John Edwards

I'm off to the land of South Carolina to wittness the primary before I embark on a quick Find Rudy Campaign. Why you might ask am I looking for Rudy... well... has anyone really seen him lately? I mean other than the great state of Florida. So I'm going to Florida to find Rudy.

Again... you're shaking your head... See, Rudy is actually one of only TWO republican candidates that have a youth section on their websites. One of course is Ron Paul. So, first I want to see what the crowds are like at his events - are there young people? Do they seem engaged? Do they feel like they are missing out without the whole Chuck Norris thing? Why did Rudy feel compelled to connect with young voters? All questions I'll try to get answers to.

Speaking of the GOP.... Jane Flemming Kleeb from YVP tipped me off to Jason Mattera. Jason is from the Young Americas Foundation - which gets young people into wacko right wing policies. Yeah... I know... I'm totally a partisan hack, but Jason has a few good points here. 1. Young people aren't conservative. 2. The GOP doesn't do youth outreach.... hardly at all. 3. Young conservatives are more likely to be involved in church not campaigns. 4. Reagan is dead and gone. Its true. He is.

Ew... don't you just need a shower after that?! I wish the GOP super good luck on their adventures attracting young voters. And while I hope those young voters take one look and come running the other way to my big happy partisan party, I have to say once again that any outreach to young voters... is good outreach. Even when they're evil? Yes, even when they're evil, because they are showing you that you are important... and lets face it... you are.

Ok.. moving on... Hillary Clinton launched a youth focused national tour this week titled Our Voices, Our Future.

"The Clinton campaign today launched the “Our Voice, Our Future Tour,” a two-week tour to encourage young voters to support Hillary and make their voices heard. The tour builds on and expands Hillblazers, the campaign’s youth mobilization program. Through visits to high schools, colleges and young professional events, Chelsea Clinton, Members of Congress, and prominent Hillary backers will reach out to young people and inspire and mobilize support for the campaign. New supporters will be encouraged to engage their social networks in support of Hillary.

“Young people have always been a voice for change. Throughout my campaign, I’ve heard students and young professionals speak about the challenges we face and the solutions they’d like to see, from an education policy that makes college affordable to a health care policy that provides quality care to all Americans,” said Clinton. “Young Americans are thinking about our future and making their voices heard during this election, and I am listening, and I’ll be sure to continue to listen in the White House.”

When I asked OK YD president Mandy Winton about it she was enthusiastic

"Sen Clinton will be able to take her message to young voters who will be pivotal in the outcome of this historic election. Hillary brings real solutions to problems our generation is facing. From rising costs for higher education to the environment, Senator Clinton will bring real change and solutions for a brighter future for all Americans," she said

While I applaud the effort for the same reason that I champion Jason's antics, I worry that for her its too little too late. If young voters don't come out for her and she does become the nominee, I wonder if that will reduce her enthusiasm for young voters in the general. I could be jumping to conclusions, but its a fear that I think all of us face ... going BACK to the sad scary world where politicians didn't know we mattered....

And finally Senator John Edwards will be the second candidate to participate in the town hall style forum hosted by the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) today (Friday) at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in Columbia, South Carolina.

The event will mark the second in a series that SAVE is hosting with Democratic and Republican Presidential Candidates. “The gap between politicians and young people is too wide,” said Matthew Segal, the executive director of SAVE. “The purpose of our forum is to show politicians that young people care and to show young people that politicians are accessible and listening. I am pleased that John Edwards recognizes that youth are a crucial component of the electorate who require the same respect, attention and consideration that older voting blocs receive.”

This comes about after BraveNewFilms's MeetThePrez did an interview with Sen. Edwards asking him why he thought young voters mattered.

SAVE's townhall will be going on around the time the Senator's recent interview with Tyra Banks will be aired. See clips here and here.

Senator Clinton appeared earlier, she and Tyra discussed Clinton's first date with Bill, text messaging, and headbands. Obama also appeared earlier this year. You can see clips from him revealing his first date experience here.

Hey - say what you will about Tyra, but she gets them to answer some personal questions, and she's much nicer than Tim Russert.

Happy South Carolina Primary to everybody!

Many speculate on the democratic value of the caucus system because it requires people to be available at a specific time where in a primary you have all day long to vote. Thus the Iowa Caucus being held in the eventing and the upcoming Nevada primary being held on a Saturday.

A recent post on MyDD explains differences in the two systems and some of the important details for the Nevada Caucus:

A series of "at-large" precincts are scheduled to be held near the Strip properties for workers who are on their shifts Saturday . However, the last I heard, the companies had not agreed to let workers take extended breaks to participate, and since the shift change is at noon, its not clear whether those coming off will be allowed to leave early or those coming on will be allowed to arrive late on Saturday. (With Culinary now backing Obama and Clinton having support among some management executives, such as MGM/Mirage VP for personnel, there may be some interesting behind-the-scenes tussles as this gets worked out in the next 10 days.)"

