Republicans

I'm heading out shortly to tape for GritTV with Laura Flanders. We're doing a one-hour panel on the youth vote and a half-hour segment on Youth to Power. Be back online this afternoon.

• At Campus Politico, Ben Adler notes that summer break is putting a crimp in plans to register and organize students.
• At AlterNet, Courtney Martin talks about growing up a Millennial and how race and gender play differently on the campaign trail for younger voters.
• Republicans have a new blog dedicated to reaching "Generation Next" online. It involves crayons.
• Salon notes rising youth turnout, and while they are still skeptical, admit that young voters could be a factor in November.
• Barack Obama has 1 million supporters on Facebook.
• The "American Dream" as our parents knew it is dead, argues Anya Kamenetz, but she's got some suggestions on what a new American Dream might look like. Long live the American Dream!

Yesterday in USA Today, Republican operative David Frum published an Op-Ed acknowledging the Republican Party's huge loss of support from young voters, and outlining a four-point plan to recapture the youth vote and revive the days of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Frum gets a few things right. Millennials are the most anti-Republican age group in the electorate, that position is a response to the failures of the Bush Administration to adequately address any number of social, economic, and geopolitical problems, the dominance of Christian conservatives and their culture war values on choice and GLBT rights also plays a part, as does the fact that the Millennial generation is the most diverse, tolerant generation in history and the Republican Party is not at all diverse or tolerant.

But Frum is smoking something if he thinks his four-point plan can turn things around for the GOP.

Three of his proposals amount to nothing more than putting a kinder, gentler face on policies that a majority of youth roundly reject. I see little room for a pro-environment, pro-choice, multilateralist generation that believes in the power and obligation of government to protect and provide opportunity for its citizens to embrace a unilateral foreign policy, green washing environmental policy or a more compassionate anti-choice agenda.

But one recommendation sticks out among the rest and it deserves closer scrutiny.

Think Social Security taxes, not income taxes.

Today's young voters are paying much more in Social Security taxes than in income taxes — and contributing much more into Social Security than they will ever see out of it.

Republicans took a beating on the Social Security issue in 2005. But the issue is not going away. And Barack Obama's solution — taxing more income for Social Security — is neither workable nor popular. Personal accounts offer hope for personal wealth to a generation that is increasingly anxious about its economic future. With a relatively small subsidy — $300 per year for workers earning less than $40,000 — a revived Republican personal account plan could guarantee that every American worker would retire a millionaire, even if they never earn more in their lives than minimum wage.

Republicans will always face overwhelming disadvantages among blacks and Hispanics. President Bush's attempts to woo Hispanics via lax immigration policies disastrously backfired, alienating white Republicans without achieving gains among Hispanics.

But we can talk to young blacks and Hispanics as young people, who share economic interests with an entire generation of overtaxed young workers, regardless of race.

This is a common narrative heard not just among conservatives, who use it as their supposed "Ace in the hole" when talking to or about young voters, but also among progressives. During my book tour this question has come up a number of times. Yesterday at the Roosevelt Institution conference, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, made reference to an alleged conservative view of Social Security reform among Millennials. I myself have fallen into the trap of believing that young people consider Social Security broken and privatization as the most viable option for "fixing" it.

After extensive conversations with some fellow youth leaders this morning, and a little bit of reading, I no longer believe that to be the case.

Back in 2005, the last time that this issue came up, Rock the Vote teamed up with the AARP to poll the electorate on the issue. Contrary to popular belief, they found that most young people did not support Social Security privatization if it entailed the dismantling of other parts of the social safety net:

Most Americans in the 18 to 39 age group, for example, say that they would flat-out oppose the accounts if, for example, it means that cuts to their guaranteed Social Security benefits would be so severe that they could not make up the difference with private accounts (70 percent say they would oppose) or that diverting some Social Security payroll taxes means "massive new federal debt in order to pay current benefits" (63 percent say they would oppose).

