Stuff you should know and see that I won't be blogging in depth:

• Looks like we have another YEO! John Tyler Hammons, a 17 year old freshman at the University of Oklahoma was elected the mayor of Muskegee, a town of 38,000 people. He ran on a good government platform and won in a run-off against the former mayor, capturing 70% of the vote. Way to go John. - The Politico
• Young evangelicals continue to abandon Bush and the GOP over Iraq and the economy. - Huffington Post
• The Godfathers of GOTV testing and research, Gerber and Green, have a new book out pimping Peer to Peer as the best form of organizing. Direct mail and robo-call consultants everywhere are not happy. - Campaigns and Elections
• Two articles say that Obama will need the "senior vote" if he is to beat McCain. I tend not to agree. There are more voters under 30 than over 65, and in some contests we are already performing on par with their turnout. It all depends on how many new young voters show up in November. - Democratic Strategist
• Obama is the king of voter-generated music tributes. - The Politico
• Republicans held a fashion show on the National Mall to show off their new convention swag. This was my favorite photo. And no, this is not a joke. - Minnesota Monitor

Who at the GOP thought it was a good idea to bring back MC Hammer pants? And I'm pretty sure that if that little girl were a lib'rul, we'd hear wingnuts screaming about flag desecration.

So there were some elections yesterday (the madness never stops), and I figure we should at least mention them here.

In West Virginia, Sen. Clinton won in a landslide (as predicted). She defeated Obama 67 - 26%, and she even captured young voters who chose her 59 - 35%. I haven't checked, but I believe this is only the third state in which Clinton won the 18 - 29 demographic. Young voters were 14% of the Democratic electorate. Unfortunately, there is no data from previous cycles against which to compare that, however, based on averages, it is likely that young voters increased their share over previous cycle.

In a race that saw major coverage in the netroots, Scott Kleeb won his primary agains uber-DINO (Democrat in Name Only) against Tony Raimondo. Scott will now compete for the seat vacated by Chuck Hagel in November. This was a good win for Democrats and for young voters. Scott is a huge friend of the youth organizing community and many of you are probably familiar with his wife, Jane Fleming Kleeb, who is an all around youth-organizing rock star and blogs here at Future Majority occasionally under the name of her organization, the Young Voter PAC. Jane blogged the race all day yesterday and you can read her dispatches here.

Finally, we also won a long-shot race in Mississipi. In a deep-red distrinct, Travis Childers defeated his Republican opponent Greg Davis. This was the third special election in a row in which a Democrat defeated a Republican in a red district, and it's an indication of just how big a wave we might see in November. It's also another reason why we need to maximize the youth vote in every state. If victories like this are possible in the deepest or red districts, 50 million Millennials can help make this one of the biggest landslides we're likely to see in our lifetime.

For more, don't miss Joe's take on yesterday's elections and what it all means:

Just before the Obama campaign announced their intention to defund the left, Democracy Corps issues the second part of their new youth polling series: Youth for the Win! The report examines the youth electorate, identifies the opportunities and challenges facing Democrats in "maximizing the youth vote" in 2008, and calls on Democrats to do everything in our power to not let this demographic advantage go to waste.

There are four main takeaways from the poll:

1. Democrats maintain large and growing leads among young voters at the polls
2. Obama has the most support among all remaining candidates (even McCain), and he actually polls almost as well as the "Generic" Democrat numbers.
3. Winning over Clinton supporters will be a challenge for Obama
4. McCain has lower youth support, but is not yet identified with the Republican brand among young voters.

Affirming the obvious, the report shows rising youth support at the polls for Democrats, with most support this cycle going towards Senator Obama:

Obama will face two challenges in maximizing youth turnout this year. The first will be within his own party. Clinton supporters are far more likely to declare that they will not vote in November if Sen. Clinton is not the nominee:

Now, Obama has won the youth vote in most states by a landslide, but in a year of record youth turnout, Clintons numbers are still very very respectable. That's a lot of lost votes and that means Obama will have much shorter coattail for down-ballot candidates to ride. Bridges will need to be built/mended among Clinton's youth supporters in the coming months OR their activism will need to be channeled into forms of engagement aside from the Obama campaign (e.g. youth groups working at the state and local level).

The second challenge Obama faces in maximizing the youth vote for Democratic advantage in November comes from McCain. Polling shows that among young voters, McCain is not yet associated with the tarnished Republican brand. He's not popular by any means, but he should be far more unpopular considering his support for Republican policies.

