John McCain

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.

Pew Research has a new report: Young Voters in the 2008 Election. The details of the report read like they were ripped right from the blog posts here at Future Majority - I could get used to that.

If you are interested in demographic data on the 2008 youth vote, there's lots of good stuff in the report, including breakouts by income, education, race, religiosity, gender and party ID. The long and short being that, among 18 - 29 year olds, Obama won all racial, gender, and socioeconomic demographics, including white non-college males. The only group that he lost, according to the data, is self-identified young Republicans.

Beyond demographics, there were two findings in the research that I thought were noteworthy in that I hadn't seen them reported anywhere else. The first was this breakdown of the Democratic youth vote margin compared to the overall Democratic vote over the past three decades. We've touched on that data here (see the graphs on the sidebar), though we've never compared them side by side in this format. It really highlights how significant and unusual young voter's support for Obama is historically:

The second item I wanted to highlight, and to my mind the most interesting/new item in the data, is the vast difference in contact rates by the campaigns.

Nationally, 25% of young voters reported being contacted at some point by the Obama campaign, compared to just 13% for John McCain. In crucial swing states, that gap climbed as high as 35%. Back in 2007 and early 2008, I was worried that "maverick" John McCain, ubiquitous guest on the Daily Show, spotted in such movies as Wedding Crashers; a candidate who did quite well in his appearance at the MTV/MySpace Dialogue, would make a play for the youth vote. Maybe it was a function of the youth energy surrounding Obama's campaign by the time McCain emerged from the primaries. Maybe it was a function of McCain's smaller campaign budget and lack of a coherent field operation. But it looks like the Maverick completely ceded the playing field to Sen. Obama when it came to young voters. He didn't even try.

Looking at the contact rates for older cohorts, it looks like McCain had his hands full just trying to compete with Obama among his base - voters over 65 who were the only age demographic to choose him over Sen. Obama.

Pew notes that this disparity in contact rate accounted for a significant difference at the polls, and hits upon one of our favorite talking points here at Future Majority (emphasis mine):

But the electoral influence of young voters also depends on efforts made to mobilize them. According to the exit polls, young voters in key battleground states this year were far more likely to have been contacted by the Obama campaign than by the McCain campaign - and in some states they were more likely than older voters to have been contacted, a significant reversal from past patterns.

Nationally, a quarter of voters (25%) 18-29 say someone contacted them in person or by phone on behalf of the Obama campaign about coming out to vote. By contrast, just 13% were contacted by the McCain campaign. In 2004, nearly the same share of young voters was reached by the Kerry campaign (22%) as was reached by the Bush campaign (19%).

But the disparity was much larger in some of the key battleground states. In Pennsylvania and Nevada, which Obama carried by double-digit margins, more than half of voters under age 30 said they were contacted by the Obama campaign (54% in Pennsylvania and 61% in Nevada). The McCain campaign reached considerably fewer young voters in those states -- 30% in Pennsylvania and 26% in Nevada. Obama's get-out-the-vote operation also reached three times as many young voters as McCain's operation in Indiana (45% vs. 15%) and twice as many in Florida (32% vs. 16%).

The curious thing about the data is that, despite incredibly high contact rates for young voters, major swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida actually saw a significant decline in share among young voters. In those three states - almost the holy trinity of Presidential Politics, youth share of the electorate dropped 4%, 4%, and 3% respectively over 2004 levels.

The most obvious reason I can think of behind this dramatic underperformance is disinterest and disillusionment among young McCain supporters. Lacking any significant contact or encouragement from their candidate - who spent his final weeks on the trail shoring up Red States - perhaps they turned out in far lower numbers than in the more closely contested 2004 race. If those young conservatives sat it out on election day, and older voters turned out in greater numbers than usual, that might account for the rather dramatic decrease in youth share in those states.

Whatever the cause - and I'm sure it is something we'll be returning to again and again in the coming months as more data creeps out - this is great information from PEW proving once again that outreach to young voters works. Not only can it move votes, it can win elections.

The Discovery Channel YouTube channel Why? Tell me Why? Addressed the question of why young voters vote the way they do and old voters vote the way they do.

Irwin Morris from the University of Maryland says these are tendencies that develop depending on the political environment. Young people have come of age in an era with unpopular Republicanism thus they are more inclined to harness those anti-republican sentiments and carry them with them throughout the course of their lives.

