WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama may be in the lead in the polls, but he’s leaving little to chance especially among younger voters.
He went on MTV to answer questions from young voters ranging from student loans and taxes to gay marriage and whether ordinances should be passed prohibiting sagging pants — yes sagging pants.
“I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq,” Obama said.
But he added: “Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What’s wrong with that? Come on.”
MTV said his Republican rival John McCain was offered a similar opportunity to answer questions from young voters, but he declined.
Obama also tried to explain his remark about taxes and spreading the wealth around that came out during his conversation with Joe the Plumber and was lampooned by McCain.
He argued that he proposed returning tax rates back to what they were in the 1990s for those making over $250,000 a year, a move of about 3 percentage points, and that would not limit their success.
“Back in the 1990s, we created more millionaires, more billionaires, because the economy was growing, everything was strong, at every income bracket, people were doing well,” Obama said. ”So this idea, that somehow everybody is just on their own and shouldn’t be concerned about other people who are coming up behind them, that’s the kind of attitude that I want to end when I am president.”
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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama arrives at a rally in Jacksonville, Fla.)
KAILUA, HI - Barack Obama may be the first U.S. president who can successfully pull off the shaka, a Hawaiian greeting Hawaiians say has various meanings, from “hang loose” and “cool” to “thanks.”
