Barack Obama

Hope you are all having a better holiday than me. I've been sick as a dog and mostly useless since Friday morning.

• CQ Politics profiles Henry Waxman, congressional watchdog and the new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman is likely to be a big ally in passing bold energy policy this year.
• Despite problems with the exit polls, word is trickling in that young voters in Colorado came out big and like their peers in most states, went for Obama.
• Ari Melber at The Nation has a few thoughts about Obama for America 2.0.
• Looking back on Obama for America 1.0, you should read this lengthy interview with campaign manager David Plouffe if you have not already done so.
• At CNN.com, Marian Salzman discusses intra-generational politics within the Baby Boomers, and how Obama represents a changing of the generational guard.
• Meanwhile, the Washington Post delves into generational politics in this piece about the "Madoff Generation."

One of the most-discussed campaign issues is higher education and its soaring cost. The possibilities for campaign rhetoric are numerous; one can discuss the resulting squeeze on middle-class families and their budgets, the inability for institutions to provide an innovative education, or even the skyrocketing interest rates on student loans and sound fairly competent. But unfortunately, developing talking points for any/all of these problems is all the candidates will do.

Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (and former president of the Teachers College, Columbia University), has suggested that, given the recent developments with the economy, the most influential policymakers and decision-makers should attend a higher education summit that picks apart these problems and actually solves them in the form of a contract.

President Obama could convene a summit, bringing together Washington, the states, and colleges and universities to triage the higher education goals he championed during the campaign — and to focus particularly on access and affordability, which are of greatest concern to the largest numbers of ordinary Americans.

Attendees for the summit should represent the full breadth of higher education — two-year and four-year and doctoral institutions, state-supported and independent — as well as the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and the key state education leaders, including governors and state higher education officers. That said, this has to be a select, influential group with the power to effect real change — no more than five per side.

These leaders should examine the real resources available to higher education, not as fat juicy pork but as basic sustenance for the key issues: access and affordability, research, economic development, and global competitiveness. The summit should be structured in three parts: first, a one-day gathering to identify key issues and priorities; second, a one-month period for a staff working group to develop and provide options; and third, a final one- or two-day meeting to reach conclusions.

The outcome of this gathering must go beyond rhetoric. The three sectors must agree to a practical, achievable contract that outlines specific roles for each sector. And all this should happen in the first 100 days of the Obama administration, before revenues are otherwise committed.

I like Levine's proposal, mainly due to the contract at the end. Levine sets up the excerpt I provided above with a detailed explanation of the depressing education policy-making cycle that usually happens in politics. Long story short: the buck gets pushed from the federal government to the state government, from the state government to institutions, and then the institutions to students. The common good, the country, and all of the stakeholders lose.

The contract allows each constituency to take ownership of the provisions and encourages the quick passage of policy and allocation of revenues that we need in order to take serious steps toward solving the gargantuan problem with higher education in our country.

Yes, these big issues are tough to solve, and perhaps there could be a heated conversation or two (or plenty more than that) during these meetings, but this is a much better formula for success than playing the blame game. Kudos to Levine for putting forth an idea that seems to mesh with Obama's philosophy. Let's see if President-elect Obama and Secretary of Education-designate Arne Duncan are paying attention.

I want to follow up on something I had written about last month now that we're a month and a half into the transition.

Barack Obama clearly subscribes to the premise of a "thick democracy," in which citizens form the center of the American political process. Citizens are expected to not only participate by casting a vote, but also by upholding other supplemental responsibilities, such as informing themselves, lobbying their representatives in Congress, (or in their state legislature or city/town council), working for a candidate who represents their views or volunteering for their local board of elections. A government based on an active citizen model also relies on people to to publicly serve through the government itself. Peter Levine wrote about the core principle of previous presidencies last month, and he addressed the incoming Obama presidency:

Barack Obama launched his campaign by addressing citizens' relationship with government and he never stopped talking about it. It even came up in his 30-minute TV ad. I thought this theme was under-reported, even though it is always the most important question about a presidential candidate, and Obama has a distinctive view.

Obama's core idea is that citizens are at the center of politics. Not private individuals, not the government, not politicians, but people working together in public, on public matters. Campaigning in New Hampshire in 2006, he said, "There's a wonderful saying by Justice Louis Brandeis once, that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen. ... All of us have a stake in this government, all of us have responsibilities, all of us have to step up to the plate."