The same is/has been true for older voters who he said came of age in an era of anti-democratic tendencies which is why they lean more toward republicans. This might also account for the messages republicans used nearing election day about communism and socialism etc... because those were real threats that older voters faced when they were first beginning to cast ballots.

These kinds of arguments of course flopped on young voters who only know about socialism within the context of republican finger pointing and communism with regard to Cuban relations or history classes about the former Soviet Union.

With "reliable seniors" as a major voting demographic in the past, this was a good strategy, but as we saw with the new data, young voters surpassed those seniors in turnout and at least a third of the seniors voted for Obama.

My hope is that this means we are finally beyond the idea that crying "socialism" and "communist" are helpful to a campaign.

Some reading material when you have time to take a break from the craziness:

• Music for Democracy has launched its "Be the Change" project:
  

  Hip-hop stars Chingy, Q and MC Lyte have joined forces with two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer-songwriter Graham Nash in an innovative get-out-the-vote effort that aims to mobilize young voters for election 2008 by leveraging the power of social networks. On November 4, music fans who sign up for "Be the Change" will receive an automated call from the musician of their choice to remind them to go to the polls. A selected number of voters will receive calls from the musicians themselves.

• A recap of why Election 2008 deserves the "historic" label, especially given the generational tensions.
• A commentary on why youth will show up at the polls this year.
• Attention political junkies: Google has created an elections map complete with results since 1980 for each state.
  
• Andy Kroll writes a couple (#1 and #2) posts on pushback on the Hip Hop Republicans and what they're doing to change the culture and approach the contemporary GOP has taken over the last decade or two.
• Want to watch the election results with some fellow liberals? Living Liberally lets you know where you can go.
• 35,000 Colorado mail-in votes from newly-registered voters could be nullified, thanks to confusion over the need to include an ID.
• Obama's not the only politician popular among young voters.
• A public-private partnership to fix our ever-mounting problems. A Green New Deal. Sounds pretty good, huh? Read more.
• Anna Quindlen at Newsweek has her own commentary on the potential of Millennial voters on Election Day

John McCain is preemptively kicking young people out of his events. Even the ones that support him:

“When I started talking to them, it kind of became clear that they were kind of just telling people to leave that they thought maybe would be disruptive, but based on what? Based on how they looked,” Elborno said. “It was pretty much all young people, the college demographic.”

Elborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave.

“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”

I think this is the ultimate "get off my lawn" moment. The Republican Party literally eating its young. I hope this is a widespread phenomenon.

I am a young amateur filmmaker from Canada who, after becoming increasingly frustrated with the political system and lack of action among his peers has made a short video aimed at George W Bush, John McCain and the conservative/religious right. The result is a hilarious but deadly serious message of anger and a call for mobilization.

Watch, laugh, think, maybe die a little inside, and then spread the message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw88vPtMR40

This is so awesome. I've added the lyrics below the jump. --Mike

OMG this is the cutest thing ever, I'm already ripping an MP3 of it

Updated video and interview with the kids on CNN

This may not be ground-breaking news, but I thought I'd post something about it anyway.

In a survey of 2,406 18-24 year old Americans conducted by Harris Interactive from September 12th through October 6th, 2008, the Harvard University Institute of Politics found that youth continue to be a strong force in this campaign, and they have, by and large, placed most of their enthusiasm and energy behind the Obama campaign.

