Craig Berger's blog

An interesting blog post at Newsweek's "The Gaggle":

The other issue, I think, is the way health insurance has been sold and positioned. In general, we talk about the outcome of health care reform in two ways: the micro impact on individual citizens and the macro impact on health care costs. Neither has struck a cord with Millenials [sic]. Like I said, the individual impact strikes us as unimpressive. The large-scale economic outcomes take a lot of effort to understand. They seem distant, probably to Millenials [sic] and the rest of the population, and easy to lose sight of in a Twitter-size news cycle.

Instead, the more attractive part of health insurance for Millennials, these poll numbers indicate, is the moral underpinnings of the bill: that all Americans ought to have access to insurance, that this is our responsibility as a nation. While 47 percent of Millennials generally support health care reform, 70 percent support the idea that all Americans should have access to affordable health insurance, the highest number for any demographic. Maybe we’re just young and idealistic, maybe we have genuinely different viewpoints than our parents; either way, that provision really strikes a cord with younger Americans. But the bill has not been sold that way--if it had, perhaps more Millennials would strongly support health care reform instead of the kind of, sort of support we see now.

Yes, the expertise gap is tough for us to navigate. But I think what's worse for youth engagement is the heavy presence of traditional Washington behavior. Untelevised hearings. Deals behind closed doors. Inaccessible jargon. A lack of political courage. All of these elements and more preclude young people from focusing on the moral principle at stake.

We live in the United States -- all of us should should have access to affordable health insurance. But when the discussion is misrepresented, shrouded in Washington-speak and timidity, we lose that right to health care and we (young people) understandably lose patience with the process.

This week Chris Bowers over at Open Left predicts that the voters upon which Barack Obama depended in 2008, a large bloc being young voters, will fail to turn out this November. Bowers grounds his argument in what he calls "long-term civic trends" that show "drop-off voters" participating in presidential elections and failing to go to the polls just two years later. Bowers contends that the importance of young voters to Obama's coalition will exacerbate this situation come Election Day, as youth consistently form a smaller share of the vote in midterm elections compared to presidential elections (for information on "share" versus "turnout," please read the first bullet point here). Thus, Bowers calls for a strategy of persuasion as opposed to mobilization.

I disagree with Bowers. In covering youth political participation, one quickly identifies the chicken-egg nature of the topic. Politicians and parties believe youth cannot and will not be politically engaged, so many of the ads, phone calls, and messages are tailored to older voters, alienating the youth demographic. When youth do not turn out after politicians largely ignore them, the media, pundits, parties, and candidates express disappointment in young voters for failing to engage. Thus, youth naturally view electoral politics with cynicism.

In unquestionably consuming the line that youth won't turn out without unearthing why this might be, we perpetuate the cycle. In a tough political environment thus far, with 435 House races this November and over 30 Senate campaigns, it's going to be easy this cycle for timid and weak Democratic incumbents and their consultants to stick their fingers in their mouths, hold them out in front of them, and avoid making tough decisions. And with the GOP disgusting young voters, Republicans have little incentive to target youth. Accepting this as inevitability is what gets us to this situation in the first place, because it doesn't shine the light on the ineffectiveness of this stale strategy. The result is an electorate that's older, more moralistic, and polarized. Boomer-like ideological strength is at the heart of midterms, not Millennial problem solving. Thus, I heartily disagree with Bowers' resigned argument because it reflects the hegemony that silences youth and leads to more of the same in our political dialogue, which we can no longer afford.

Perhaps if candidates were to truly engage youth in medium (use up-to-date technological communication) and message (a strong, progressive discussion of the economy, higher education, climate crisis, and national service framed in a problem-solving approach) and possess a strong record of consistent conviction, they might respond. Furthermore, youth suffer from a lack of access, not apathy. When young people are registered to vote, they turn out. For example, according to the US Census, 81.6% of all registered young voters actually cast a ballot in 2004. That is on par with other portions of electorate.

It's not going to be easy. It's harder to register/inspire a younger group of people to vote when they are collectively facing over 500 decisions without a headlining candidate/campaign at the top. But it won't be as hard if we're willing to challenge our candidates' conventional campaign strategies.

Bowers is right on one thing -- young voters do form the heart of Obama's base. Unlike Bowers, though, I argue that 2010 is so important, our issues are so pressing, and our demographic is so critical to Democratic success that there's no choice but to view this as a mobilization struggle. Political interest is at an all-time high among youth; to capitalize, we must recalibrate our campaigns to attract the support of young people.

Peter Levine asks this question in tracing the evaporation of the active citizenship theme from the campaign to the White House.