PEW found similar results at the time, and also noted that the more young people knew about the details of privatization, the less likely they were to support it.

A number of young activists wrote about the subject at the time. Dana Goldstein, then of Campus Progress, actually debated a pro-privatization student and found that the pro-privatization student group, Students for Saving Social Security, was little more than an astroturf group.

At the time, Matt Singer, now of Forward Montana, and Heather McGhee, who is now working on Demos's Better Deal Conference, also wrote critiques of the supposed youth support for social security privatization.

Lest you think that my outdated statistics from 2005 are no longer relevant, let's remember that in 2005, a number of Gen Xers were still in the 18 - 29 catagory (and they made up a majority of the 18 - 36 cohort). Gen Xers have consistently been far more conservative than Millennials. If anything, these numbers have likely seen a vast improvement. Again, Rock the Vote's poll data can provide some help here.

In February of 2008, Rock the Vote released a new poll of young voters (18 - 29) (pdf). When asked what their top concerns were for the country, only 2% responsed that Social Security was one of their largest concerns. 0% of African Americans agreed that Social Security was a major problem, and only 5% of Hispanics. Now granted, there are margin of error issues in these numbers, but the point is, the numbers are so small that it is hard to see how this could turn out to be the Republican's "Ace in the Hole" to win back young voters.

At best, what we have in Social Security is the one issue in which we may actually have to engage the Republicans in serious debate among young voters. But research shows that once young voters become educated as to the details, and the consequences, of privatization, they readily abandon the concept. Considering the conditions of the stock market recently, this is a debate I'm more than willing to have.

I'm off to the land of South Carolina to wittness the primary before I embark on a quick Find Rudy Campaign. Why you might ask am I looking for Rudy... well... has anyone really seen him lately? I mean other than the great state of Florida. So I'm going to Florida to find Rudy.

Again... you're shaking your head... See, Rudy is actually one of only TWO republican candidates that have a youth section on their websites. One of course is Ron Paul. So, first I want to see what the crowds are like at his events - are there young people? Do they seem engaged? Do they feel like they are missing out without the whole Chuck Norris thing? Why did Rudy feel compelled to connect with young voters? All questions I'll try to get answers to.

Speaking of the GOP.... Jane Flemming Kleeb from YVP tipped me off to Jason Mattera. Jason is from the Young Americas Foundation - which gets young people into wacko right wing policies. Yeah... I know... I'm totally a partisan hack, but Jason has a few good points here. 1. Young people aren't conservative. 2. The GOP doesn't do youth outreach.... hardly at all. 3. Young conservatives are more likely to be involved in church not campaigns. 4. Reagan is dead and gone. Its true. He is.

Ew... don't you just need a shower after that?! I wish the GOP super good luck on their adventures attracting young voters. And while I hope those young voters take one look and come running the other way to my big happy partisan party, I have to say once again that any outreach to young voters... is good outreach. Even when they're evil? Yes, even when they're evil, because they are showing you that you are important... and lets face it... you are.

Ok.. moving on... Hillary Clinton launched a youth focused national tour this week titled Our Voices, Our Future.

"The Clinton campaign today launched the “Our Voice, Our Future Tour,” a two-week tour to encourage young voters to support Hillary and make their voices heard. The tour builds on and expands Hillblazers, the campaign’s youth mobilization program. Through visits to high schools, colleges and young professional events, Chelsea Clinton, Members of Congress, and prominent Hillary backers will reach out to young people and inspire and mobilize support for the campaign. New supporters will be encouraged to engage their social networks in support of Hillary.

“Young people have always been a voice for change. Throughout my campaign, I’ve heard students and young professionals speak about the challenges we face and the solutions they’d like to see, from an education policy that makes college affordable to a health care policy that provides quality care to all Americans,” said Clinton. “Young Americans are thinking about our future and making their voices heard during this election, and I am listening, and I’ll be sure to continue to listen in the White House.”