With some serious help from the media, McCain has an image that distances him from traditional Republicans, and -- I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- he's skilled at playing the culture card to increase that "independent" image. He had a great turn on the Daily Show just last week in which Stewart let him slide on every major issue, and he'll be hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend. Now, that might seem like so much pandering to young people, but it's the type of pandering that most high-level Republicans are loathe to do.

The Obama campaign is going to need to tie McCain tightly to the Republican brand among young voters. Knowing their preference to "not go negative," I'm a little afraid that they won't be up to this task. Yet another reason why outside organizations can be a useful piece of progressive infrastructure.

The two superdelegates from the College Democrats of America - Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel - have endorsed Obama. This comes at the end of a long process in which they posted a YouTube video asking for advice from college students, were lobbied heavily by Obama surrogates, their fellow young superdelegates, and Students for Barack Obama. It also comes on the heels of criticism for lagging in their endorsement.

There are 5 superdelegates allocated in total to YDA and CDA. Lauren and Awais's endorsements put the tally at 3 - 1 in favor of Obama. Still to endorse: YDA President David Hardt.

Ben Smith at the Politico is now reporting what Matt Stoller blogged as rumor earlier this week: that the Obama campaign is telling progressive donors to withhold funds from "outside" 527 organizations. At this point it's inclear whether this means all 527 organizations or all just the media organizations that might run negative campaigns in the fall.

Senator Barack Obama's campaign is steering the candidate's wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups, calling into question what had been expected to be the groups' central role in this year's Democratic offensive against Senator John McCain.

Obama's national finance chairwoman, Chicago hotel mogul Penny Pritzker, told supporters at a national finance committee meeting in Indianapolis May 2, and in other conversations, not to give money to the groups, people familiar with her comments said.

From the perspective of the Obama campaign, this makes sense. It reinforces their message of rejecting the partisanship of the past and don't need anyone muddying their message with negative ads. They have a large enough volunteer base geographically dispersed enough to run their own 50-state field campaign (which they already launched this last weekend).

That's a short-sighted view, however. The Obama campaign isn't the end-all, be-all of progressive, or even Democratic, politics. He may well have the money and volunteers to pull this off all by himself this year, but will he do the same next year, while he's busy pushing policy and his name isn't on a single ballot? Will he lead the media and field campaigns during the 2010 midterms? What happens when Obama is no longer on the ballot? Or if Obama should become an unpopular president and can no longer muster the same forces as we're seeing now?

One of these things will eventually come pass, and when they do, we will need those "outside" organizations to step up and fill the gaps as they have these last years.

In the realm of youth organizing, there was nothing happening outside of non-partisan voter registration prior to 2003. That was rectified by the creation of numerous 527 and 501c4 organizations during the last election cycle. Presumably these, too, would be defunded if the Obama campaign has its way.

Not all campaigns, will be as successful with youth as Sen. Obama. The state parties are still quite bad at targeting young voters. We will have a hard time maximizing youth turnout without those organizations, and I worry that if these new institutions have funds withheld this year, they will wither on the vine and in a few short years we will be back where we started pre-2003.

Some might argue that Obama is posturing. That this is just a pose to maintain his post-partisan image. That all depends on how serious the donors take him and what they decide to do with their money this cycle. If donors ignore Obama's statements and give anyway, then no-harm no-foul. The article makes clear, however, that some donors are taking him seriously:

The donors have been considering entreaties from Progressive Media USA, run by conservative-journalist turned liberal media critic David Brock; from former Clinton aide John Podesta's Fund for America; and from America Votes, a group backed by billionaire George Soros that focuses on voter mobilization, among other efforts.

But in recent days, major donors have begun to conclude that Obama is serious in trying to cut off funds to the outside groups.

"It's given donors pause," said one prominent Democratic donor of Pritzker's words.

Youth organizing is supported by so few donors. Indeed, the big struggle now is to find mid-level donors to help make our new infrastructure more sustainable and less dependent on the whims of one or two funders. If even a few of these funders heed the Obama campaign's words, it could have drastic effects on the sustainability of our nascent youth movement.

I hope that doesn't happen.

Rock the Vote has updated their 2008 youth turnout fact sheet (PDF). It's got a very handy chart measuring Republican and Democratic youth turnout this year, and measuring that turnout over previous cycles.

There are two big takeaways from the data:

• Youth turnout is up 109% over the previous cycle.
• Young voters are increasing their turnout, measured as their "share of the electorate," at greater rates than every other age demographic.

The fact sheet also has this great visual comparing Republican and Democratic youth turnout to each other and to the previous comparable presidential cycle.