Service and transparency are not nearly "edgy" enough; there is no fight in them. People are angry - from the Tea Partiers to MoveOn. When citizens try to solve serious social problems, they identify enemies. They do not just hold hands and serve together; they strike back at those whom they perceive as threats. "Active citizenship" reduced to non-controversial "service" or downloading government data completely loses touch with the legitimate anger of the American people.

The White House chose to make health care its major focus and included no aspects of civic engagement in the deliberations about the bill, in its advocacy for the legislation, or in the design of the statute. There could have been real public discussions, instead of sham "Town Meetings" that were really speeches by politicians with time for Q&A. Progressive volunteers could have been encouraged to conduct face-to-face dialogues in their communities and to form relationships with one another (instead of merely finding themselves on the receiving end of an email list). The legislation could have included health co-ops as an experiment in engaging citizens in policy.

As Levine notes to close out his piece, the climate legislation, currently "stuck in the Senate," makes for a good starter kit for this new, authentic political dialogue, in which the grassroots is mobilized and the American people are asked to participate. It's audacious in that it could shift the debate away from special interests (or at least make their involvement more transparent), and it could restore more faith in our government. An addendum might be asking C-SPAN to cover these dialogues across America and any administrative meetings in Washington. Obama has already admitted he messed up by not involving C-SPAN in health care discussions.

For those of you undergraduate students looking for a great summer internship, check out The Roosevelt Institute Campus Network's posting below:

The Roosevelt Institute Campus Network’s Summer Academy combines a full-time, paid internship with a training curriculum and weekly networking events as part of an integrated program of leadership development. Our objective is to bring new, diverse, and progressive voices into the political process, and we pair these young leaders with progressive partner organizations that will task them with substantive, policy-related work. This highly selective program is open to all undergraduate students and runs for ten weeks, from June 3rd to August 12th, 2010. If you are interested in applying, visit the Roosevelt website. The deadline to apply is February 26th.

This opportunity is great in that 1.) it is with a great youth-driven organization; 2.) it's a terrific opportunity to get your progressive voice heard; 3.) it's an awesome chance to build relationships with colleagues in other progressive organizations and work with them to advance progressive policies.

Here is the application on their website.

NAFSA announced this week that it has named a winner in its Student Diplomat Video Contest. Here's the release:

Winner Named in Student Diplomat Video Contest

Study Abroad Experience Inspires a Recent Graduate to Help Local Youth Think Globally

WASHINGTON, January 20, 2010 – NAFSA: Association of International Educators and the Abroad View Foundation are pleased to announce Nicole Barrasse, a recent graduate of Keystone College in Pennsylvania, as the winner of the 2009 Student Diplomat Video Contest. During the fall semester, NAFSA and Abroad View watched as students from across the country showed us how their educational experiences abroad shaped them as global citizens, served as bridges to cross-cultural understanding, promoted peace, or positively impacted the local communities in which they studied. After reviewing dozens of entries and narrowing those down to five finalists, we asked the public to vote. More than 1,300 votes were cast and combined with the votes from an expert panel of judges to select the 2009 Student Diplomat.

Nicole’s video tells an inspiring story of cultural understanding and global connections as she gives us a glimpse into her study abroad experience in the small agricultural village of Ladakh, India. Nicole stayed with a host family in the village and spent her days farming and learning the local language and culture. The cultural understanding that Nicole developed through this experience not only allowed her to learn about the Ladakhi people, but also to communicate to them how much she appreciated their culture and way of life.

Nicole came away from this experience not only knowing much more about sustainable farming and the Ladakhi culture, but also understanding what it means to be a citizen of the world. “Ladakh has not only taught me life lessons, but also what it truly means to be connected to the world around you,” she says in her video.

Nicole is now home in Pennsylvania and plans to start a local effort to inspire youth in her community to think more globally.

The Student Diplomat Video Contest was open to undergraduate students who studied abroad during the fall semester or had recently returned from a study abroad experience. Entrants were asked to focus their short videos on how their study abroad experience helped to advance global understanding. In addition to being named the 2009 Student Diplomat, Nicole will be awarded a cash prize of $300.

To read more about the 2009 Student Diplomat, or to watch her video, visit www.nafsa.org/studentdiplomat.

Here is Nicole's video:

Peter Daou's piece on the Huffington Post today argues that Democrats have hurt themselves by creating the convergence of the extreme right wing and progressive activists and bloggers. Governing from a lack of grounded principles, writes Daou, makes the president, and thus Democrats, look weak regardless of the legislation passed.

The half of Peter's argument positing that Democrats whiffed on the decision to legitimize Rush Limbaugh by repeatedly taking him on from the Press Room of the White House is on point. Robert Gibbs ridiculed any little comment Limbaugh (or Beck or Michael Savage or other conservative hacks) made. Daou actually wrote the following back in March.

