Huffington Magazine Issue 1 | Page 65

people excited. He was a celebrity as much as he was a political candidate. He doesn’t have that anymore.” IT’S JUST SO COOL Obama does have one thing that might provoke enough enthusiasm to extend his presidency: an extraordinary ability to connect with his audience; an ability that sometimes seems to eclipse setpiece battles over issues. This is something the campaign intends to draw on in sending Obama to campuses far and wide. On issues alone, Joseph Terrell personifies why Obama may be in danger. Terrell grew up in High Point, N.C., the childhood home of jazz legend John Coltrane. He plays guitar in a folkbluegrass band called the Mipso Trio. Clean-cut, confident and intelligent, he seems like the sort of guy with whom almost anyone might plausibly be friends. In 2008, Terrell took time off from school to go work for the Democratic party. He was supposed to begin his freshman year at UNCChapel Hill, but getting Obama elected took precedence. “I felt the same excitement everyone else did,” he says. “I was blown away by him.” Once Obama took office, Terrell began to see him as a clas- sic politician for whom political expedience dictates all. “I don’t think Obama’s stuck to his guns on important issues,” he says, rattling off a list — Guantanamo, same-sex marriage, foregoing public financing of his campaign so he can raise unlimited cash. “He’s compromised not as a means, but as an end.” Terrell is not planning to volunteer this time. When he looks back on his role in the last campaign, he feels used. “It seemed like he wanted to win in 2008 by energizing young voters, but now he wants to win by not disappointing older white voters,” he says. “I feel taken for granted.” As North Carolina’s primary approached in early May, Terrell was besieged by e-mails from the Obama campaign reminding him to vote, though Obama was the only name on the Democratic ballot. Terrell and his friends were focused on a different part of the ballot: a constitutional amendment