College Republicans

Two things in need of debunking today. First, Sarah informs me that Newsweek reporter Christopher Dickey was on Talk of the Nation today making scurrilous claims about 2004 youth turnout. When a caller asked him about the youth vote and their potential impact in November, here's what he had to say (paraphrase):

Dickey:"No, because young people don't vote"
Talk of the Nation: "Well they sure came out in primaries and caucuses this year"
Dickey: "Well they did but they were so bothered by Bush in 2004 but they failed to elect John Kerry... "

As all of you know, young people increased their vote by 4.3 million and their turnout rose from 40 to 49% over 2000 levels. They were also the only age demographic to vote for John Kerry, favoring the Democrat 54 - 45% over President Bush.

Resting the entire election on the shoulders of a single demographic is a dishonest and unfair analysis. As a friend and colleague of mine likes to say "the youth vote never turns out until they do. And even then it wasn't enough." Damned if you do, damned if you don't, aye Mr. Dickey?

If you have time, write Mr. Dickey a friendly email stating just that. His email address is shadowland [at] newsweek [dot] com.

Second, the delusional College Republicans hang their hat on a single poll by Zogby (of all people) to claim that McCain is starting to take the youth vote away from Obama:

However, a new ATV/ Zogby poll shows that is not the case, and that McCain’s support among young voters is increasing rapidly. The poll says that “McCain gained 20% and Obama lost 16% among voters ages 18-29.” Obama still leads among young voters 49%-38%, but with the way his support has been increasing, we might see McCain becoming very competitive for the youth vote soon.

This poll just goes to show that you shouldn’t believe all the hype. Young people all across America are getting excited for John McCain and the GOP, and will turn out in large numbers for our candidates in the fall.

I wouldn't put nearly so much faith in Zogby. He's notoriously inaccurate and with only ~1,000 respondents in the whole poll, his data on young voters probably has a ridiculously high margin of error. Add in the fact that he used landlines, and so probably missed a lot of low-income and Latino "cell only" users (who are also young) makes me think even less of his results.

And besides. 49% - 38%? If you assume a margin of error of even 5% points, that could put the race for young voters at 54 - 33%, not too far off from the Dem vs. Repub congressional results in the 2006 wave election. I'll take that margin anyday.

It's a bit of a slow news day (unless Obama decides he's going to announce Bayh as his VP in the next couple hours). Most of my reading today has been tech heavy. Here's what I'm looking at:

• At WireTap, Sarah has an excellent piece up about rural broadband.
• For any organizations out there thinking about revamping their website, The Bivings Report will help you figure out if you need a content management system.
• Colin Delaney looks at how CRM software can help legislators better manage constituent relations work.
• Kevin Bondelli notes that the College Republicans are trying to counter program in Denver during the DNC. I've already signed up to receive their text messages and emails. Can progressive youth groups in Denver counter-program their counter-programming?
• PEW finds that McCain's Britney/Paris ads did have some effect after all: they dragged his campaign out of the shadows, giving him parity with Obama in the media coverage for the first time in weeks. I guess in that sense they were effective.

I’ve landed in Nashville. I’m sure I’ll be seeing some of you at the YDA conference tomorrow. For the rest of you, I’ll be live-blogging as I can depending on the WiFi access, which wasn’t all that great at the last YDA conference.

Over at The Next Right (sort of an “Open Left” for conservatives), Ethan Eilon, the Executive Director of the College Republicans is saying some smart things about young people and their relation ship to the GOP. Specifically, he’s calling on the Republican Party to wake up and start reaching out to young voters. The whole thing reads very much like stuff you heard out of Democratic youth circles 4 years ago (and still do today though people seem to be getting the message).

His advice to the party is good and will be familiar to many here: go where young people congregate (online), make an effort to promote effective youth leaders in the party. Address youth issues on the stump, etc. The piece is valuable reading for anyone in either party looking to court young voters. But he’s got two huge problems.

First is the straight up math of what we’re seeing now:

Now, I'm not naive enough to suggest that we make these changes and all of a sudden we are going to win the 18-19 vote 80/20, but we don't need to. We just need to not lose it by that margin, which is exactly what current trends, if left unchecked, will yield.