• U.S. Senator Barack Obama is favored among 18-24 year-old likely voters by nearly a 2-1 margin over U.S. Senator John McCain in the race for President. Just weeks before Election Day, Senator Obama holds a twenty-six point lead (56%-30%; 15% undecided) over Senator McCain in the 2008 presidential race, a lead that has remained virtually unchanged since July (55%-32%) and March (53%-32%) 2008 IOP polling. Obama’s lead grows slightly among young people saying they will “definitely” be voting (59%-31%). As IOP polling also showed in July, young people continue to say they “trust” Obama more than McCain on eight out of ten major domestic and foreign policy issues facing the country.
• Youth are ready to answer a new call for public service, including working in government. Almost six in ten (59%) 18-24 year-olds say that they are personally interested in engaging in some form of public service to help the country. Nearly one-half (47%) of this group said engagement could include working for the federal, state or local government; almost a third (32%) said they would think about getting involved in a political campaign; and nearly two in ten (17%) said they would consider running for office. Importantly, this is one issue where strong support is seen regardless of party (Democrats 68%, Republicans 63%, Independents 57%), presidential candidate supported (67% Obama supporters, 63% McCain supporters), or gender (63% women, 55% men) of young people today.
• Economy is ten times more important to young people today than one year ago. More than half of young people (53%) say economic issues are their top concern. IOP polling showed 30% of young people expressing the same opinion in March and only 5% in the fall of 2007. During the same time period, the percentage of young people who said Iraq and the War in general was their top concern fell from 37% (fall 2007) to 20% (March 2008) to 9% today. No other issue in this year's poll garnered more than 9%.
• Sen. Biden Vice-Presidential pick shows little effect, while Gov. Palin pick has hurt among Independents and women. When 18-24 year-old likely voters were asked whether each candidate’s vice-presidential selection made them more or less likely to support that ticket in November, six in ten (60%) said that Senator Obama’s pick of U.S. Senator Joe Biden made no difference with just 21% saying the pick made them more likely and 19% saying less likely to support the ticket (Net effect: 2% points positive). However, while only 35% of young people said Senator McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin made no difference, 40% of young voters said the pick made them “less likely” to support the ticket with 25% saying “more likely.” (Net effect: 15% points negative). Among young people self-identifying as Independents, the Biden VP pick had a net 8% point negative effect, while the Palin VP pick had a net 22% point negative effect.
• More than half of young people currently supporting a presidential candidate are interested in volunteering for their candidate’s campaign. Among 18-24 year-olds currently supporting Senator Obama, nearly six in ten (57%) say they would be interested in volunteering for the presidential campaign if asked (17% very interested; 40% somewhat interested). Slightly less than half (47%) of Senator McCain supporters said they would volunteer on their candidate’s campaign if asked to do so (16% very interested, 31% somewhat interested).

[...]

• More young people see the effectiveness of political engagement than one year ago. Nearly seven in ten 18-24 year-olds today (69%) say they see political engagement as an effective way of solving our nation’s problems, up six percentage points from fall 2007 (63%) and fall 2006 (60%) IOP polling. Fewer young people today agree that politics is not relevant to their lives (28%) than did one year ago (32%) and fewer believe that elected officials don’t share their priorities (69%) than did one year ago (71%) or two years ago (75%). In addition, over six in ten young people (68%) say running for office is an honorable thing to do, up from one year ago (67%) and two years ago (66%).

The thing that sticks out to me is the total rejection of McCain and his philosophy. At the top of the bulleted list of outcomes, the first two are the most telling. Obama's lead has largely stayed the same; if it did change at all, he gained a few more percentage points compared to March's numbers. But when we pair that with the bullet point immediately below, we get that basis for the strong, rock-solid support for Obama: activism through sacrifice and working within the system. With Obama repeatedly linking a call to service with this nation's young people, he's clearly established trust with this age group on this issue -- even among Republicans and McCain supporters. This notion of serving something greater than yourself is very appealing to them, given their loads of experience with volunteerism and the large-scale social traumas they've gone through (9/11, Katrina, financial meltdown). While McCain pushes the military as a way of serving the greater good, Obama sees more diversified opportunities. And you can even see this dedication to serving others in the numbers that are willing to volunteer for their candidate's campaign. Obama's recognized this and with his fundraising advantage, has enabled hundreds of thousands of youth to have those opportunities in many small towns across the country. With McCain's limited financial resources, he doesn't offer those same opportunities (even though his supporters also want to be more involved).

The other thing I noticed is the job this election has done in raising enthusiasm for the political process as a means of creating positive change. Over the past few years, this election cycle has convinced one person in every group of ten 18-24 year olds that the political process is effective. With six out of ten already agreeing with this premise two years ago in 2006, seven out of ten now agree.

Finally, as we've been able to establish for a few weeks now, the idea that Palin somehow attracted and mobilized a large segment of youth for the GOP ticket is, well.. bunk. Young people are repelled from the ticket (40% said it made them less likely to support the ticket, compared with 25%, who said it made them more likely).

