Craig Berger's blog

Yesterday, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, of NDN fame, presented the findings of an online poll they conducted from June 1-7. The report, "The Changing Coalitions of 21st Century America," explores how the parties are adapting to rapidly changing demographics in America.

The data affirms what we have been noting for some time now.

While most Americans continue to favor activist government focused on promoting economic equality, those components of the electorate that identify most strongly with the Democratic Party are much more likely to want to see that approach reflected in legislation on such issues as health care, education, and off shore drilling. In addition, while both party's coalitions want action on the economy and financial reform, only major groups within the GOP coalition are strongly concerned with reducing government spending and the federal debt. These deeply felt differences are likely to be reflected in the 2010 midterm elections campaigns and on Capitol Hill in the years ahead.

Democrats retain a clear lead in both party identification and the congressional generic ballot that is virtually unchanged from the lead they held in the project's first survey conducted in February 2010. The core groups of the Democratic Party's new coalition - Millennials, African-Americans, Hispanics - remain solidly Democratic in both their partisan identifications and vote intentions, but the current lack of political intensity among these Democratic groups give Republicans an opening to make gains in 2010.

In short: the Democratic coalition has the demographic trends in their favor, but whether or not they can effectively mobilize these voters in a hostile environment is the big question.

Morley and Mike's presentation can be found here and the executive summary is here.

I start this post hoping that most of us can agree that contemporary political discourse is problematic. The oversized egos of television and radio commentators and news personalities, accompanied by the narcissistic and moralistic tone of most politicians, leaves us with lots of posturing and little change.

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter in the Bush administration and a current columnist in the Washington Post, decided to wade into this topic in his latest piece. Gerson sees discourse breaking down into two parties: the Ugly Party and the Grown-Up Party. In differentiating the two, Gerson rightly attributes all dialogue which wishes death upon people or likens them to a disease to the Ugly Party. For instance, Ann Coulter's lamentation that the terrorists did not also hit the New York Times building, or that Mike Malloy, a radio talk show host, stating that he believed Glenn Beck should blow his brains out. I have no problem with Gerson's scolding here -- we need more of it.

I do have a problem with his alternative, however. Gerson explains the Grown-Up Party:

The alternative to the Ugly Party is the Grown-Up Party -- less edgy and less hip. It is sometimes depicted on the left and on the right as an all-powerful media establishment, stifling creativity, freedom and dissent. The Grown-Up Party, in my experience, is more like a seminar at the Aspen Institute -- presentation by David Broder, responses from E.J. Dionne Jr. and David Brooks -- on the electoral implications of the energy debate. I am more comfortable in this party for a few reasons: because it is more responsible, more reliable and less likely to wish its opponents would die.

Sounds nice, right? My problem is that Gerson's explanation of the Grown-Up Party is too regressive for my taste. If we are trying to engage youth in politics, especially optimistic Millennials, we certainly should be doing what we can to rid the political environment of divisive rhetoric (as well as produce a title less insulting to youth democrats -- little "d"). But we should not be doing it at the expense of access and opportunities for participation.

Gerson's "seminar" places the experts at the center of the discourse suggesting that they should be controlling this country's political discussion, not its citizens. Gerson anticipates this criticism, noting this approach's reputation as "stifling creativity, freedom and dissent." Unfortunately, Gerson does little to soothe these concerns.

While I appreciate Gerson's critique of the status quo and his call for a better political environment, I regret his admitted lack of creativity in constructing an alternative. This Grown Up Party, in throwing the proverbial baby (New Media) out with the proverbial bathwater (an indecent discourse), also squanders opportunities, to use Gerson's language. Today's youth are coming of age with heaps of learned technological experience, and while many online communities have extremists, just like offline communities do, the Internet can be used productively and responsibly and should not simply be dismissed.

I propose a hybrid of Gerson's approach and the status quo. Yes, our culture is poisonous, with dangerous rhetoric flowing into our discourse. The resulting animosity begets more nasty language and leads to personal attacks that immediately shut down productive policy discussion and the free exchange of thoughts and ideas. Instead of attacking New Media, perhaps we educate young adults. Using deliberation in high school classrooms, for example, teaches students civic knowledge, critical thinking, and communication skills. This pedagogy could replace the boring overhead projector and transparencies many of us experienced in social studies courses. Maybe we simultaneously empower young adults, ensuring they understand that politics is not merely a negative, episodic adventure, but an ongoing marathon in which they can easily participate.