• Will Ralph Nader poach youth votes from the Democrats this year? - Chronicle of Higher Education
• Will John McCain poach youth votes from the Democrats this year? - The Politico
• Kat Barr from Rock the Vote interviews me and reviews Youth to Power. - WireTap
• Tim Fernholz has a tough but fair review of Youth to Power. - Campus Progress
• 17 year old Pennsylvanians are fighting for the right to cast primary ballots if they will be 18 by election day. - Fair Vote
• Obama hits McCain for failing to support the Webb GI Bill. - TPM Election Central
• Bob Herbert gets hip to the economic plight of Millennials - New York Times
• Former candidate George McGovern has an interesting solution to bring the primaries to an amicable end. - New York Times
• Along a number of indicators, the civic engagement gap between college and non-college youth has widened since the 1970s. - Peter Levine
• Hip Hop youth organizing is going local and deeper in 2008. - Boston Globe

When Michael asked me to be a guest writer here on Future Majority last month it was mostly because of my tutorial and organization tips posts that I wrote on other blogs. While a few were cross-posted on here I figured I would write a round-up post with my previous tips and tutorials articles. Many of these were targeted to a Young Democrats audience, the tips should be useful for anyone involved in youth organizing.

Tips for College Chapters Starting a New Year
It’s that time of the year again when college chapters are looking to recruit new members from the influx of wide-eyed freshmen joining their campuses. Here are are a few ideas for new member recruitment that have been used effectively by chapters in the past.

Blogging for Young Democrat Chapters
Blogging has grown from being a novelty in political communication to a vital tool for candidates, campaigns, and organizations. This post is designed to guide Young Democrats chapters in developing their blogging strategy.

Why You Should Get Involved in Your Local and State Parties
We all know the stereotype of the composition of local and state Democratic Parties: a plethora of old activists that consider anyone under 50 a young Democrat. While this keeps many younger voters from becoming involved in those entities, it would be to your advantage to bite the bullet and take the plunge.

Blogger Outreach 101
One of the best ways to get your message out to an audience that is likely to be receptive to your message is by working with established bloggers to cover your organization. Good blogger outreach is a subtle art, and this post is a crash course in implementing a strong outreach program.

Making Your Website’s Posts Social Bookmark-Friendly in Textpattern
A lot of state and local chapters use Textpattern for their websites. Sometimes the page templates don’t have adequate textpattern code for the titles of your posts. This means that no matter what page, article, or post is being viewed the same title will appear. While this may not seem like a big deal, it makes a difference on social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. I use del.icio.us for my links posts, as do a lot of bloggers. With some chapter sites when I go to add a post it will just show a generic title, for example if it were YDAZ every post would show up as YDAz.org :: The Young Democrats of Arizona. I have to write in every post title that I share. While I am willing to do this, some bloggers won’t, and it can limit your exposure.

Developing a Traditional Media Strategy Part 1: Media Lists and Press Releases
So I have written about reaching out to new media, but it is always important to develop a traditional media strategy to get your message out to print, radio, and television news. This post will help you create a media contact list and learn some best practices about writing and sending press releases.

Developing a Traditional Media Strategy Part 2: Working With Reporters
In Part 1 of the Developing a Traditional Media Strategy series I discussed how to create a media contact list and best practices for writing and sending press releases. Today’s post will give you some advice on working with reporters once you have their attention.

Developing a Traditional Media Strategy Part 3: Media Monitoring
It is important for you to know what is being said about your organization in both new and traditional media outlets. You may also want to keep track of posts and stories about candidates, issues, and legislation that your organization is interesting in. This post will give you two tips to efficiently monitor the media. These are the methods I use in compiling all the stories in my link posts.

Developing a Traditional Media Strategy Part 4: Rapid Response and LTE
This is the fourth and final part of my Developing a Traditional Media Strategy series. Part 1 covered media lists and press releases, Part 2 covered working with reporters, Part 3 covered media monitoring, and this post will cover rapid response and letters-to-the-editor.

Getting the Most Out of Your Members
Chances are that the members of your organization have a wide range of experience, skills, and knowledge that you may not even know about. This post is designed to help you learn what you members bring to the table and how to effectively utilize their skills through goal-setting.

The Importance of a Quality Website
We have reached the point in the internet revolution where organizational websites are not only common but expected. If you don’t have a website, you don’t appear to exist. With more people using search engines to find information than ever before it is critical that your organization have a strong web presence. This post will cover the importance of chapter websites and ways to improve or start one.

More Tips on Blogging and Websites
I have come up with some additional tips on blogging and websites since I published my Blogging for Young Democrats Chapters and The Importance of a Quality Website posts. Here are those tips.

