CNN

Bumped - Kevin

Crossposted at Politics of the Common Good.

On pushback, Lee Fang posted a transcript of an interesting interview taking place on CNN. The guest was Ben Ferguson, a 27 year old right-winger. Fang describes him as "the media's go-to guy for all matters relating to young people and conservative politics." Of course, Fang also points out Ben's credentials: "He abhors MTV and popular youth culture, is a proud virgin, and routinely mocks progressive causes through his nationally syndicated talk-show and newspaper column." Let's take a look:

FOREMAN: Ben, let me ask you this question then. If you’re a young conservative and you’d like more people to support McCain, presumably, what does John McCain do at his age to reach across that gap because truly there are so many young people who I run into who say, I respect him, he’s a great guy, he’s wonderful. But he’s so different than me.

FERGUSON: I’ll be honest with you, if I’m advising John McCain right now, I would tell him to not inspire young people to come out and vote because for every one he turns out to vote for him, he’ll end up inspiring two or three other people to come out and vote for Barack Obama.

FOREMAN: Let’s not get out the youth vote movement?

FERGUSON: Yes, if you’re John McCain, I wouldn’t want to inspire young people. That’s going to get that movement vote to kick your tail. And that’s the last thing he needs to do.

Emphasis added. Well, first -- it's a good thing Ferguson is only a talk show host, because that advice is deplorable.

But let's assume Ferguson's contention that McCain should stay away from inspiring young people for fear of actually pushing more toward Obama is true (which, it very well may be). And let's bring in what we know about the connections between a healthy democracy and engaged young voters:

A healthy democracy requires that people learn, listen, dream, and work together as they unleash their collective potential to build the common good. When young people are excluded from participation in this dynamic, the potential for common good is deeply diminished. Despite a common misperception of today’s youth as self-absorbed and uninvolved, in example after example, young people ages 15 to 25 demonstrate a strong desire to engage actively in the work of building a just national and global society. This high degree of youth involvement not only develops leadership and civic skills in young people, but also adds much needed energy and perspective into community change efforts, policy debates, and governance at all levels.

With all of this in mind, isn't Ferguson's proposal indicating that a victory by McCain might not be the best thing for a democracy? My political sympathies aside, that's what I'm thinking when I read the transcript of Ferguson's statement. Choosing not to inspire younger voters goes against everything I have been taught to believe about the democratic process.

Granted, Ferguson does not play a role in the McCain campaign. But an appraisal of his campaign keeps me from thinking that McCain isn't taking some of Ferguson's advice. We know McCain exerts great energy trying to figure out the Internet, which is where young people are increasingly getting their news and information about the campaign. We know he's not put forth any plan for national service outside of the military (young voters are service all-stars). We know he's not exactly forthcoming with plans for higher education, a hallmark issue for today's youngest voters. While it's probably not that groundbreaking for many readers of Future Majority and my own blog, it would appear that McCain does indeed have a "youthiness" problem.

One more thing about Ferguson, though. When pushback's Lee Fang quoted the transcript, he cut out one of the most annoying and grating things for me to hear or read from any political observer -- something that immediately erases any ounce of credibility they may have had with me.

FERGUSON: There were more young people that voted but it was the same percentage of the overall vote because overall, more people voted in the last election than the one before it. So I don't know if they're necessarily going to show up. They thought they were going to show up for John Kerry and they didn't.

The young people, do they have an opinion? Yes. Does that mean they're going to go vote? I don't think so.

Ben Ferguson, meet Michael Connery:

Turnout vs. Share: There's a sub-theme to be aware of here as well. There are two ways of measuring how a demographic performs during an election. These are turnout and share of the electorate, and the media has a hard time distinguishing between the two. Turnout means the hard number of people participating. In the IADP data above, 4,836 18-24 year olds caucused. That's the hard turnout number for that age demographic. You'll also notice that the data states that 18-24 year olds made up 3.9% of caucus goers in 2004. That's the share of the electorate for that age demographic. These two numbers can present very different pictures of demographic performance. The 2004 general election provides us with an excellent example.

In 2000, 18-29 year olds made up 17% of the electorate. That was their share of the electorate. In 2004, 18-29 year olds once again comprised 17% of the electorate. The "logical" conclusion is that the youth vote did not increase, and that was what the media reported on November 5th, 2004. Of course, this was wrong. If one examined the actual turnout numbers, it quickly became apparent that there was a huge increase in youth participation. In fact, 4.3 million more 18-29 year olds turned out in 2004 than did in 2000. That increase didn't appear in the share of the electorate data because turnout increased among all age demographics. In order to get a sense of what happened with young voters this year, we'll need to examine not only their share of the electorate, but also the hard turnout numbers. The media missed this in 2004, and the campaigns and youth advocates will all be checking this data to make sure that the campaigns and press don't make the same mistakes twice.

Ferguson can't distinguish between share and turnout. Just because many other people turned out to vote in 2004 outside of the 18-29 age bracket does not mean those aged 18-29 should be criticized and believed to be a disappointment yet again. The truth that Ferguson and other ignorant political observers want to ignore is that there is a trend toward increased voting among youth (which I think is related to Ferguson and McCain's avoidance of this demographic).