"All of us have a stake in this government ... all of us have to step up to the plate." Obama's approach here, though not as obvious, takes on the form of his "team of rivals" approach to Cabinet-nominating. His rivals in this case are those Americans -- many Reagan Democrats -- who saw the bloated bureaucracy paralyze America in the 1970s. These citizens decided in 1980 that government should exist in the smallest form possible. Obama knew he needed to secure the investment of these cynics, understanding that it's much harder to criticize something when you've been a part of it. On November 4, millions of new voters took the first step in enlisting in Obama's effort. And since then, Obama's message of responsibility and the need to take ownership seems to have worked, albeit an assist from the putrid economy helped:

For those of us finishing school in the next few years, there’s no denying that the U.S. job market has slimmed down–it shed a massive quarter-million private-sector jobs in November. But there is one sector that is beginning to fatten up–and young people are starting to take notice. You can see that the federal goverment is growing by taking a look at the size of the Plum Book, an inventory of positions soon to be vacated by the Bush administration and open for hire. This year, it is about 1,000 jobs heavier than it was in 2004.

Over the past eight years, the government, neither welcoming nor respected among progressive young people, hasn’t been a very attractive prospective employer for them. Understandably, when I’ve asked my friends about where they want to work after graduation, I get the typical responses: an investment firm, a hospital, a university, a small business, etc. Only a few have said they want to be a politician, and fewer still have said they want to be a government agency employee or a committee staffer. Just like my progressive friends, I ran from government as if it were a toxic asset.

But things have changed since Obama’s election and the financial meltdown. Now, it’s private jobs that look poisonous, and public employment that smells sweet.

Just look at all the applications the Obama administration is receiving. Granted, any change in administration is bound to bring in new blood, but this time it is different, no doubt. As of this week, the Obama transition web site, change.gov, has received 331,000 job applications for about 3,000 positions. Compare this to the mere 44,000 political job requests Bush received before he took office in 2001, and the 125,000 Clinton received before he entered the White House in 1993.

Obama's new "core principle" found within his approaching presidency combined with the slumping private sector means that we're going to see a kind of participatory politics Millennial activists like us can only dream of. The next few years (and hopefully decades) will see Americans engaged in rebuilding efforts, sometimes literally through projects like Habitat for Humanity and other service opportunities, and sometimes figuratively, by running for office and staffing local, state, and federal government. This new spirit of civic activism meets its match in the Millennial Generation, which is coming of age at just the right time to lead it.

If the media's looking for a story, they'd be well-served to ignore this Blagojevich mess. The story of the next few decades is found in the approaching perfect storm that's poised to transform our politics, government, and civic health.

This sure is nice. From the Times earlier this week:

Barack Obama is calling for a national day of service to take place on Jan. 19, the federal holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and the day preceding Mr. Obama’s inauguration as president.

[...]

The Presidential Inaugural Committee is putting the wheels for the project in motion with calls and e-mails to national service organizations. The committee is reaching out to organizations of all sizes and ideologies, including faith-based groups, unions and businesses as well as political groups — from Moveon.org on the left to Focus on the Family on the right — to motivate their members to participate.

“While government has an important role to play in helping rekindle our economy and addressing the problems of a distressed nation, President-elect Obama believes each of us, as Americans, have a responsibility to do what we can for our communities and fellow citizens,” said the e-mail, which was signed by the five co-chairmen of the committee.

The e-mail also suggested that the day of service would be the beginning of a larger effort.

“Unlike past calls to service, President-elect Obama will ask Americans to do more than just offer a single day of service to their cities, towns and neighborhoods,” the e-mail said. “He will ask all of us to make an ongoing commitment to our communities. Never has it been more important to come together in shared purpose to tackle the common challenges we face.”

It's encouraging to see Obama put actions behind his rhetoric, and it gives us a sneak preview of the consequences of putting a community organizer in the White House.

I'm interested to see if we might be able to incorporate some kind of Twitter dimension behind this effort. For example, those that are able to serve and bring a mobile device with a data plan can tweet their experiences for others to see. Talk about visualizing the movement -- the "ripples of hope" Kennedy talked about would be on a computer screen.

Wednesday, President Elect Barack Obama announced the new Secretary of Agriculture was to be Governor of Iowa Tom Vilsack. In his press conference Vilsack specifically addressed his hopes for utilizing alternative fuels tapping rural America for ways to combat the climate crisis.

Back in rural Oklahoma I was spending the day with friends and farmers Clay Pope and his new wife Sarah Love-Pope who have taken family farming to a whole new level. As an environmentalists Sarah said she had never considered moving to a farm and putting her money where her mouth was.