The Bring Back Bondelli’s Blog Strategy
Following the success of the “Bring Back Bondelli’s Blog” strategy (if it wasn’t a success I couldn’t be posting this right now) I thought it might be helpful to explain my methodology and show how you can apply the same techniques for your own causes and campaigns.

Using Twitter for Your Organization
This post is an attempt to unravel the mystery that is Twitter for the youth organizing community. While Twitter is pervasive amongst the early adopter crowd, it is just now beginning to gain traction with regular internet users.

So these are the tutorial and tips posts up to this point. I hope they will be helpful to you and your organization. If there are any topics that you would like to see a tutorial post on, please leave a comment and I will try to fill your requests.

Last Friday I attended the Better Deal Conference, a gathering of young activists to discuss the creation of a new progressive economic policy that addresses the issues facing our nation and our generation.

As Tamara Drout, one of the conference organizers noted in an article in the American Prospect, young Americans today are the first generation that may actually end up with a lower standard of living than their parents. On average, we graduate college with $20k of debt and enter into an outsourced, service-industry dominated economy in which health care has been decoupled from employment. For those of us who don't make it into college, it is becoming near impossible to earn a middle class living with just a high school diploma.

The issue is timely, to say the least.

Andy Stern (SEIU) and Katrina Vanden Heuvel (The Nation) delivered the keynote addresses (morning and afternoon, respectively), and there were some truly informative panels including:

• Paycheck Politics - covering the quality of jobs available to young people in the New Economy
• Getting a Life - affordability barriers to the necessities of a middle class life
• Race, Ethnicity, and Economic Destiny - exploring the intersection of race and class among Millennials.
• I myself sat on a panel entitled "We're Broke and We Vote - about youth GOTV efforts and the economy as an election issue for Millennials.

I won't sum up all the panels. CSpan was filming live all day and you can watch each panel by clicking the links above, or by going here. There were a few big takeaways from the day that I would like to mention:

• There was a lot of talk about recognizing that class is what divides us even more than race - particularly as a movement. Issues like green jobs, which can lift up poor Latinos and African Americans in inner cities, or poor rural whites equally, can create new ties and partnerships between traditionally disparate groups.
• tThe conference was full of college students and recent grads. Young people's debt burden is "pricing them out' of the nonprofit sector and traditional organizing jobs within the movement, but there are a variety of more professional roles that attendees can aspire to that will allow them to do well by doing good. The movement needs lawyers, researchers, economists and more just as much as good organizers. There needs to be a broader understanding of how this work will happen and where we can all fit in.
• Most importantly (at least to me since it came up numerous times during the voting panel), we need to think more about what happens on November 5th. All of our energies seem focused on getting out the vote. This is a good - and as I've noted a very new - thing. But the off year of the cycle (2009) is a very big open question. How will we shift gears from GOTV to policy? How will we make sure that the candidate fulfills their promises to young voters and institutes a Better Deal for "Generation Debt?" I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's pretty clear that we're going to need to have a large conference of some kind in which the issue orgs and the GOTV orgs all get in the same room and work out some kind of plan.

On this last point, I thought that the big elephant in the room that no one was really talking about was the Obama campaign, particularly in light of the recent post by Matt Stoller outlining how Obama is short-circuiting the influence partisan, "outside organizations" on the process and is in a position to rewire the Democratic Party in his own image.

Sen. Obama probably has a bigger "youth" list than all the youth vote and youth policy organizations out there combined. What does he plan to do with it after election day - win or lose? How will he keep his Millennial Movement engaged in effective action beyond his election towards the accomplishment of real progressive policy goals? We have no idea because his campaign won't tell us.

Clearly we need to start planning for "Day One" ourselves, and judging by the energy in the room there are lots of people itching to get started. When that time comes, hopefully Sen. Obama will join us and won't let all that energy and potential activism go to waste once the campaign reaches its end.

One final thought. A few weeks ago I attended a similar conference by the Roosevelt Institution called A New New Deal (again, the economy is the # 1 issue for young voters and reestablishing the kind of social safety net that gave our parents and grandparents a leg up into the middle class weighs heavily on everyone's mind). Despite the similar topics, these were two very different conferences. Roosevelt's conference felt very much an insider event. A number of stars from the Democratic economic policy apparatus were in attendance and the audience was composed of as many policy wonks as young, aspiring policy wonks. It was a networking event for young people to climb into the circles of Democratic public policy. Yesterday's event was a much more hands-on, learning experience for young activists whose constituents face economic hardships. With a 1 hour "Roots Camp" at the end of the day, it was very much a pragmatic conference. I suspect that both are needed if we are to create a leadership pipeline for young policy types and create quality organizing campaigns around the issues. But it is worth noting the difference between the two.