So what does all of this mean?

1.) Ben Ferguson might just have a career in the "vast right wing conspiracy," given his ability to repeat untruths and act like he knows what he's talking about.

2.) John McCain, if he is pursuing a "youth avoidance" strategy like it currently appears, would ostensibly be running counter to healthy democratic values.

While you are waiting for the PA results to come in, check out these stories around the internets:

• The DNC has an excellent primer on all things related to the Democratic Convention: Delegates, Super Delegates, and more.
• The New York Times notes that age is the biggest predictor of support (aside from race) in the Democratic primary, a trend I'm sure we'll see play out later tonight.
• MySpace has teamed up with NBC news to produce a snazzy new political section to their website: Decision '08. This is very similar to the partnership ABC forged with FaceBook. For MySpace's sake, I hope it's more effective. And if anyone is reading, or goodness sake, please stop the video from auto-playing. The last thing I want is Chris Matthews blaring at me whenever I hit your site.
• U.S. cell phone voters would like to be able to vote via text.
• Bush's approval ratings are the lowest of any President in the last 70 years. Maybe that's why he decided it was a good idea to appear on Deal or No Deal last night.
• The Nation has launched their annual student writing contest.
• CNN's League of First Time Voters, which you may be hearing about tonight, is catching flack from youth activists.
• Finally, students in Washington and Arizona are competing to see who can register more new voters on Facebook:

CNN has a new subsite within their www.cnn.com site specifically for The League of 1st Time Voters (not to be confused with the League of Young Voters)

See the League Here

Pretty cool when you have the most successful cable news network focusing more on young voters than the republican candidate for the Presidency.

Against my better judgement, here's my segment from CNN. God I hate watching myself on TV . . . .

As I said, I was a little blind-sided by the first two questions, and think that I could have given a stronger answer to the final question. The real proof of excitement among young voters is the turnout, which has been double, triple, even quadruple 2004 numbers in some states.

I also said "I don't know," which is the one thing you don't ever do. The sad thing is, I do have an answer for that question - lower income and education voters are lower information voters, and Hillary has higher name recognition. The interesting thing is that this is changing as the campaign progresses and more voters get to better know Sen. Obama. During the recent Potomac Primaries, Obama swept all income and education demographics.

Finally, I was wrong about the book and website - those were both mentioned, though on the bottom bar, not the "bio" sidebar that popped up early in the segment.

Update: Well that was interesting. They blindsided me with two questions in the beginning that weren't discussed in the pre-interview (I had no warning that we'd discuss that poll or foreknowledge of the results). My final answer could have been stronger. I should have mentioned that the proof of young voter excitement was in the turnout numbers - double, triple, even quadruple 2004 numbers in some states. C'es La Vie. I'll do better next time.

I'm also a little upset that they misidentified me. We agreed that I'd be identified as a youth blogger at Future Majority.com and author of Youth to Power. Instead, They said I was a former Dean staffer (not true - I was involved in the early Meet Up scene in NYC on a purely volunteer level), and an Obama supporter (This is sort of right. I voted for him but he was my 2nd choice. I haven't campaigned for him or endorsed him as a blogger).
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I'll be on CNN Newsroom at 11am this morning talking about the youth vote in Ohio. I'm pretty nervous as this is my first network/cable news appearance (not really counting G4). Hope it goes well.

Additionally, welcome CNN viewers - here's the nickel tour.

If you are looking for information about my book, you can buy it here: Youth to Power: How Today's Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority, or you can check out the Youth to Power website to learn more.

Here's a listing of some of the better articles you'll find on the Future Majority site:

• How Should YDA and CDA Super Delegates Cast Their Ballot?
• Super Tuesday Confirms Huge Democratic Youth Advantage
• Significance of the FaceBook Causes Giving Challenge
• Youth Vote Triples in Iowa: Proves Naysayers Wrong
• Biden and Richardson Against Student Voting; Clinton Unsure; Yepsen Attacks Obama (Again)
• McCain and MySpace Hit a Home Run
• Journalist Cheat Sheet: 11 Tips for Reporting the Youth Vote
• 60 Minutes Slanders Millennials
• DNC Youth Outreach Not Walking the Walk
• Yearly Kos: Building the Progressive Youth Movement
• Republican Brand Crashes Among Young Voters
• The Horse Race and the Youth Narrative
• Case Study in Music Activism: Head Count
• 95 Theses of Progressive Youth Activism
• Linking the Progressive Youth Movement
• The Progressive Politics/Social Justice Divide
• A Young Voter's Response to the Democratic Strategist
• The First of Many Thirds: The Youth Vote in 2008 and Beyond
• 2006 Youth Turnout Fuels Progressive Wave
• This Year the Narrative is Different
• Organizational Models: Deconstructing Music for America
• Living Liberally: Reforming Progressive Youth Outreach - Part I and Part II
  

How could this be?! This is indeed breaking news, because it may very well be the first time FoxNews has done something right - er... correctly.

