YDA Day 3: Can't Get No Respect

This is the third in a series of reports on the YDA Fall Conference. Parts I and II are here.

After two hours canvassing in the cold, YDA reported back to debrief each other on their experience. In terms of practical results, the canvass was only mildly successful by YDA standards. Typically the organization tries to canvass areas that have at least 25% youth density, and they actually prefer that targeted areas have 40% or more. Because of the restrictions of the conference (Manchester is not a young town, and the canvass was limited to the area within 1.5 miles of the hotel), density was far lower and very few useful youth contacts were made.

Nevertheless the canvassing seemed to be successful in so far as those who participated learned how it worked and were eager to figure out how to implement such a strategy. During the debrief, the group exchanged best practices learned during their Saturday afternoon pub crawl, and YDA members from rural areas tried to put their heads together and figure out how a peer-to-peer strategy would work in their scattered districts. The group was clearly dedicated and - even though not all of those attending had received money for such canvasses during YDA's previous campaigns - seemed to be buying in to the national leaderships new organizing strategy.

It was a small group, though. Out of over 300 YD's registered at the conference, only 30 or so participated in teh YDA canvass. The rest either skipped canvassing altogether or went out to canvass on behalf of the Presidential campaign they were supporting. This could just be the inevitable result of holding a national conference in New Hampshire during the height of a primary campaign, or it might also be an indication that those other 270 YDA members are still more invested in the celebrity of candidates and trying to play with "the adults" than they are in the dirty work of turning out young voters.

To their credit, the leadership of YDA recognized that this was one of the problems of the conference, and they were candid about it with each other and with those members who did participate.

As it turned out, this was the last YDA event of the weekend I attended, as Sunday I attended mostly New Hampshire Democratic Party events. The next morning I watched Patrick Murphy (D-Pa) speak about his support for Obama, and got pulled into a presentation on new media delivered by Donnie Fowler.

Fowler is from a long-standing family in Democratic Politics, and Donnie was one of a number of candidates in the running for DNC chair against Howard Dean. He and his partner Jamal Simmons delivered an excellent presentation. There were a few tiny things I would quibble with regarding blogs and bloggers, but nothing that could be considered a deal breaker or horribly inaccurate, despite a decidedly rock relationship that Fowler is known to have with some blogs.

The surprise of the presentation was his unabashed support for young voters and the need for the state parties to court them. Woven throughout his presentation were facts on the size and ideology of the Millennial generation, and the role they will play in forming a progressive majority for the 21st Century.

This was in stark contrast to the attitudes of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, whose officials were at times openly dismissive of the Young Democrats - both publicly and privately - throughout the weekend. I overheard a number of conversations in which staffers openly mocked YDA's portion of the conference. With this as their starting point, it's no wonder that the conference seemed disjointed, and lacking in collaboration between the state party and YDA, and it also puts the relentless competition for bodies in a new light.

Fowler, a presidential campaign veteran, seemed like an incredibly respected figure among those listening to his presentation, and I wonder if he changed their minds about the youth vote - or if the NH Democratic Party was even aware that in their actions throughout the weekend they were doing exactly the opposite of what Fowler was advising them.

These are the big questions - for the Democratic Party and for YDA - coming out of this joint conference. What will it take to convince the rank and file of the state parties that young voters are worth their time and energy as more than manual labor used to lick envelopes and GOTV senior citizens? How many presentations like Fowler's will it take, and is there any way to speed up the process? And how can YDA increase the rate at which their own membership buys into the national organization's strategy of using peer to peer tactics to target young voters? How long will it take for those doing the real work of turning out young voters to convert or outnumber the "star-fuckers" who only care about their own candidate or just want to play with the big-boys?