video

Finally got my Flip camera working again. Here's the video interview of Alexandra Acker, Executive Director of the Young Democrats, comparing youth participation in Denver to previous conventions.

So the post I wrote on the Trick or Vote Party may go up on AlterNet. I'll post a link when that happens, or post in full here if it doesn't. In the meantime, though, I wanted to point people to a video - one of three or four - that the Bus Federation showed at their trick or vote party.

This is the only one online at the moment, but these are some of the best videos I've ever seen come out of a youth vote organization. It's fun, witty, it doesn't feel like it is trying too hard, and it's selling some serious activism.

MoveOn has put together a pretty good video laying out the playing field for this election. Pass it around, especially to your less political friends:

In case you missed it . . .

• A loophole in Ohio voting law that will allow for one-stop registration and voting this fall could be a huge boon to Obama (and young voters) in the state.
• Yesterday activists launched a campaign on Facebook against Evan Bayh as the potential VP pick called 100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh. You would already know this if you were friends with Future Majority on Facebook.
• Huckabee youth group "Huck's Army" is now recruiting for McCain.
• Future Majority friend, activist, and videographer "noneck" Noel Hidalgo was deported from China this week for filming protests in Tiananmen Square. Noel and his crew might be following me around during the DNC convention producing video for FM. Let's hope it doesn't get quite so dicey in Denver.
• Jared Polis won his primary in Colorado and will go on to become the next Democratic congressman in his district. Not only that, he is the first openly gay candidate elected to congress and he may well be one of - if not the - youngest congressman in the country. I'm proud to have had Jared as a guest in our live blog series. Congrats to him and everyone who worked on the campaign.
• I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but in the next few days, Barack Obama will announce his VP nominee via text message. This was a great idea on their part. They probably received thousands of cell phone numbers that can now be used to get out the vote in November via text.
• The New York Times has more on that in Garret Graff's op-ed about text messaging in the Presidential campaign.
• Blender asked the candidates about their favorite songs. John McCain - what happened to Usher? I thought he was your favorite artist?
• The Washington Post has the skinny on the hottest parties at the DNC.
• In Nevada, a 22 year old is running against an incumbent state Senator who has held office since 14 years before his challenger was born.
• The Wall Street Journal finally picked up on James Fowler's study of the Colbert Bump.
• Generation Vote has a put together a Youth policy platform.
• The Post Chronicle has some thoughts about what Obama's youth supporters need to do post-election day.
• Tom Friedman actually wrote a decent piece about McCain's energy policy.
• It's Getting Hot in Here explains the whole "Gang of 10" energy compromise and why it's a win for Obama.
• David Burstein of 18 in '08 explains the significance of just one vote.
• Medill reports that this may be the geekiest of all conventions.
• Wow:

This was in the Featured Video slot in the sidebar yesterday. Normally I'm inclined to leave video - even really good video - there. But this sermon from Joe is just too good. Amen.

Here's a little Monday morning humor to get your week started on on a good note.

This Onion News Network video is proof that laughter is great medicine- though getting rid of Bush will be a lot better. Only six more months to go- lets hope he doesn't do too much more damage in that time!

Let the pandering to young voters begin:

Only problem is, young voters don't consider this a voting issue and won't buy it in the face of an alternative argument from the Obama camp. But by all means, Sen. McCain, please keep trashing the social safety net.

Jimmy Kimmel gives us an advance look at John McCain's new youth ad:

Update II: Got the video up and working again.

Update: Grrrrr......looks like the video got removed from YouTube. Basically, in so many words, Rendell said that young voters were drinking the Obama Kool-Aid and were swayed by pretty words and a nice speech, but knew very little about Obama's actual policies.
---------------------------------------------

In what is becoming an all-too common script for Clinton surrogates, Governor Ed Rendell thinks that young voters are suckers, duped by drinking too much of the Obama Kool-Aid:

I'll let some young voters rebut these allegations for themselves:

I've just arrived down in DC for the Roosevelt Institution's conference, Towards a New New Deal: FDR's Liberalism and the Future of American Democracy. It's an interesting crowd. Probably 40% of the crowd are young people involved with Roosevelt - aspiring policy makers. The other 60% seem to be older folks, many of whom probably are policy makers (in the sense that they work at policy oriented institutions). This strikes me as a good thing. In the best case scenario, it means that the Roosevelt Institution isn't ghettoized at a "kids's table" that lacks any connection to the real progressive policy world. We'll see if that observation bears out throughout the day.

We're on a ten minute break now before the first panel. Once things get going I'll pop in every couple of hours with my thoughts on how it is going. In the meantime, mtvU's Editorial Board held it's session with Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday. I still haven't had time to watch the clips, but I put them here without comment for your own information/enjoyment.

I know the clips look the same, but they are all different. If you're more for text than video, Ben Adler has the rundown on the forum at the Politico.