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Making political references to pop culture is becoming the thing to do for presidential candidates. Last week, ultra-conservative Alan Keyes jumped into a traveling mosh pit of college students and then body surfed the crowd as Rage Against the Machine's "Guerilla Radio" played. Arizona's own scrappy presidential contender, John McCain, made a joke about Nine Inch Nails being his favorite band. Vice president Gore, in an MTV interview, admitted to smoking and inhaling pot, often. Bill Bradley beat him to that especially chic public revelation. Bill Clinton started it all with that damn saxophone. Though the mental picture of Al Gore high is surreal; the increasing social liberalism of three generations of voters is real.

Baby boomers, Gen Xrs and then us college kids, who if we're lucky will escape a generational moniker, are all becoming more active voters. Politicians have long been paying attention to baby boomers as they have long been politically active. They vote often enough, but boomers are approaching the age at which they vote more than often enough; they vote all the time.

Voter behavior statistics suggest that the older and more affluent a person is, the more likely that person is to vote. And while a person is also expected to grow more conservative with age, baby boomers are only growing fiscally conservative, if they're growing more conservative at all. Evidence lies in the marked political indifference to every single one of the outgoing president's sex scandals, louder and more frequent calls for environmental legislation; the long-overdue attention to "women's issues" such as child care, wage equity and education. These are all traditionally liberal issues. Conservatives run a poor imitation with "family issues" such as prayer in school and canonizing the stay-at-home mother.

Generation Xrs, the people in college when we were in high school, are also coming of age as voters. Now being full-fledged adults starting careers and families, they will begin to vote. As with baby boomers, these voters may be fiscal conservatives, but it's a good bet that they're socially liberal also.

Known for being more cynical than usual, it stands to reason that Gen Xrs would be cynical about government as well. Politically, they'd want less government in their lives. Sounds conservative, but that's where similarities end. Less government as pertains to social issues means fewer restrictions on abortions, at least a detente in the drug war and no flag-burning amendments. These are socially liberal positions.

On a different note, if the "glass ceiling" is to be broken, it's likely to be broken by the women of this generation or our own. That means conservatives should start talking about wage equity and child care in the workplace, and they should try to talk a better game than liberals who are fairly well-versed in this discussion.

Finally we come to us, college students. While, generally, we don't vote now, voter behavior statistics suggest that we will. We will, the statistics predict, vote more often than other people our age, and we are more likely to vote liberal on social issues.

As things stand, there is little on the horizon to make us think we should vote any differently than baby boomers, with whom we share many generational characteristics, such as coming of age in a time of prosperity, materialism and a sense that drastic changes are taking place in our world.

As entertaining as it is to witness serious men of politics donning swim trunks and wading into the public swimming pool that is pop culture, there is substance behind the show. Political references to pop culture indicate that politicians are trying to reach out to not only young, liberal voters, but old, liberal voters as well.

Moniqua Lane is a political science/history junior. She can be reached at editor@wildcat.arizona.edu.