This 'n' That From The Campaign Trail

By this time next month, the caucuses will have been held in Iowa and we will be anticipating the New Hampshire primaries in a few days.

What follows is a glimpse at nuggets of news from the campaign trail:

* Harvard University's Institute of Politics reports that it conducted a poll among young Americans (ages 18 to 24) from both parties who are "likely voters" in 2008. Young Democrats tended to favor Barack Obama, and young Republicans supported Rudy Giuliani.

(I put quotation marks around "likely" because, historically, young people don't vote in dramatic numbers. Surveys show that, the older you are, the more likely you are to vote, and the 18-to-24 group is at the bottom of the heap -- even though the people who are elected will be in a position to affect all kinds of things that are important to that age group, like student loans, health care, the war in Iraq, employment, wages, taxes, day care, the quality of schools for young children, the environment, energy, law enforcement, etc.)

John Volpe, polling director for the Institute of Politics, told CNN that young voters represent the "wild card" in the election next year. But CNN rightfully points out that it will depend on whether many young voters actually participate in the election.

The poll found that more than 40% said they definitely would participate in a primary or caucus, and more than 60% plan to vote in the general election. But CNN observed that, in a similar poll in October 2004, more than 80% of young Americans said they planned to vote, but, based on Census Bureau figures, actual voter turnout among young people was 47%.

* In the buildup to tomorrow's speech on Mormonism by Mitt Romney -- which is being compared to John F. Kennedy's speech on his Catholicism during the 1960 campaign -- Kenneth Baer of the Los Angeles Times makes a convincing argument that, rather than emulate JFK, Romney should aim for a Jimmy Carter tone.

Baer writes that Kennedy "ran away from his religion. Carter ran on it, using his religious belief ... as a selling point." Because Romney needs the support of social conservatives in his bid for the Republican nomination, Baer says he "has to turn the potential liability of his Mormonism into a selling point -- just as Carter ... did with his faith in 1976."

Everyone's got something to say about Romney's speech.

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention believes that Romney should take a Kennedyesque approach while New Testament scholar Ben Witherington thinks Romney needs to "walk a very narrow tightrope between saying too little and saying too much."

* No one knows what kind of economy the Democratic and Republican nominees will face in next year's general election campaign, but Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post writes dourly in today's edition that, while this isn't 1929, it's close.

Pearlstein says this "isn't just a mortgage or housing crisis" the economy is facing. He makes a good -- and frightening -- case that a major economic calamity, the likes of which hasn't been seen in this country since the Great Depression, is looming in the near future. Read what he has to say.