When I asked OK YD president Mandy Winton about it she was enthusiastic

"Sen Clinton will be able to take her message to young voters who will be pivotal in the outcome of this historic election. Hillary brings real solutions to problems our generation is facing. From rising costs for higher education to the environment, Senator Clinton will bring real change and solutions for a brighter future for all Americans," she said

While I applaud the effort for the same reason that I champion Jason's antics, I worry that for her its too little too late. If young voters don't come out for her and she does become the nominee, I wonder if that will reduce her enthusiasm for young voters in the general. I could be jumping to conclusions, but its a fear that I think all of us face ... going BACK to the sad scary world where politicians didn't know we mattered....

And finally Senator John Edwards will be the second candidate to participate in the town hall style forum hosted by the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) today (Friday) at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in Columbia, South Carolina.

The event will mark the second in a series that SAVE is hosting with Democratic and Republican Presidential Candidates. “The gap between politicians and young people is too wide,” said Matthew Segal, the executive director of SAVE. “The purpose of our forum is to show politicians that young people care and to show young people that politicians are accessible and listening. I am pleased that John Edwards recognizes that youth are a crucial component of the electorate who require the same respect, attention and consideration that older voting blocs receive.”

This comes about after BraveNewFilms's MeetThePrez did an interview with Sen. Edwards asking him why he thought young voters mattered.

SAVE's townhall will be going on around the time the Senator's recent interview with Tyra Banks will be aired. See clips here and here.

Senator Clinton appeared earlier, she and Tyra discussed Clinton's first date with Bill, text messaging, and headbands. Obama also appeared earlier this year. You can see clips from him revealing his first date experience here.

Hey - say what you will about Tyra, but she gets them to answer some personal questions, and she's much nicer than Tim Russert.

Happy South Carolina Primary to everybody!

Last night I helped live-blog the CNN/YouTube debate over at Tech President. Here's my rough thoughts on how it went down:

• Overall, CNN continues its fine tradition of infantilizing its audience, this time also managing to take the internets down with it. After an opening montage about how they carefully weeded out all the crazies and "unserious" questions, they proceeded to waste the first five minutes on a ridiculous song about the candidates that asked no question and made no substantive points beyond caricature. What followed was a freak show (Bible Kid, Confederate Flag Kid, etc) of issue advocates mostly lobbing softballs and non questions to the candidates (what' kind of gun do you own?!?). To wrap up, CNN almost topped the Diamond and Pearls incident of a few weeks ago with the most important question of the evening: Red Sox or Yankees? Surprisingly, there was no Mac vs. PC question. CNN: The most trusted name in news? More like CNN: We think you're dumb.
  
  

  For more on how CNN spectacularly failed the audience and demeaned the internet as an information resource and media outlet, I recommend checking out J-Ro over at The Seminal.

