THE LOST OPPORTUNITY – AT 11:35 A.M. ET:  The great Michael Barone, one of our best political analysts, examines the lost opportunity that is the Obama administration, and what its failed policies mean for the younger generation.  Is that generation getting the hope and change it wants?

It seems that some young Obama voters have decided it isn't. The Pew Research Center's poll of the millennial generation, which voted 66 to 32 percent for Obama in 2008, found that they identify with Democrats over Republicans by only a 54 to 40 percent margin this year.

Perhaps they are coming to realize that the burdens the Obama policies are placing on the private sector economy are reducing their choices for the future...

...We've had such an economy before, in the second half of the 1930s, and Americans didn't much like it. And not just because they weren't making enough money. Because in such an economy it's much harder to find satisfying work, work that can give you a sense of what American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks in his forthcoming book "The Battle" calls "earned success." We get such satisfaction when we believe the work we are doing -- in workplaces and in community activities and voluntary associations -- is serving interests broader than our own.

And...

Democrats argue that their policies transfer money down the income scale and provide a safety net for individuals. But a nation with an ever larger public sector and an inhibited-growth private sector is a nation with fewer openings for people who want work that will benefit others. Fewer opportunities for young people who want to choose their future, just as they choose their iPod playlists and Facebook friends...Change, maybe, but not much hope.

COMMENT:  The one sector of the economy that hasn't lost jobs in the last few years is the public sector, where the average employee now earns more than his or her counterpart in private industry.  That setup is defended by a powerful union that has, essentially, veto power within the Democratic Party. 

We're not against good, honest unions here.  I'm a union member.  We have many, many readers who are union members.  Ronald Reagan was a union president.  When unions have influence in the private sector, that's one thing.  But when they have influence over the public purse, that is something entirely different.

Barone is right.  The choices available to young people are narrowing.  Of course, that is exactly what the left wants, and has always had at the center of its dreams.  The fundamental position of the left is that its leaders know best what is good for people, and should have the power to enforce their opinions. 

Americans have always recoiled against that notion of government.  Today, though, even many public schools have been infiltrated with leftist thinking.  Will we, as a nation, continue to resist centralization?  On that our future will largely depend.