"Some of the greatest environmentalists are farmers, because they own the land and they decide how it will be cared for," she said while driving a truck through their fields.

Clay agrees. His work as the director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts has fueled a new incentive for farmers to use techniques that reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. A company could buy carbon credits that could then be passed off to farmers who use these environmentally friendly techniques like no-till which can both protect and repair the land. Pope has said before that carbon can be a cash crop to farmers new and established.

A major problem with rural America continues to be retention of its youth, but the Department of Agriculture has a great opportunity to utilize the existing enthusiasm for Obama to educate youth on ways they can impact their world by investing in the communities they grew up in. Turning environmentalists into farmers is one way youth can help combat global warming but other than the goodness of their heart, there is little in the way for incentives.

The Department of Ag could increase grants and scholarships to youth who seek Ag degrees or the new Associates Degree the Oklahoma State University now provides for Wind Turbine Engineers and Technicians. Additional subsidies could be provided to children who return to take over their family farms is another way. And developing our country's broadband infrastructure to enable youth to have a connectivity to their friends or to entertainment available online.

See my adventure with the Pope's in Loyal, Oklahoma here

I'm encouraged to see Gov. Vilsack take the reigns, but I hope the new Department of Ag makes an effort to reach out to youth to understand more about what is needed to revitalize rural America.

After a year of the likes of MTV's Street Team, Rock the Vote's Rock the Trail, and others harnessing the power of youth reporting on youth, Kids network Nickelodeon has decided to also get into the politics game for some of the younger members of the youth movement who are at the tail end of the Millennial Generation.

Reporters Lily Collins (daughter of singer Phill Collins) and J.J. will be the reporters on the scene at the Presidential Inauguration to report from their perspective.

According to the AP

"Throughout the presidential campaign, Nickelodeon found that interest among its young viewers matched that of the adults. Nick's own online "election" had 2.2 million children voting, with kids supporting Obama over John McCain (51 percent to 49 percent) in a closer margin than the real election.

"We decided to carry it through so that kids would have the full experience of the presidential election," said Marva Smalls, executive vice president of public affairs at Nickelodeon.

The coverage will show up during commercial breaks and, most prominently, during the periods between regular shows in prime-time. Nick will offer a retrospective of past presidents taking the oath of office and interviews with young people about Obama's election and his inaugural address."

The piece goes on to say that because the Obama children are within the Nick demographic the network believes it is a major reason viewers connect with the new First Family so well.

Like others, Nick covered the primaries in some way as well as the conventions and election night, but this seems to be a much more detailed coverage of the events.

Nickelodeon first began to dive into the youth news with Nick News, a series hosted by Linda Ellerbee in 1992 and has consistently brought both global and domestic issues to young viewers and covered them in a way youth can both understand and relate to.

Its always great to see other young reporters who bring youth the news, I hope Nick News covers the youth movement moving forward and the impact those formerly in their demographic then grow into some of the best movers and shakers of our generation.

Regular readers know that Curtis Gans is both a highly respected expert on voter turnout, and something of a crank when it comes to the youth vote. This week, Gans released his report on 2008 voter turnout, and, given his history, I was pleasantly surprised to see him giving young voters some props in contributing to Obama's win.

An analysis of exit polls by Peter Levine and his colleagues at Tufts University, showed that youth turnout (18- 24) increased by one percentage point over 2004 and that both voting and activism was largely by the college educated and resident. This was the same group which, with strong anti-Bush and anti-Iraq war views, participated at a high rate in 2004 and drove overall youth turnout to within three percentage points of the post-18-20 enfranchisement high of 49.6 percent of eligibles voting in 1972. It is likely that the 2004 gain will mean that youth turnout was much closer to the 1972 high in reported turnout when the Census Bureau survey on reported voting is released.

But the more important contribution of the college-educated young was in providing the sinew for Obama’s extensive grassroots organization which was, in part, responsible for the large increase in Democratic turnout.

Nevertheless, something would be horribly amiss if Gans and I didn't disagree at least a little bit. And I can't agree with what he says here (emphasis mine):

This election and the election of 2004 provided a lesson about mobilization. In the 2004 election there was a large gap in President Bush’s favor with respect to positive feelings about the candidates. Most Republicans were voting affirmatively for Bush, while the primary motivation for nearly a majority of Democratic voters was not pro-Kerry, but anti-Bush. The situation was precisely the opposite in 2008, with substantially more Democratic voters expressing affirmative views about Obama than Republican voters about McCain.