Dualistic thinking is dangerous, and employing it in this context threatens our ability to fully capitalize on the opportunities present in our citizenship. We need healthy rhetoric in our political discourse, but we need it to accompany expanded participation in the conversation, not eschew it.

As the President prepares to speak to the nation Thursday regarding the need for comprehensive immigration reform, NAFSA: Association of International Educators has launched a campaign called "Reaching for a DREAM: Support a Path of Hope for Undocumented Students."

The campaign calls on as many people as possible to contact Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and ask her to make "deferred action" the formal policy for DREAM Act-eligible international students. If "deferred action," now only instituted on an ad hoc basis, was to become formal policy, students would be able to stay in the United States to pursue their studies without fear of deportation while Congress debates the DREAM Act.

At Connecting Our World, NAFSA's online community in support of international education, advocates can send a message directly to the Secretary, tweet about the campaign, and share their story with the community.

Props to NAFSA for launching this campaign. Here's to hoping that Congress gets this thing done.

To follow up on this weekend's post regarding the GOP's dire long-term political future, here's a gem from former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), defending Gen. Stanley McChrystal:

"Obama is detached from the American experience. He just doesn't identify with the average American because of his own background. Indonesia and Hawaii," said Santorum. "His view is from the viewpoint of academics and the halls of the Ivy league schools that he went to and it's not a love of this country and an understanding of the basic values and wants and desires of its people. And as a result of that, he doesn't connect with people at that level."

No word on what Santorum defines as the "average American experience."

Santorum's not on his own here. As the GOP continues to be hostile to the diversity that forms the heart of the American story (either implicitly or explicitly), it is rejecting the citizenship and cultural heritage of wide swaths of the Millennial generation's experiences with this country.

UPDATE: More craziness: John Boehner's turn.

"They're snuffing out the America that I grew up in," Boehner said. "Right now, we've got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history. There's a political rebellion brewing, and I don't think we've seen anything like it since 1776."

David Brooks argued the other day that Stanley McChrystal's now-famous comments should have never been made public. Brooks laments the inability of today's elite figures to "kvetch," to blow off some steam with underlings in response to their tough lives.

General McChrystal was excellent at his job. He had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond. He set up a superb decision-making apparatus that deftly used military and civilian expertise.

But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.

By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.

The reticent ethos had its flaws. But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.

I understand Brooks's argument here. And I do think "gotcha journalism" is a major fault of today's politics, dissuading many an ideal public servant from running for office or even getting involved.

However, Brooks' line of thinking in this context is problematic. First, it is a symptom of another large problem with our politics: the media's cozy relationship with those in office. As Andrew Sullivan wrote this week (as well as Frank Rich today), it's problematic we did not hear more about McChrystal sooner. Though Brooks tries to get away with painting McChrystal as an angel who enjoyed great relations with the White House, that's not the case. And despite McChrystal's penchant for risky behavior, Obama continued to provide him with all he could want.

That leads me to the second problem with Brooks' column. The public has a right to know when a general jeopardizes a mission funded by their tax dollars, especially a mission that is a part of the longest war in this country's history. This wasn't run of the mill complaining, either. McChrystal again challenged the authority of the President's administration, and he did so with considerable audacity.

Brooks seems to be doing the compartmentalizing Harry Boyte, from yesterday's post, rejects. Brooks assumes that because we're all fallible as humans, we all should be given time to indulge our inner monster, to spew a few choice words to no particular audience. Unfortunately, we don't live in that vacuum. Everything is political, whether we like it or not.

But in this particular situation, Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter who embarrassed the traditional media, did the right thing. McChrystal's comments illustrated a pattern of behavior that undermined civilian authority over the United States military. Hastings did not make it impossible for Obama to retain his general, as Brooks argues; McChrystal did it himself.

DemfromCT over at DailyKos has an interesting interview with Ruy Teixeira, an expert on political demographics and a Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and Center for American Progress and author of the recently published working paper titled, Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties.

While you should go check it out in its entirety, here are the main points, which should be very familiar to faithful Future Majority readers.

