Tom Allen

Update: Frank Chi, Communications Director of the College Democrats, contacted me about this post to let me know that this video was shot not for public dissemination, but rather as an introduction to Rep. Allen's address to the Maine College Democrats Convention this week, making both my critique somewhat off the mark. Chi also notes that the students in the video are in fact Bowdoin students doing phone banking. He did not clarify whether or not they were targeting students or helping with more general state party outreach.
-------------------------------------------

This video by the Maine College Democrats has been making the rounds this week, getting some well-deserved linkage on MyDD, Senate2008 Guru, and America Blog. I just wanted to give my 2 cents on it:

The production values are great. This is about 10 steps up from any video I've seen the College Democrats produce thus far. I don't know who produced it (someone in the org, friend of a friend, etc.), but this is sort of what I'm talking about when I say that College Dems and YDA should find ways to tap into creative class students/young professionals; people who might never work a canvass but are capable of producing something like this for a campaign. My hat is off to the Maine College Dems for putting together such a professional ad.

Now for the critique. The ad is slightly confusing, and requires that the viewer already be well-versed in the campaign. It's right on in its critique of Right Wing government, but it's tough to know more immediate details like who is being critiqued and or the identity of the mysterious white guy that's supposed to make everything better. Outsiders or political newbies might not know that Senator Susan Collins is the woman next to Bush and Santorum in a number of photographs. Representative Tom Allen (aka the white dude at the end), as a congressman and not a Senator, is likely even more obscure.

The ad also is an extremely soft ask. It's promoting the Maine College Democrats new website (which is pretty decent, btw, though I can't speak for it's back-end capabilities), and not necessarily plugging people into a useful action. The Maine College Democrats have a presser up on their site stating their intention to do peer to peer organizing in the lead up to '08, but images of such an operation aren't anywhere to be found in the ad. Instead, what we see is students working in a campaign office - likely working to GOTV the Gen X and Baby Boomer vote using state party lists that are out of date and highly innaccurate when it comes to young voters (ostensibly the target of the ad).

This sort of gets to a third, and more meta point about coverage of this video in the blogosphere. It is great that MyDD, America Blog, and Senate Guru all linked to some progressive (and partisan Democratic) youth activism, but this is hardly the best representation of youth activism in the country (indeed, it's not even the most exciting thing happening in the last four days). As I've noted before, there are structural problems with CDA at the national level - and frequently at the state level, though I can't speak directly to the situation on the ground in Maine - that make CDA a less than ideal vehicle for youth GOTV. College Democrats may well be the weakest link in progressive youth infrastructure. So my feelings are mixed. I'm elated to see the blogosphere taking note of things that young people are doing for the Party and the movement, but still think that there's a lot of education and critical evaluation of just what is working and what isn't in youth organizing on the part of everyone.