In 2004 both parties had strong voter identification and get-out-the-vote efforts, but the GOP was able to draw substantially more voters to vote early and on Election Day. The opposite was true in 2008.

Which suggests that mobilization efforts—no matter how sophisticated they are and how comprehensive their reach—are as successful as the ground they till in terms of affirmative voter sentiment.

Maybe for the overall electorate that is true. After all, older voters are fairly set in their partisanship and voting habits. They need to be persuaded to change either - an expensive and difficult thing to accomplish. But with regards to the youth vote, I'm not sure that Gans's logic holds up. That' important because these paragraphs immediately follow the ones where he lauds the contributions of young voters, leaving the impression that youth turnout and mobilization is all about the candidate's popularity.

But as Gans himself knows, youth turnout increased substantially in 2004, despite the lack of "affirmative voter sentiment." I'll reiterate the message of my favorite political website in 2004, which I find to be a good summary of young people's attitudes during that campaign: "John Kerry is a douchebag but I'm voting for him anyway." In the face of that mantra, Gans' argument has no explanation for higher youth turnout, and he quite skillfully words his report so as to avoid the conversation. That's sort of his M.O.

The real lessons of 2004 and 2008 are that young voters will participate if you ask them to. And unlike older voters, their partisanship and voting habits are malleable. They don't need to be persuaded, they just need to be engaged and contacted. In 2004, independent organizations made that ask and youth turnout rose substantially. In 2008, both independent organizations and the Obama campaign made that ask, which was then echoed throughout our media. The result? Youth turnout reached the second highest level recorded since 18 - 20 year-olds received the right to vote.

It's also worth noting that Gans is defining youth as 18 - 24 year olds, despite the fact that CIRLCE, which he quotes, and pretty much every single organization dedicated to engaging young voters defines them as 18 - 29.

I'm playing catchup today after 4 days in DC. Here's some stuff I missed while I was away. In reverse chronological order:

• The Project on Student Debt is encouraging the incoming administration to include student aid as part of the economic stimulus package. Here's a letter they sent (pdf) to Speaker Pelosi on the subject.
• The Project on Student Debt is also sending letters to Hank Paulson, demanding that he bail out students along with multi-billion dollar corporations. Sign the letter here.
• At the New American Foundation's Higher Ed Watch Blog, Luke Swarthout outlines a fair textbook policy that could alleviate economic pressures on students and break the oligopoly of the big three text book publishers. For more on this, visit Make Textbooks Affordable.
• The Democratic Strategist has a new paper outlining how Democrats can keep the support of young white working class voters.
• In The Nation, Kristina Rizga continues to ask "you voted, now what?" This time, she profiles Juan Reynosa of New Mexico Youth Organized, a member group of the Bus Federation.
• My Change.org Idea - National Election Day Registration - is tied for third place in the Civic Engagement category. The top three vote-getters in each category by December 31st will move on to round two. Go vote for my idea!
• At Personal Democracy Forum, Micah Sifry revels more about what a potential Obama for America 2.0 will look like.
• YP4 announced it's 2009 Fellows. Congrats to FM friend Ian Magruder for snagging a spot.
• In the Washington Times, Ben Domenech argues that Republicans must fight for young voters. Not because they will win, but because any victory for the GOP relies on at least cutting into Obama's 2 - 1 victory margin among Millennials.
• A study by Anderson Analytics shows that blogging is increasing in popularity among Millennials.

Since August, when I started writing here, I have regularly commented on the lack of technological proficiency exhibited by the McCain campaign. Apparently, the technological bungling hasn't stopped.

Sarah Lai Stirland's October piece in Wired magazine, describing how the Obama campaign leveraged its technological advantage, also highlighted the technological ineptness of the McCain campaign.

Like Obama, the RNC and the McCain campaign offer supporters their own set of social networking tools. But volunteers in Florida say they generally don't use the sites. Harout Samra, chairman of the Florida College Republicans, notes that McCain launched his services — McCainSpace and McCain Nation — relatively late in the campaign, and Samra and his fellow organizers had already gotten used to relying on Facebook and Storm, the College Republicans' social networking tool.

"Some of it is just repetitive, without adding much value," says Samra, a 25-year-old University of Miami law student. "I really don't have time to learn how to use something new."

Even McCain supporters readily acknowledge Obama's superior online organizing.

