Youth at the DNC: Seen Everywhere, Heard Nowhere (Corrected)

Update: A correction has been issued for this piece. Two young people did address the convention on Monday and Tuesday. Read the full correction here.
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My final write-up on the DNC.

On Thursday, Senator Obama finished the long primary process and accepted his party’s nomination in front of 75,000 supporters. In no small part, Senator Obama stood on the podium at Invesco field thanks to the hard work, and votes, of millions of young voters, many of who cast their first ballot in support of his campaign.

Turnout among young voters in the Democratic primary was double the level recorded in 2004, and young voters broke heavily in favor of Senator Obama. In the Iowa caucuses, young voters performed on par with the "reliable" senior vote, and were widely credited with providing Senator Obama’s margin of victory.

That trend continued at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, in which young people played a larger-than-usual, though still not proportional, part in the proceedings. Young people made up a record 16% of all official participants in Denver, including 631 delegates. This represented a huge increase over 2000 and 2004, when young people made up 9 and 11% of convention participants, respectively.

As Crystal Strait, political director of the California Democratic Party and active Young Democrat noted during a press conference by the DNC Youth Council, young people were still not represented in the convention at the levels in which they participate in Democratic politics. Young people made up 19% of the Democratic electorate in 20004, and under the DNC Charter, should also make up 19% of the delegates at the Democratic Convention, 3% higher than the record levels found in Denver.

Off the convention floor, though, young faces could be found in abundance. The College Democrats of America held their own national convention in Denver, concurrent with the DNC. The group flooded the city with hundreds of student activists who came for trainings, speeches from top DNC officials, and perhaps a chance to view Senator Obama’s acceptance speech live.

During the day, panels coordinated by the DNC Youth Council – a board consisting of leaders from College Democrats, Young Democrats, Democrats Work, and Future Majority (myself and coblogger Kevin Bondelli are both members), as well as all members of the DNC under age 36 – provided access to elected officials and party leaders like Howard Dean and Scott Kleeb, as well as advice on best practices for organizing young voters or running for office.

Non-partisan youth organizations, such as the Bus Federation and Rock the Vote, were also in attendance, throwing parties at night and flooding the street with viral campaigns during the day. It was hard to walk down the street without noticing Bus Federation volunteers dressed as vampires, angels, or devils to raise awareness about Trick or Vote, their national Halloween GOTV canvass. Often not more than a few yards away, Rock the Vote street team members handed out cryptic black postcards with white numbering. The numbers changed each day, and represented important statistics on young voters.

Despite this unprecedented youth involvement at the convention, young people were more likely to be seen than heard by the delegates and party officials in Denver.

Though they are the official youth arm of the Democratic Party, the College Democrats were unable to provide the vast majority of their membership in Denver access to the first three nights of the convention. The Young Democrats and DNC Youth Council had similar problems obtaining credentials for their members early in the week, and young Democratic organizers in Denver needed to rely on their state parties or personal connections to obtain credentials to the Pepsi Center. The situation was much improved for Thursday night's events at Invesco Field, for which party youth organizations were mostly able to provide access to their members.

Most surprisingly, the one place young voters were completely absent at the Democratic National Convention was at the podium. During my four nights at the convention I did not see one young voter or youth organizer – from CDA, YDA, SFBO or otherwise – address the convention. Young Democrats looking forward to Chelsea Clinton’s introduction of her mother as a kind of passing-the-torch to the next generation moment were disappointed when the former First Daughter’s role was reduced to narrating a video about her mother’s life.

Thursday at Invesco Field was no better. Not one young person took the stage that night – not even during a brief period in which the party introduced half a dozen “regular folks” to talk about the problems they face. It was a curious and conspicuous omission considering the economic plight of “Generation Debt.”

The closest the Party came to including young people during the night’s proceedings came during the speeches of Al Gore and Sen. Obama, both of whom acknowledged the unique role of young people in pushing for change during this election.

To the extent that this is a change election, it is also generational election. Age was the greatest predictor of how someone would cast a vote in the primary process. Unfortunately, the convention organizers chose to talk at young people this week rather reward them for their activism with a place at the podium. Young voters are pushing the Democratic Party towards victory, yet it appears that the convention organizers still adhere to the old adage: children should be seen, but not heard.