• The Republican base is shrinking. The white, working class vote, a demographic that you hear all the "smart" television personalities talk about, is vanishing before our eyes, notes Teixeira. We heard a lot about this particular voting bloc in the 2008 Democratic primary, especially in the Ohio, Texas, and Mississippi contests. Yet, those states, like everywhere else, are seeing the size of this group diminish.
  

  In Texas, the white working class share is down 17 points, with minorities up 9 points and white college graduates up 7 points. In Ohio the share of white working-class voters fell by 15 points between 1988 and 2008 while white college graduates rose by 8 points and minorities by 6 points. Even a state like Mississippi has seen a huge drop in the white working class vote since 1988 (down 21 points).

• Millennials continue to decidedly identify with the Democratic Party. Though we continue to battle the "conventional wisdom" that youth always become more conservative with time, Teixeria corrects this, pointing to multiple studies that show partisan loyalty increases with age. And why would Millennials be attracted to the GOP anyway? In supporting the oppressive Arizona immigration law, continuing to treat gay people as if they are not human, and acting as if government has no redeeming value, it is almost as if the Republican Party is running away from our generation (you know, like Mark Kirk).
• To continue to build a long-term political advantage while championing good policy, the Democrats need to provide an alternative to Arizona's SB 1070, getting behind comprehensive immigration reform. Polling shows that the Arizona legislation is popular, but so is a description of a fairer comprehensive reform, in which the federal government strengthens border security and investigates employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants. These undocumented workers currently living in the United States would be required to register with the federal government, have criminal background checks, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for U.S. citizenship (84 percent of those supporting the Arizona law support this alternative). For the Democrats to put forth a strong alternative to the GOP-backed position, they would be strengthening their attachments with already friendly Latino voters, and they also would be enhancing their stature as a party that can solve our larger problems.

The writing is on the wall. Despite the gloomy outlook for the midterms at this point, there are quite a few promising long-term trends for the party. Yet, in order for these to mean anything, we must go all out, institutionalizing peer-to-peer registration efforts. Luckily the DNC recently unleashed their voter registration strategy for the midterms, which significantly targets young voters and minority voters, a large chunk of the President's and the Democrats' base.

And while we face some short-term stress in 2010 while looking at some friendly long-term trends, the GOP is in the opposite situation. While the Tea Party continues to drum up conservative resistance to Obama and the Democrats (occasionally attracting attention for racist behavior), they are moving in the wrong direction of where they need to be to have any influence on the Millennial vote in the long-term. With Millennials forming about 40 percent of the electorate (and 44 percent of the generation identifying as a minority) in 2020, they form the anchor of this country's electoral future; meanwhile, the GOP can't seem to break away from the Tea Party, which actively resists a move toward the center.

For further reading, check out Teixeira's white paper (linked above) and read the reviews by Tom Schaller for FiveThirtyEight.com and Ed Kilgore at the Democratic Strategist.

As the Senate paralyzed itself yet again this week, refusing to allow an up and down vote for a crucial extension of unemployment compensation, Harry Boyte's op-ed in the Pioneer Press this week calling for a new view of government takes on heightened relevance.

The expert-knows-best culture has spread across Minnesota in recent years, weakening civic life. Local businesses have been replaced with giant box stores. Schools have redefined students as consumers. The local YMCA traded community problem-solving efforts for racket ball courts.

But there are signs of discontent with this state of affairs, and the time may be ripe for change. Research by the think tank Demos has found that the liberal customer-service framework does not work, especially with swing and independent voters. When people are treated as consumers, they are likely to become angry shoppers, not citizens concerned with the commonwealth.

Demos also found that an alternative framework of government as a meeting ground to solve problems generates far more positive sentiments.

Such findings suggest rebirth in the Minnesota tradition of citizen partnership with government. Minnesota Democratic leaders as well as Republicans like Anderson and Quie, once understood the importance of such partnership, and saw it rooted in locally owned businesses, VFW halls, farmer cooperatives, union locals, schools and many other settings.

Whether it's in Minnesota or across the country, as long as we sit on the sidelines attributing expertise to many of those in office, who continue to screw things up, we already lose. Boyte notes correctly that Lincoln's "for the people" quote in the Gettysburg Address included "of the people" and "by the people" as well.