That’s really the crux of it. There’s very little chance that the Republicans will eat into Democratic gains among Millennials unless the Democrats drop youth outreach altogether and/or severely mess something up policy wise. McCain was probably the best candidate choice for Republicans to make an attempt at courting youth, but eve he won’t be enough and he’ll likely have little influence down-ticket in an environment so toxic to traditional Republicans. The GOP is now in the unenviable position of doing electoral triage for a generation. It’s not about winning anymore; it’s about losing as little (young) blood as possible.

The problem is that the Republican brand is not just tarnished – that in itself is a tough hurdle to overcome (see Democrats: National Security) – but the governing philosophies of conservatism itself are rejected by Millennials. That’s why this is more than a little wishful thinking:

We need to get very serious about making our brand more appealing to young voters, and to get young people bought into the overall concept of what this party is about: limited government and individual liberty. This is not a hard sell, but when the Democrats and their affiliates are outspending us in the demographic by 25 to 1 we are going to have an uphill battle.

Culture war issues promoted by the Republican Party restrict individual liberty (gay rights, right to choose, etc.) in ways that the multicultural, tolerant Millennials find repellent, and limited government is a failed proposition. For a generation that lived through Katrina (and exhortations from Grover Norquist to “drown the government in a bathtub), limited government fails to recognize the responsibility that a government has to its citizens to provide opportunity and security. These will not be winning talking points for reaching out to today’s youngest voters.

Finally, I would just like to point out that the 25 – 1 number cited by Eilon is highly disputable. The College Republicans had well over $20 million in expenditures over the last 4 years: dwarfing spending by the College and Young Democrats (from Open Secrets):

And while it is true that Democrats have focused far more than Republicans on GOTV in recent years, the amount of money going through the conservative leadership pipeline is about 5 – 10 times more than what equivalent progressive organizations have to work with. Campus Progress thoroughly debunked similar claims made by Young America Foundation Alum Jason Mattera earlier this year (below). There are rumors that the CRNC is nothing more than a money funnel conservatives use to direct money to other “grown up” projects, and that the College Republicans actually see little to no of their tens of millions raised/spent. So perhaps there is a grain of truth here, but if so doesn’t that just speak to the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party?

In the words of Stephen Colbert, I give a wag of the finger to Smith College Republicans, who sponsored a virulently anti-gay speaker to come to their school and lecture on the "born gay hoax." Conversely, tip of the hat to Smith students for mounting a spirited protest.

The Smith College Republicans sponsored a speaking event featuring Ryan Sorba, author of the upcoming book The Born Gay Hoax. After about twenty minutes he was forced to abandon his speech after protesters forced their way into the room and drowned him out. I'll send videos and articles when they are available, but I thought I'd give you a heads up and ask you to please cover this action. I couldn't be more proud to be a Smithie right now, after I saw so many amazing young feminists come together to stand up against this asshat and his hate.

Looks like the always obnoxious, controversy-seeking Young America's Foundation was also involved.

Here's some video of the speaker and the ensuing protest.

Hat tip to Pam Spaulding, too, for picking this up.

File this one under "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

The College Republicans have put out a video to promote John McCain as a youth candidate.

What a downer. Watching that, I get the feeling that America is a nation in decline, my generation can't accomplish anything (too few heroes), and the best I can hope for is to "sacrifice" by voting for John McCain. But the video doesn't even leave me with the impression that he can do anything. He may be channeling Winston Churchill in that sound bite, but I get the overwhelming impression, thanks largely to the music, that even though John McCain may not ever give up, he probably won't win either and the best we can hope for is a draw.

I also found the imagery of 9/11 a little offensive. I understand that it wasn't quite being used to fear monger as Republicans have done in the past - it was meant more to invoke the events which inspired a generation to action - but still that's really lacking in good taste.

If this is the best support the College Republicans can offer McCain, we're in great shape.

My second guest post at TPM Cafe is now live - The Conservative Youth Factory. Go check it out.

While you are waiting for today's returns to come in, check out these quick hits.

