This Does Not Seem Random

For a long time we reported on the odd lack of youth outreach by the Clinton campaign, a strategy of inaction that ended only recently with the launch of HillBlazers, Clinton's data-capture operation masquerading as a youth outreach website. Now two disturbing events in the last week have brought the Clinton campaign's attitude towards young voters into sharp focus.

First, the Clinton campaign was caught planting audience questions at their townhall events using a student as their plant. This was revealed when Muriel Gallo-Chassenoff, an Iowa college student, came forward and told CNN that a Clinton advisor asked her change her question from a detailed, comparative one about the candidate energy plans, to a softball question that teed up some talking points on climate change:

The second incident came a few days later after the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner. During her speech, Clinton stated that she wasn't interested in attacking her Democratic opponents, but apparently their supporters were fair game for her campaign aids:

At least two of Hillary Clinton’s upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed.

“Our people look like caucus-goers,” Grunwald said, “and his people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook.”

Penn added, “Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state.”

For those who don't know, Mark Penn is one of the chief architects of the Clinton campaign.

Both these events are similar in that they reveal an utter lack of respect for the role of young people in our political process - whether that be in their ability to ask important and intelligent questions, or to be worthy of voting and participating in the process at all.

Worse, they reveal both a short-sightedness and lack of transparency that are detrimental to both the Democratic party and the progressive movement. That Penn would be so dismissive of young voters is utterly unacceptable (and should be a black mark for the campaign among young voters). Has he even read through the election results from 2004 and 2006 and seen what role young voters played in mitigating Kerry's loss, and propelling Democrats to victory in 2006? Has he viewed the demographic numbers and seen that by 2015, Millennials will be over 30% of the eligible electorate and that we are the future core of the progressive movement?

As a pollster, one would presume that he would be familiar with such figures, but it appears that he's more willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater and sacrifice a generation of progressive voters to undercut Obama's stand-out performance at the J-J Dinner (and I say this as someone who is not an Obama supporter). It is such shortsightedness that turned young voters away from the Democrats in the 80s, when Gen X helped elect Reagan, and early 90s (despite conventional wisdom, President Clinton only won 43% of the youth vote in 1992 - more young people voted for Perot and Bush combined than did Clinton).

Planting questions, while disrespectful to all the young voters at the event who no doubt had substantial queries they wanted answered, shows an even worse tendency towards the kinds of propagandism and lack of transparency that have been hallmarks of the Bush Administration. Young voters and the nation have been screaming for change, yet the Clinton campaign is embracing the very traits we want abolished from our government.

Despite this, I don't foresee Clinton losing her lead among young voters. This is just so much inside baseball to the race, and none but the most committed voters, who follow all of the inside baseball, will ever hear about this. Nevertheless, it's important to note, in the words of Muriel Gallo-Chassenoff, that "this is not random." More and more these seem like trends, not blips, and that's the most disturbing thing of all.