Millennial Progressivism and the Horse Race: How Much Change is Enough?

The today's Chicago Tribune is running an in-depth look at the Obama policy team today, leading with the observation that a not-insubstantial portion of campaign's advisors are old-hands from the Clinton Administration. That would seem to run counter to the campaigns' rhetoric that Obama brings change and an outsider perspective.

Barack Obama's presidential bid may have a well-cultivated insurgent feel, as the candidate both benefits and suffers politically from a relatively thin record of experience in Washington.

But the swelling team of policy advisers who have joined his campaign shows a politician grounded in his party's intellectual mainstream and well-connected within the capital's Democratic establishment.

Now, I believe that young voters are intelligent and informed, but I don't expect that they are also policy wonks. Knowing who's on a candidate's policy team is pretty esoteric stuff, even for the most hard core political junkie or activist. But I have to ask, would Obama's young supporters even care about this if they knew? I don't think so.

Young voters are progressive. Of that, there is no doubt (just look at my post from this weekend if you need a refresher). But just how progressive are they, and how is that manifesting itself in this election cycle? How deep are those commitments and what is required of candidates to meet them?

Recently, Young Voter Strategies released new polling data (pdf) noting that Barack Obama was the #1 choice of 33% of 18-29 year olds in the Democratic primary. Yet when 2nd and 1st choices were tallied, the more centrist (and certainly inside-the-beltway) Hillary Clinton surged into the lead among young voters, with 48% of the vote compared to Obama's 43%. Now, this is a bit of a leap since we don't know from what candidates Clinton and Obama are pulling their second-tier support, but if almost half of all young voters are happy with a Clinton nomination as their second choice, it doesn't seem to far fetched to concluded that young supporters wouldn't much care that Obama has built a centrist and even somewhat entrenched policy apparatus stocked with ex-Clintonites.

There are likely a number of factors at play here. I don't think you can discount the fact that both Obama and Clinton would break significant glass ceilings. This country is still really racist and sexist. It might very well be that having a black man or a woman be president is significant enough in and of itself to satisfy the desire for change among large swaths of the youth electorate. That both candidates are Democrats who are likely to significantly shift American policy also helps, but the degree to which that policy is shifted doesn't seem to matter. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that Dodd and Edwards, two of the more progressive candidates in the race who are taken seriously by the media and the political class (sorry Kucinich), get almost no support as first choice candidates from young voters.

So just how progressive are young voters? In poll after poll, they are supportive of Democratic policies, but maybe that is not a commitment that extends all the way down to the nitty gritty at the policy level. In a two-party system, you only get an either/or choice, and when it comes down to brass tacks, the policies of the major Democratic candidates are very similar compared to the GOP alternative. All are promising some form of universal health care coverage, better environmental stewardship, a restoration of civil liberties, and a significant draw-down in troops levels in Iraq. Perhaps a shift in power from one party to another, and a shattered glass ceiling that has long held back sidelined groups like African Americans and women, is enough change to satisfy the Millennial voter.