David Sirota has a very thought-provoking post up at Open Left pointing out that McCain and his advisers, in the last throes of this campaign, are actually helping Obama, his would-be administration, and the Democratic Party with their polarizing approach. Sirota observes the McCain campaign forcing the electorate to choose between someone very far left and someone very far right:

Indeed, in tacking to the hard economic right and focusing the presidential debate on "socialism" and "wealth redistribution," McCain is creating a very clear decision for our country: Either we reject his neo-Reaganism and the regressive redistribution machine that I describe in my new newspaper column this week. Or, we vote to preserve the regressive redistribution machine that has created the most economically unequal America since the Great Depression.

Sirota goes on to point out that while McCain and the GOP might think it beneficial to make people choose (thinking like Jon Meacham, Pat Buchanan, and the rest of the inside-the-beltway blowhards that this country is "center-right"), they seem to be ignoring the implications of the likely possibility that the voters overwhelmingly reject the Republicans' offer. Barack Obama's plan was relatively moderate in the first place, and so the GOP may have had an easier time with their campaign setting up shop in the middle, being more competitive with the independents. An election fought in the middle would have suited the GOP better than the current campaign topography. Because in that case, it would be hard for either party to claim a mandate, as no ideology would be so vulnerable. And in this political environment, the GOP would have to call that a win. Perhaps, if the election was less polarized, the McCain campaign would have been more successful at constructing a narrative that was based on the personalities of the two men -- the only turf favorable for the GOP this cycle. Even with the economic crisis, perhaps McCain would have appeared less political and more statesman-like; less senile, and more knowledgeable. The campaign may have actually appeared to be more strategic and less tactical. But the GOP (Steve Schmidt and the rest of Karl Rove's cronies) wanted a polarized electorate. They went with the divide and conquer card again. Unfortunately for them, it's not working.

So what are the implications of the Republicans continuing to polarize the electorate in the face of an oncoming Democratic tidal wave? Well, if they're not careful, their prevailing principles and ideological narrative will be washed away. Sirota explains that the McCain campaign, while not too successful the past couple months, has succeeded at "...framing the choice as one between a Republican presidency to the right of Ronald Reagan on economics or a Democratic presidency to the left of Franklin Roosevelt on economics..." This framing is essentially McCain saying "all in." By using the word "socialism," and using the "redistribution" line, the GOP, the McCain camp, and its surrogates, are laying it all on the line for voters: it's the choice between socialism or more trickle-down. Of course, Sirota's thesis notes the inherent irony: with Obama poised to win in eleven days barring a true game-changer, McCain's aggressiveness is actually pushing liberalism forward, not Obama. Obama's moderate agenda has become radicalized by the GOP in hopes that it might scare voters, but if it doesn't and the voters rubberstamp it with a huge landslide, doesn't this actually allow the Obama administration to be more radical thanks to McCain and the Republicans? David Sirota thinks so, and I agree.

But building off of that, what's even more important is the cataclysmic stature of this cycle. If 2008 turns out to be anything like 1932, the electorate that would overturn decades of Washington conventional wisdom would be rewarded for their civic participation and their game-changing activism -- their votes created history, and just like the New Deal Coalition, the "Yes We Can" Coalition could stick around for decades to come. For those Millennials that have been around since 2004, this will be the third election in a row in which they've heartily supported the Democrats, and with such a huge victory on the horizon, one could surely assume, their support for Democrats and progressive causes would be cemented. So in an election that is already shaping up to be one of those transformational moments in American history, the Republicans are upping the ante and going "all or nothing."

What we have developing in front of us, now that the Republicans are willing to risk a mandate for true change, is an opportunity for the values that Millennials espouse to guide this new ruling coalition for the next forty or fifty years. So while McCain's gambling all that he has left, we're all poised to reap the benefits. Someone tell John Mayer he might not have to wait much longer.

Update: Political Wire brings attention to a David Frum quote reflecting the theme of this post.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum: "There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him... I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly... it's too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP."

Emphasis added.

(h/t Kevin.)

According to the Sun-Sentinel, a volunteer in one of McCain's Florida campaign offices got caught violating Godwin's Law in a manner that readers of Future Majority will find particularly egregious. The unidentified worker compared Obama to past dictators based on the strength of his youth support:

Among the images that greeted visitors to the John McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach on Thursday was a sign headlined "Barrack Hussein Obama," that compared the Democratic presidential candidate to Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro.

You stay classy, McCain supporters.