This comes on the heals of the CNN blunder in reporting a lot of misinformation about young people and the youth vote in 2008. Add to that Naomi Wolf and Courtney Martin and you're ready for your own nuclear meltdown of frustration.

There's been a pretty substantial rapid response linking to a brilliant post by Mike that details data and a fact sheet for reporters who can't bring themselves to research - and the response has been tremendous!

Rob Anderson from CP went after Naomi at the Washington Post, we hit CNN on FM, and Campus Progress nailed Courtney here.

After posting Mike's piece everywhere and emailing it to CNN, NPR, and all of my own local news and radio stations I figured the last to talk about young people would be a Republican News Network who so clearly excludes young people. But they did. As you can see they addressed all of our main issues.

The only fault I have with this is that the piece likens youth to phrases like "Yo Dude" when, shocking as it may seem, young people do have a capability to converse like adults and understand complex topics.

Alexandra Acker ED of the Young Democrats of America was interviewed in the piece and later commented to me

"One thing that stood out was Frank Luntz’s outrageous statement that young people want to be addressed as “Yo, dude” whereas I had spoken about the need for candidates to take young voters seriously and talk about issues they care about."

Another interesting thing to mention is the ways in which FoxNews reaches out to young commentators like Acker when CNN's and the piece on 60 Minutes was largely dominated by older generations who are out of touch with the reality of the Millennial Generation.

Fox is notorious for connecting with younger demographics (see MySpace, the Simpsons, and FoxNews Porn) - CNN's only got Anderson Cooper and Soledad O'Brien. Let's face it almost 3/4 of their airwaves are full of old angry Lou Dobbs, Larry "he's still alive?" King, and the Jack/Wolf Playdate (and my TV is always on CNN!)

The reporter doing the piece seemed young. Probably not 25, but she's definitely younger than Lou Dobbs. And Acker said she made a real effort to understand the issues:

She "went to resources like YDA and YVS, did follow-up with me after the interview to make sure she had the Harvard quote right, but CNN just recycled the same old, tired storyline."

Acker goes on to speculate that the youth friendly ways in which FoxNews and its family targets young people is perhaps because they are more aware of our generation's purchase power. And I think she's got something there.

While I agree that Fox is bad, evil, worse than bad and evil, I think if they could make more money by supporting Democrats they'd flip parties in a heartbeat. By targeting young people, regardless of party affiliation, with products, musicians, and the like their advertisers make more money and thus the network banks a pretty sweet deal.

In many ways we're being used - but at the same time, they're the only ones talking about the importance of young people in the first place - so what do ya do?

Until we can get mainstream news sources to report these facts correctly, you have to give props to the ones who do, even when they're traditionally crazy nutbars.

Cross posted to Kos, please recommend

Pete Leyden at the New Politics Institute was at the debate and has two really good observations:

Another striking thing was how all the video submissions, with one or two exceptions, came from Millennials, those under age 30. And almost everyone in the audience was much older. In fact, before the show began, CNN host Anderson Cooper asked for questions on the format from the audience. One young guy from the balcony asked why so few tickets had been given to young people. Cooper shot back – the Republican Party gave out the tickets, not us. It’s another sign that the Republicans are having a hard time connecting with this massive generation of young people, as well as coming to terms with the new demands of the new online media.

Hat tip to Micah Sifry over at Tech President for finding out that apparently there is zero coordination between YouTube and CNN when it comes to selecting questions and arranging for audience participation. YouTube has no input into which questions are selected, and no knowledge of which questions will be aired until they appear on the screen. That's why there's so little participation and follow up from the crowd. It's a total crap shoot as to whether or not YouTube invites the correct people to ask follow-up questions.

Totally ridiculous. People's debate my ass. This is a CNN production through and through with a little Web Two-Point-Oh window dressing from YouTube. Here's David Bohrman of CNN explaining the whole question selection process.

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.

I saw a great piece in a local paper that caught my attention about young people pealing potatoes for a community Thanksgiving Dinner.

"I like helping people and making a difference,” said Emily Bertols, a sophomore at North."

Last week we talked about CNN's inability to get the youth vote right in a piece they did in The Situation Room on Friday afternoon. From what I understand another discussion took place that next morning where two commentators were duking it out over the youth vote. While one of them didn't have a clear understanding of why young people matter, he did mention that young people are more involved in their communities than any other age group.

The same happened this week as I was driving to see family down south and was listening to NPR's Diane Rehm's Show and a commentator (I couldn't tell which one) also was very careful to acknowledge that both youth involvement and the youth vote are on the rise.

I guess you could say there is something there to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

I also thought given these recent developments and in the spirit of the holidays I would remind us how much young people do to get involved and volunteer for their communities.

Not only do we vote, but we care about our community, our country, our future, and our world. Which is more than I can say for some generations. I don't want to get on a holier than thou high horse but I'm proud of my generation's dedication to developing a more livable world and I thought I'd remind us all to give ourselves a pat on the back every once in a while.