to campus.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
The midterm elections were over. The 11 campaign workers from Occidental College returned to class. But first, they heard from a school reverend.
“You win some, you lose some,” Susan Young told the group. It’s perfectly OK, she said, to have trouble readjusting to college life or to feel out of place.
Occidental is best known as the school Barack Obama attended before transferring to Columbia University. The young Obama lost the Democratic Party primary to incumbent Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) in 2000 and might have faded into obscurity had he not linked up with political strategist David Axelrod shortly thereafter. Axelrod used his media skills to reshape Obama’s persona (and to undermine Obama’s U.S. Senate opponents), introducing him to the nation in 2004 as a figure of national reconciliation who carried the hopes for the future of his party.
For the Occidental students, however, such dreams remain distant after a brutal midterm election season for the Democrats. Not one of the students volunteered for Republicans, although some have done so in the past.
One student recalled the sting of defeat: “It felt like everything I had poured my heart and soul into ended up not meaning anything,” she told the Times.
However, most seem determined to return to fight once again.
Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak edits Breitbart California and is the author of the new ebook, Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, available for Amazon Kindle.
Follow Joel on Twitter: @joelpollak
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