In order to build bridges to our government and our elected officials, our generation must figuratively and literally go to where they are. We must root one end of the bridge in their territory by engaging them in conversations, repeatedly contacting their office on important votes.

We must also remember that politics is never a private matter. Ignore the bit you learned about politics being one of those taboo issues not to be touched in polite company. Following this advice ignores the reality that everything in our society is political. We must not be willing to reach out to our peers, just as we reach out to our public officials, demanding their attention on important, public issues.

It is only through these partnerships that we can begin to solve the myriad problems facing us.

Two voter-purge programs have now been put to rest now that the state of Michigan has agreed to stop unlawfully disfranchising thousands of Michigan voters (many of these voters being college students). The agreement ends a legal battle commenced in September 2008 when organizations like the Advancement Project, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Michigan and the law firm of Pepper Hamilton LLP on behalf of the United States Student Association Foundation (USSAF), ACLU of Michigan and Michigan State Conference of the NAACP all filed suit against the state.

“This is a true victory for Michigan voters,” said Bradley Heard, a senior attorney with Advancement Project. “Voter-removal procedures like those at issue in this lawsuit, which allow eligible and registered voters to be suddenly stricken from the rolls without notice, are bad for democracy. We are happy that the state of Michigan finally agreed to right these wrongful practices.”

Michigan’s voter-purge programs disfranchised Michigan voters with out-of-state driver’s licenses or voter-identification records associated with incorrect mailing addresses.

Many of these out-of-state driver's license issues and incorrect address problems occur when non-Michigan college students relocate to go to school within the state. Though this makes them a legal resident, the Michigan voter removal program ignored that.

Michigan’s voter-removal programs had a particularly detrimental impact on students and minority and low-income communities. These populations tend to be more transient and to live in multi-family housing or in dormitory settings where mail can be unreliable and unpredictable. Students often have driver's licenses from different states than where their colleges are located.

“This ruling ensures that, despite the transient lifestyle of college students, they will continue to have an influential voice in the electoral process," said Gregory Cendana, President of USSAF.

Props to Cendana and the organizations fighting this unlawful behavior. This is the kind of injustice that a healthy progressive youth movement can eliminate. Though it took nearly two years, students and low-income voters in Michigan just had some of their rights restored.

USA Today/Gallup released results of a poll this morning showing support for health care reform remains steady among Americans – 49 percent to 46 percent, an increase of 4 percent since April -- while support among young Americans (18-29 years old) has increased.

From the poll:

Say Congress passing Affordable Care Act was a Good Thing:

• 57 percent of young adults age 18 to 29 – up 7 percent since April; 40 percent disagree
• 51 percent of Americans age 50 to 64 – up 7 percent since April; 44 percent disagree
• 49 percent of Americans age 30 to 49; 43 percent disagree.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein concludes that "it does seem we're looking at a trend…it does show support rising and opposition falling."

And the Republicans want to repeal this? Bad move.

Matt Bai's piece in the New York Times Magazine chronicles the emerging tensions between the White House and the Congress as they strategize for the 2010 mid-terms. Within the piece, Bai discusses the generational dynamic at play as the DNC (what is now the Obama-backed OFA) is pushing congressional candidates (against their wills) to make their pitches to voters normally perceived as unreliable.

...The lesson that Plouffe and his operation took away from the dismal 2009 elections is that Obama can act like a matchmaker of sorts, introducing the party’s candidates to new voters and vouching for their intentions, but it’s only going to matter if the candidates themselves embrace the so-called new politics. What that means, practically speaking, is that the White House is urging candidates to divert a fair amount of their time and money — traditionally used for buying TV ads and rallying core constituencies — to courting volunteers and voters who haven’t generally been reliable Democrats.

This is not what members of Congress or their campaign managers are trained to do, and it has created something of a cultural chasm between the White House and the party apparatus. There is a strong generational component here. With some exceptions, Obama’s passion for organizing finds more enthusiasm among candidates closer to the president’s age and newer to politics (candidates like Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado), while older Democrats have a harder time imagining that a bunch of volunteers and a dozen virtual town-hall meetings are going to matter more than labor endorsements and some killer 30-second spots...

[...]