• Let's all pause for a minute and remember that this debate was postponed two months becausethe Republican candidates were scared of the internet. Granted, such an up close look at their base was indeed scary, but they really had more to fear from Chuck Norris in the audience. I think with the power of his mind he cowed the other candidates into either mumbling incoherence (Thompson) or clouded their minds, giving Huckabee cover while Romney and Giuliani sliced and diced each other and every topic under the sun.
• Huckabee was the clear winner tonight, and it came at a time when his star is rising in Iowa. He really came across as a true compassionate conservative, particularly on issues like immigration and poverty. If he holds similarly "compassionate" views on the environment (stewards of the earth and all), then Huckabee truly is the most dangerous candidate in the GOP race. I can see the Huckster pulling the GOP away from its radicalism of the last 7 years, and appealing widely to moderates, progressive evangelicals, and even younger folks who mostly don't even know who he is yet. Huckabee might be the only candidate that actually could beat one of the Democrats in November.
• Did everyone notice that the debate was sponsored by Big Coal, and not a single question out of 5000 submissions was about energy policy or the environment?
• YouTube and CNN made a big deal about this being "the people's debate." So it was a pretty big shock to see a question from Grover Norquist, uber Conservative advocate and tax lobbyist. Why didn't they just get Bush, Cheney or Rove to ask the questions?
• Thompson almost had a breakout moment when his campaign bucked the trend with their 30 second video. Most campaigns air uplifting bio vids or humorous shorts, like Edwards, Dodd, and Giuliani have done. Thompson instead used his time to attack his two biggest competitors. It was interesting because it jolted the debate off-script. Cooper had to delay a commercial break to let Huckabee and Romney respond, and it briefly put them on the defensive and gave Thompson control of a supposedly uncontrollable debate. Too bad Thompson isn't nearly as good as his campaign. He seemed asleep the rest of the evening and failed to capitalize on this.
• Apparently only three black people in America care what the Republicans think, and only two were willing to sit in the audience and allow CNN to carry on the long-standing Republican tradition of using a few black folks as props to highlight their committment to diversity.
• Finally, how could I not mention the gay Brigadier General. Republican heads across the nation exploded from cognitive dissonance over that one. A few points to make here - this was geniunely the best question of the evening, and the General shamed every candidate on that stage with his rebuttal. I was shocked that the audience booed the general - I guess they don't support the troops. I loved Duncan Hunter's response, which boiled down to "our young men and women in the military are all conservative (not true, particularly among enlisted men and women), and they're bigotted, so we can't allow gays to be out in the military." Second point - this was the only substantive follow up from a questioner. Again, I thought this was the people's debate? Third point, I don't want to be a tin foil hat guy, but what's up with his mic getting cut? Fourth and final point, CNN failed to disclose that the General was an active volunteer in the Clinton campaign. Is it me, or does CNN really really suck at this debate thing?

Overall, this was a step backwards from the Democratic debate. Less hard hitting, less participatory, and the CNN editorial filter did an even poorer job of vetting the questions and moderating the discussion. I give the evening a D. These debates can't even hold a candle to what MySpace and MTV have been doing with their candidate "Dialogues." Speaking of which, John McCain is on deck for Monday . . . that should be interesting. It will give us the first chance to see how a Republican fares against the Flektor live polling, and, because of McCain's views on Iraq, we may actually see an information feedback loop from question to poll to user-generated follow-up that really pushes back on what the candidate is saying.

It's been reported widely in the blogosphere and traditional media that the Republicans candidates are ignoring certain groups: Latinos, African Americans, young people. The DNC even went so far as to produce this video on the topic, which unfortunately doesn't seem to have gotten much attention:

I just wanted to point out that these are not mutually exclusive groups, and while it is bizarre that Republicans may be ignoring the future of what they themselves see as the core demographic for electoral success (white males) by skipping the Young and College Republican Conventions, they're also shunning a substantial portion of all young voters by skipping events like the Univision debate and NAACP forum.

According to a report by the New Politics Institute, 40% of Millennials come from a "minority" racial or ethnic group. Not that I'm complaining, but as Chris Bowers discussed on Open Left, that is a long-term strategy for defeat, particularly among Hispanics, who will comprise 25% of the total electorate by 2050 and already comprise 18% of all Millennials. In a number of states in the southwest, Hispanics have already surpassed 30% of the population, and in the swing state of New Mexico they are already 30% of the electorate. Young voters are the gateway to those families, as children of immigrants are frequently more acclimatized and function as political influencers for the rest of their families. (From NDN: Hispanics Rising)

My point is that ignoring African American and Latinos is also ignoring young voters. We've rehashed this many many times here, but you really can't say it enough: partisanship is a habit (pdf), and by ignoring these constituencies, Republicans are shoring up the Democratic base among three growing and overlapping groups that are going to overtake the electorate in the coming decades.