• At The Albany Project, Phillip Anderson lets us know about two youthful primary challengers to New York State Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver.
• Marc Ambinder lets us know that Hillary Clinton appeared on the Daily Show last night.
• The College Republicans have launched a new website (that looks half decent). The blog seems to consist of repetitive bad puns about Barack Obama's name. Go join THE STORM!
• Rock the Vote alerts me to the fact that Larry King recently ran segments on the youth vote featuring Josh Groban and Wyclef Jean. Why is it that singers who are older than me (Wyclef) or appeal to my mother (Groban) get to speak for my generation? (Not to look a gift-horse in the mouth - celebrity involvement is better than no involvement, and this is really a critique of Larry King, not Rock the Vote, Groban or Wyclef).

Max Blumenthal has a brilliant video calling out College Republicans on their chickenhawk views on the war:

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From his Huffington Post blog:

In conversations with at least twenty College Republicans about the war in Iraq, I listened as they lip-synched discredited cant about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Many of the young GOP cadres I met described the so-called "war on terror" as nothing less than the cause of their time.

Yet when I asked these College Repulicans why they were not participating in this historical cause, they immediately went into contortions. Asthma. Bad knees from playing catcher in high school. "Medical reasons." "It's not for me." These were some of the excuses College Republicans offered for why they could not fight them "over there." Like the current Republican leaders who skipped out on Vietnam, the GOP's next generation would rather cheerlead from the sidelines for the war in Iraq while other, less privileged young men and women fight and die.

Sam Graham-Felsen, who covers the youth movement beat for The Nation, was on the ground at yesterday's NYU protest. Watch his video report or read his thoughts on the day - which echo my own - here on The Nation's blog.

UPDATE - I’m collecting stories from College Democrats for anecdotes to include in my book and to inform my views about the organization, which I did not participate in while I was an undergrad (lo those many years ago). I’m collecting those responses over at Daily Kos, or feel free to email me directly with your personal experiences with the college dems. I want to know:

• Why you did (or did not) participate in the college democrats,
• Whether or not they were effective in your area (be specific), and
• Finally I want to know how you think College Democrats could be improved as an organization.

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As per usual, College Republicans, this time at NYU, have come up with a controversial activity to bump up their visibility and promote one of their issues. Outrage du jour is an illegal immigrant hunt on campus. Kinda reminiscent of Monty Python’s Olympic Hide and Seek final, but a little racist and xenophobic.

NYU Progressives are responding by organizing a counter protest via FaceBook.

I don’t want to beat an old horse here - I’ve criticized college dems a lot - so let me just pose some questions (and I’m genuinely looking for answers). In particular I would love to hear from you if you are a college democrat reading this site:

1. Is this a lose-lose situation for the college dems? Won’t anything we do just give the College Republicans more press and increase the effectiveness of their action?
2. Is that a good enough reason to NOT protest?
3. Why do we always seem to be playing defense? How come the only time I hear about College Democrats is when they are responding to College Republicans? Why don’t I ever hear about Republican responses to College Dem operations?
4. It’s interesting that the College Dems organized via FaceBook, but not the College Republicans. Maybe it really is true that left-leaning folks use social networking more (or more effectively for political ends). Agree or disagree?

A couple months ago I blogged a story by Business Week noting that Democrats far outnumbered Republicans on social networking sites. On FaceBook by as much as 2-1.

A story in The Hotline On Call today calls that into question, noting that - at least among the college crowd - Republicans may be achieving parity, or even surpassing, their democratic counterparts.

Take it with a grain of salt. The information is totally uncited, but its a trend to watch out for (and stop):

But a state-by-state analysis of College Democrats and Republicans on Facebook proved otherwise. There were almost an equal number of organized College Dems and Republicans groups. And of the 66 College groups listed for all 50 states and D.C. (Out of 102, 36 states didn't have a CR or CD), College Republican groups had 70 more people on average than College Democrats.

That difference was in no small part because of the Missouri College Republicans group, which is the largest of its kind in the U.S. with almost 3,000 members. New York College Democrats is the second largest group with 1,100 members.