"I will just say that they've done a great job reaching out to young people," says 20-year-old Justin York, Central Florida chairman of Students for McCain. "I do have a lot of respect for whoever cooked up their operation, because it's an impressive machine that they have built among young people.... We don't have anything nearly as advanced as the Obama campaign."

It's a sentiment expressed by McCain supporters in other demographics.

"I'm afraid we're not that sophisticated," says Judy Wise, a retiree in Plant City. Wise is a lifelong Republican who volunteers three full days of her week for the McCain campaign. She manages McCain's Plant City office, where volunteers use the RNC's Voter Vault for phone banks, but not for neighborhood canvasses.

"It would be nice to know who the undecideds are," she says. "You don't want to waste your time on those people who are already voting for McCain, or those who have already made their minds up on Barack Obama."

"We've probably called every Republican in Orange County at least twice," says the College Republicans' York. "Some people tell us politely that they've been called, but others shout: 'This is the third time I've been called, and if you call again, I'm going to change my vote!'"

And so we all know what happened on November 4th. On the shoulders of millions of online supporters and donors -- many of which were recruited and welcomed thanks to the Obama's extensive technological outreach -- Obama routed McCain to become the 44th President-elect of the United States of America. After the election, whether it was a matter of not knowing how to do it or sheer laziness, the information on campaign aides' Blackberries remained on the devices -- including the personal contact information of a plethora of reporters, political operatives, politicians, and others. And the Blackberries were sold in a firesale.

An enterprising DC television reporter named Tisha Thompson picked a couple up, and a story was born.

When we charged them up in the newsroom, we found one of the $20 Blackberry phones contained more than 50 phone numbers for people connected with the McCain-Palin campaign, as well as hundreds of emails from early September until a few days after election night.

We traced the Blackberry back to a staffer who worked for “Citizens for McCain,” a group of democrats who threw their support behind the Republican nominee. The emails contain an insider’s look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support.

(Given the success -- or lack thereof -- of the McCain campaign and incidents like this, anyone thinking of using these devices to see how grassroots operations really work might want to reevaluate that thought.)

“Somebody made a mistake,” one owner told us. “People’s numbers and addresses were supposed to be erased.”

“They should have wiped that stuff out,” another said. But he added, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

We called the McCain-Palin campaign, who says, “it was an unfortunate staff error and procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure.”

This story is a funny one, but getting serious for one second, it's a very good thing Barack Obama won. Apparently not only did McCain not understand technology, but his staff -- the people that likely would have gone to the White House with him -- apparently didn't have any technological appreciation or common sense either. It's just one more nugget to remind us to count our blessings and appreciate our competent campaign.

In the last few days, a number of critiques and profiles were published commenting on new/old infrastructure, the campaign(s), and where we're at as a movement. All are worth the time for those looking to get a better birds eye view of the current political landscape.

• Rolling Stone eviscerates the disasterous "No on Prop 8" campaign. In reading the piece, one gets the overwhelming sense that the No on 8 folks ran the equivalent of John Kerry's Presidential campaign to the field and fundraising savvy Bush-like campaign helmed by the Mormans.
• On Tech President, Clinton internet strategist Peter Daou discusses the Revolution of the Online Commentariat, in which he dissects radical changes that occur in politics when information is put (more) equally in the hands of million.
• While the Obama Transition Team continues to innovate, Micah Sifry wonders if the Obama for America team - who met in Chicago this past weekend to devise the future of the movement - is regressing and killing the very openness and grasroots energy that made the campaign so successful.
• Last week, the Alliance of Youth Movements met in New York. Bizarrely, almost no one I spoke to had ever heard of the conference or the groups involved. There are definitely a lot of groups out there claiming to speak for and/or organize youth. Sometime this year we're going to have to build some stronger connections between groups that attend these kinds of conferences and, say, groups that received money from major progressive donors this last election cycle. In any case, some of the conference panels were live streamed and archived. You can view them all here. (I have not yet done so, though the topics look interesting).
• The Washington Post profiles the American Constitution Society. Created to counteract the conservative Federalist Society, ACS is becoming a powerhouse for producing lefty legal thinkers. I'll have to check my copy of Youth to Power when I get home, but I'm pretty sure that David Halperin, the ED of Campus Progress, had a hand in setting up ACS back in the day.
• The New York Times notes that teenagers are getting hit hard by the economic downturn, limiting their opportunities to raise money for school and develop skills to help them in the workplace.