A new report by the PEW Research Center shows that Bush's base among young voters - young, white evangelicals - is tanking hard. According to PEW, young, white evangelical support for Bush has plummeted 42%, from a high of 87% in 2002 to today's low of 45%. Consequently, this has also translated into declining support for the GOP, which has seen a 15% drop in party ID among this demographic. This decline in support is mirrored among older evangelicals, however the decline isn't nearly as dramatic among those over 30.

PEW is quick to note that this isn't necessarily translating into greater support for Democrats among this audience. Young evangelicals are still a much more conservative group than the rest of the Millennial generation. They are twice as likely to be Republican, 60% of them still support the war in Iraq, and on issues like abortion and capital punishment, they are also extremely conservative in their views.

PEW suggests that this dissatisfaction rests not so much with the party or conservative philosophy, but rather the execution of policy by this particular administration. This may well be the case, though I wonder how much Bush's stance on issues like global poverty and global warming have to do with it, as there has been a push in the evangelical community to support positions on these issues that are traditionally considered more liberal.

One issue that PEW doesn' address is what effect this might have on turnout and the election. These findings come just as The New York Times is reporting that Christian conservative leaders are considering a third-party candidate if pro-choice candidate Rudy Giuliani heads the Republican ticket. Could these young evangelicals be gearing up to have their own "Nader" moment? Are we going to see a not-insubstantial portion of the youth wing of the Republican party bolt for an independent bid as so many lefty youth did in 2000 when Nader was running on the Green Party ticket?

That would be an interesting scenario, and might even cripple the Republican candidate in a number of states as those young people, who would likely be footsoldiers in the Republican ground-game, put their efforts somewhere else (or, utterly disaffected, just sat it out at home).

• The Mitt Romney campaign is asking their supporters to take materials provided on the Romney for President website and remix them into campaign videos. Well, the folks on the Slate political and video teams have taken this opportunity and used it to poke fun at Romney, who once equated his 5 sons' work on his campaign to the service of our soldiers in Iraq.

• The Obama campaign has started to adopt some cultural outreach tactics. Volunteers from Bay-area schools recently set up shop outside a local music festival.
• Millennial blogger and Yale student Zach Marks compares Democratic and Republican outreach to young voters on the campaign trail in this column over at Huffington Post.
• Congress may have passed the College Cost Reduction Act, but it looks like increases in Pell Grants are still no sure thing.

Via BoingBoing - a chart comparing the issue positions of all the presidential candidates - Democrats and Republicans.

Earlier this week I posted about a new Democracy Corps report showing that the Republican brand had crashed among Millennials. Well the conservatives are starting to respond, and the racism is flying like mad:

Read the report in full, however, and you come across an interesting nugget on page 6: White young people continue to favor Republicans by a thin but real margin of 2 points. The Democrats owe their advantage among youth to a huge lead among young African-Americans (78 points) - and a very large lead (43 points) among Hispanics.

In the past, Republicans could win elections despite their unpopularity among ethnic minorities. But with the huge surge of immigration since 1980 - and especially since 2000 - the voting map of the United States has been redrawn in ways inherently deeply unfavorable to the GOP. If Republicans face an inhospitable future after 2008, we will hear much of the dreadful legacy of George W. Bush on social issues, the war, the environment, etc. But Greenberg's own work makes clear that these issues matter relatively little.

(Only 28% of young voters would respond positively to an anti-religious-right message, for example: see page 11.)

No, the legacy that will damage his party is the legacy of immigration non-enforcement. This has imported a large new community of people who are both economically struggling (and thus open to Democratic arguments) but who lack deep attachment to the American nation (and who are thus immune to the most potent of Republican appeals). It is these voters who will sway elections in future. And thanks to this president's immigration policies, there are going to be a lot more of them than there might otherwise have been.

Awesome idea. Kick those anti-American wetbacks (read: naturalized citizens and first generation Americans who vote Democratic) out so the white man can rule supreme one more.

Great strategy. Let me know if that pans out for ya.

Update: Rick Perlstein tears Frum apart on similar grounds.