There's precious little benefit in making Limbaugh more of a central player, in engaging him directly from the White House podium, in raising his stature, in stamping, sealing and approving the years he's spent bashing his political opponents. There was a moment, a brief moment, after Barack Obama was elected president, a moment long gone, where the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity could have become marginalized, bit players rather than media movers and shakers, the detritus of a sorry era. But instead, they have been granted more power -- out of some contrived political calculus. This, at a time when we don't need political calculus, we need single-minded determination to get us out of this economic calamity and to restore sanity to our government.

I agree with Daou, with some additional perspective offered. The Obama campaign came into DC following one of the best campaigns ever run. They were disciplined, they knew their message, and nearly every risk they took played well in the end. Part of their "change" message entailed changing Washington, refusing to get into the trenches against the "vast right wing conspiracy." Reviewing where we were then and where we are now, something obviously pushed the Obama administration off track.

I think Daou makes a strong argument that part of it lies within the Obama administration's decision to attempt to use Limbaugh et al. as their punching bags. But I think we have to zoom out one more level and ask: if Obama and Co. wanted to change the way elections are run, why would they violate their principles on right wing crazies? Attacking a group with such little credibility does little for the change message. The message of unconventional, but actual change transformed into the slimy politics of old.

Furthermore, the Obama administration looks even weaker when we juxtapose their toughness against the extreme right-wing commentators with their mealy-mouthed approach to health care, the agenda item forming the heart of Obama's domestic policy.

There's quite a bit of advice entering the public forum today, so I'll offer my two cents as well. The Democrats need to get back to what works, and that's offering a politics that solves America's problems from a coherent, ideological set of principles. In addition, they need to communicate with their base, especially those young voters who put him over the top in 2008 (and the millions more who will be voting in 2012), to keep them posted on exactly what is going on and how they can help support the Obama agenda moving forward.

The reality is that the Democrats still have 59 seats in the Senate. As Jon Stewart explained the other night, the Democrats still have more seats in the Senate than Republicans had when Bush was able to do whatever the hell he wanted.

As we know, AmeriCorps State and National members face limits in fundraising on the clock. So asking whether or not AmeriCorps members can participate in the extensive fundraising effort underway to benefit Haiti relief is certainly relevant.

Nicola Goren, Acting CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, has stated today that national service members can be allowed to take part in fundraising for the Haiti relief efforts "within certain limits," "supplemental to the core program activity:"

We have been asked whether it is permissible for national service programs to participate in fundraising and other community outreach efforts in support of Haiti earthquake relief. Within certain limits to be discussed with Corporation program officers, it is generally permissible for national service participants to support this activity as supplemental to the core program activity. We are putting together more detailed answers to frequently-asked questions for programs considering ways to contribute to the relief effort, to be posted and updated as needed. Please forward any questions you have to your program officer so that we can provide specific guidance.

It's important to note that AmeriCorps VISTA members are not restricted in fundraising on the clock, as many VISTA positions perform grantwriting and other development activities.

(h/t to The New Service and Service Wire)

I just wanted to pass on a few good reads about the Haiti situation -- not so much the news, but some commentary on how elites, such as the media and organizational leadership (the UN), model institutional racism and classism.

First, Campus Progress published an interesting interview with Dr. Kathleen Tierney, professor of sociology and behavioral science and director of the Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Tierney had some interesting things to say about the behavior of media outlets when reporting on large scale disasters.

And what did the early research discover?

If you go back to the 1950s and you look at some of those writings, a lot of it’s about disaster myths—what people say happens in disasters versus what really happens. What these researchers discovered was that the media—even way back in the 1950s and 1960s—approached huge disasters with certain frames. When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts. And even back then, the looting myth always came to the fore of media reports.

As it has in Haiti.

Yes. For example, the day after this earthquake in Haiti, it was reported that a prison had collapsed and prisoners had gotten away—the presumption being that they had escaped to go and loot. The prisoners didn’t go to check on their mothers or their sisters, they went to loot. And we presumably know this, because they’re bad people, they’re criminals. The bad people frame reached its nadir with Katrina.

It's really rare to gain exposure to a media outlet not run by a multimillion dollar corporation. Consequently, it's even more challenging these days to trust a media outlet's reporting on these larger events. With powerful corporations running these outlets, it's not hard to see how ratings and advertising drive sensationalism in our media. If the story's made more juicy, the idea is that more people tune in. But "juicy" apparently doesn't mean accurate. Tierney explains the looting fallacy the media reported in its coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Do you think that because the victims of both Haiti and Katrina were poor and black, the media approached the stories with a certain perspective?