By Democratic Party standards, this is a relatively muted internal disagreement. But it nonetheless points to the emergence of rival schools of thought within the party when it comes to Obama’s importance as a party leader. Some see him as having transformed both the electorate and the nature of campaigning in what could be a lasting and fundamental way, meaning that things are possible now — both in terms of liberal governance and winning elections — that did not seem possible before. Others view 2008 mostly as a cathartic election that had more to do with conditions in the country than with Obama’s peculiar magic, and they don’t think the party should assume that there are millions of new voters out there who can be tapped if you just knock on the right doors. These two worldviews coexist uneasily among the party’s elected officials and candidates, young and old, in every part of the country — sometimes just hours apart.

The congressional camp within the Democratic Party reflects the status quo that continues to claim that new voters -- including young voters -- don't vote and are apathetic. What they refuse to understand is that we are civically active; we do vote when we are genuinely engaged in a conversation about issues through a medium relevant to our lifestyles. These labor endorsements and "killer" television ads are almost as boring as network news these days. Instead, we should be investing in the peer-to-peer voting drives and organizing work that have already increased the youth vote for three straight elections. From Mike Connery's Journalist Cheat Sheet:

Tip #5: If you insist on reporting the same old story that young people vote at a lower rate than the rest of the electorate, then you have an obligation to also inform your readers/viewers/listeners that youth turnout has increased for 3 years straight, and is at its highest level in over a decade. You also have an obligation to note that in 2006 the youth vote swung a number of important federal races, including pushing Democratic candidates Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Joe Courtney over the top.

Source: Historical voting patterns (pdf), Impact on Races (pdf), Midterm Turnout (pdf).

Tip #6: If you are going to report on low-turnout among young voters, you also have an obligation to note that young people face more barriers to voting than do older voters. We move more frequently, requiring us to re-register sometimes on a yearly basis, on campus we face a lack of voting machines and long lines, and many university towns actively discourage and try to prevent students from voting.

Source: League of Conservation Voters Education Fund

Tip #7: There are simple fixes to the problems outlined in #6 – election day and same-day registration and mail-in voting are two such fixes that can be applied at the state level. These have been proven to bump youth turnout by as much as 14%!!!!! It would be nice if you reported on them occasionally.

Source: CIRCLE

Tip #8: Young voters will participate if they are asked to, particularly by a peer. This is proven. But the system stopped asking long ago by removing resources and manpower away from young voter outreach. Only in recent years have organizations – and a few campaigns – begin to reengage young voters in any serious way. The result is three straight years in which youth turnout increased. In plain terms: young voters are not apathetic. Rather, the system fails to engage them in any meaningful way.

Source: Young Voter Strategies, Voter Mobilization Tactics

Tip #9: Stop reporting on “celebrity activism” as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the youth vote. This is a Boomer and Gen-X construction created for a broadcast TV culture of the 80s and 90s. Today’s young voters are interested in peer-to-peer communication and networked action. From Facebook to on the ground, peer to peer organizing at club, bars, barbershops and apartment canvassing, the most effective, and sustainable developments in youth organizing in the past five years have come from new, grassroots organizations doing peer to peer organizing on the ground or online. Stop reporting on celebrities and start doing the work of talking to and reporting on the activities of these organizations. Good places to start include:

Forward Montana, The Oregon Bus Project, New Era Colorado, Young Democrats of America, and The League of Young Voters.

There are many more, but let’s do this in baby steps. Start with these and we’ll work out way deeper into youth organizing together.

Young voters can be courted; it just takes some courage and genuine effort. The Speaker's office and legislators like Congressman George Miller (D-CA) have been great on youth policy issues, but in purely electoral terms, the Congressional campaign plan outlined above is disappointing. While OFA doesn't have a pristine record with young voters, they apparently get it more than many of the old guard congressmen and congresswomen.

UPDATE: An example of Congress not understanding youth priorities or youth culture today? Ike Skelton, a longtime Democratic congressman, provides one:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that he thought the military should keep its ban on openly gay service members in part because he did not want to open a national discussion about homosexuality. The chairman, Representative Ike Skelton, a conservative Missouri Democrat, said he thought the debate in Congress over the proposed repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy might force families to explain homosexuality to their children. “What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?” Mr. Skelton asked reporters at a news media breakfast.