Definitely. There is an institutionalized racism in the way these poor black disaster victims are treated. The victims of Katrina were treated with so much presumption, as if you could assume they were going to loot, because they were black. Just like we know that the people in Haiti are bad because they’re black. Black men especially are demonized. During Katrina, the media picked up on every rumor—whether it was raped four-year-olds in the Superdome or people shooting each other. Actually, for a paper me and a couple of my graduate students wrote called “Metaphors Matter,” we found some transcripts of TV programs in which members of the media expressed regret. They were saying, “We really blew it during Katrina; we acted on all of these rumors.” I myself was on Jim Lehrer’s show, where they were asking about the looting [in Katrina], and I got into it with a police officer, and he ended up agreeing with me that it was a myth. It’s not real...

This institutionalized fear is also at play in the Haiti earthquake rescue efforts, only it might be a bit less based on race than class. To CNN's credit, it does a good job of shining a light on the questionable behavior of the UN leadership. Last night, a Haitian resident assisting those critically injured in the attack told CNN's Sanjay Gupta that the UN medical personnel had fled, ordered out by UN officials because of safety concerns. A retired Army Lt. General explained what was going on:

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the evacuation of the clinic's medical staff was unforgivable.

"We can't be leaning so much toward security that we allow people to die," he said Saturday.

"Search and rescue must trump security," Honoré said Friday night. "I've never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there."

Honoré drew parallels between the tragedy in New Orleans and in Port-au-Prince. But even in the chaos of Katrina, he said, he had never seen medical staff walk away.

"I find this astonishing these doctors left," he said. "People are scared of the poor."

It's very interesting to me that there's constant talk of the world uniting together to support Haiti, yet the very people charged with the responsibility of assisting the Haitian people bail when they stereotype the poor and imagine the bad things that might happen. In fairness, the rescue teams did return to Haiti this morning as the article noted, but the time they were gone last night is telling. As Dr. Tierney points out in her interview, it invalidates the "We're all Haitians" sentiment. Even though it sounds nice, realism tells us we're not. This fear of the impoverished and subsequent withdrawal from the area by UN forces is a display of cultural ignorance. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something that should be recognized. The reality is that the wide majority of non-Haitians has no clue what it's like to be Haitian, to live in such deplorable conditions.

I'm not writing this because I'm pissed off that this is going on. I simply think it's important that as many people as possible dig deeper than the glossy, convenient stories today's newscasts offer us. There's some compelling sociology and anthropology existing underneath the reporting. Once we become aware of that, I believe we can improve our responses -- both in the rescue work and reporting work -- to similar disasters in the future.

A fantastic paragraph written by Alejandro Ribó from Personal Democracy Forum:

Young Europeans do not want political parties in their lives. Only 4% of young people (15-29 year olds) participate in a political party or trade union (on Euronews (2:02 mark) from Eurostat statistics). This is a clear figure of what young people want or do no want. Political party politicians and their acolytes would quickly blame the education system, capitalism, the television or even the Playstation for the lack of interest in politics of young people. They are blinded by their group thinking and narrow perspective of what politics is. Politics is not only, and not even mainly, about what political parties and their representatives (the so-called "politicians") do. This fact, many people, including young people, know very well. I recommend the party people to go one night around bars in any city or town in Europe, to listen to what people are talking about. They talk about politics beyond political parties and their captive public institutions. They will be surprised to hear that there is political life outside the party. For politics is mainly about people and what they do, and not about organisations of any kind. That is why we need to reform the system to give chances to those who want to talk and participate in politics, but do not want to be captive of an organisation that has its own interests, often different than the interests of the rest of us.

Yes, it's Europe, but it's applicable. This is a reminder Washington needs. Because our political arena is so intensely focused on parties, we lose focus on myriad facets of politics: the people, their needs, the dialogue itself.

We saw the ramifications of this approach in New Jersey and Virginia, as both Democratic gubernatorial campaigns forgot that each political campaign is different with different candidates and different constituencies. Obama didn't win because he made young voters think Democrats were cool; he won because he engaged young voters through his campaign's bridge-building. Youth issues were identified, specific elements of the youth culture - like texting - were embraced, and he informed them he expected them to work not for him, but for their country. When a sitting governor and a gubernatorial candidate fail to do most of this yet expect results because they are Democrats too, they might as well retire. It won't (and it didn't) work.

Underneath all the pithy statements to the press regarding inconsequential events or subjects, the American people converse. Some can't afford health insurance. Some youth, led into college thinking it would lead to success, have graduated and discovered employment is little more than a pipe dream. Many have lost their retirement thanks to the greed of those on Wall Street and their enablers in Washington. Yet who among those "important" people in our system hears this? Judging by their actions, I'd suppose no one.

This restoration of "politics" is one of the main tasks our generation will need to complete. As the excerpt above suggests, the emphasis of politics is people, not organizations. Once we begin associating politics with everyday conversations among everyday people, we'll have a chance to actually improve America.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those in Haiti, those with loved ones in Haiti, and those who are working hard to rescue Haitians following a massive earthquake.