The Nevada Sagebrush - the University of Nevada Reno school paper asks its students where they will be on caucus day with the fun cartoon to the right. But both the College Republicans and the Young Democrats have worked hard to inform students what the caucus is all about.

Earlier last semester the YD's hosted a mock caucus - the "mockus" to allow students to ask questions and learn more about how the process works.

"Fashioned in the style of an actual caucus, the “mockus” will allow students to experience the process of a caucus, which Miller said she hopes will dismiss any fears or doubts concerning the official process.

Miller said Jill Derby, chairwoman of the Nevada State Democratic Party, and Nevada Assemblyman David Bobzien, D-Reno, will be speaking and helping out at the mockus.

Jason Fromoltz, president of the Young Democrats state chapter, said students can expect more of these events as part of the statewide launched plan, “Wanna Caucus.” NV Sagebrush

Nevada is quickly becoming high noon to break apart the close scores of Clinton and Obama or give a nudge to Edwards who secured union support early on in the state.

But "according to The Washington Post, candidates have hosted 188 Nevada events compared to 379 in South Carolina. Iowa drew 1,823 events and New Hampshire 942, according to the Post.

“We were hoping to get more but you’re always hoping for more,” said Bryan Bedera, state chairman of the Republican Youth Majority. “I’m a bit surprised the Republican candidates haven’t focused more on Nevada.”

I'm surprised too. You'd think with New York New York Rudy would be there most nights trying to talk about September 11th and do a press conference.

But the Nevada caucus is aimed to be a pretty swanky affair. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid predicted that there will be 100,000 caucus goers in Nevada. (compared to just under 350,000 in Iowa) And with a lower average age in Nevada, some think youth turnout may also ride the wave to high numbers here as well.

"With Nevada being a caucus state, that's going to translate into a higher youth turnout in Nevada," [said A'shanti Fayshel Gholar, who lives in Las Vegas and serves as vice president of the Young Democrats of America.]"

I agree. My prediction is youth turnout will continue to increase - and we'll see great numbers in 18-30 year olds across the state. See more inspiring stats on young Nevada voters at CIRCLE (pdf)

Check out this video that the John Edwards Campaign is spotlighting on their youth site:

It's a little long, but really good overall. It's fun, and it's a concise explanation of what to expect and how to participate in the caucus. This is part of a new project launched today by the Edwards Campaign - The Iowa Caucus Command Center. The site hooks up potential caucus-goers with the location of their caucus, ride boards, and basic caucus information.

Seeing this inspired me to go check out the three top candidate's youth websites to see what's new and how they are approaching the caucus. There's less than one month left until the caucus (and the final week of the year is always a wash), so this is really crunch time for the campaigns, and I wanted to see what a young, potential supporter might find if they came to a campaign site looking for information about the caucus.

First stop was Students for Barack Obama. The SFBO page took a more field-based approach to the caucus - presenting students with a Google Map Mashup listing all the college and high school SFBO chapters and directing new people to sign up with some forms running on ajaxy-goodness.

Some more digging around the Obama website actually turned up The Iowa Caucus Center, a section of the website that was even more in-depth than what the Edwards campaign provides. Like the Edward campaign, Obama's Caucus Center features their own retro-style video explaining the caucus, along with a slide show, downloadable information, ride boards, recruitment tools, and even help finding child care for the evening. Despite the recent stir-up in the Iowa press about the rights of students to caucus, there was no clear way to get to this wealth of information from the Iowa section of the SFBO pages.

Finally, I went on over to HillBlazers to see what was happening. Sadly, the site is very much in line with Hillary's recent comments about students at the caucuses. Hillblazers currently has no information about the caucus available, and going over to the main Hillary for President site yields only an online form for me to fill out if I want information about the Iowa Caucus.

On the social networks, Barack Obama was the only top three candidate to have any caucus-related information prominently linked in the official group or profile. His MySpace account links promiently to the Iowa Caucus Headquarters, which takes the viewer to a page that prominently features the Caucus Center. Such links to the Caucus Command Center was absent from the Edwards FaceBook and MySpace pages, and as we've seen, Hilllary has nothing she could even link eager young supporters to. So it appears that when it comes to reaching young folks (online), Obama and Edwards are starting to reach out, but the efforts are still a bit uncoordinated and not yet at full steam. Hillary, on the other hand, has nothing going.

What's happening on the ground I'm sure is another matter entirely.

Rock the Vote has released the latest (pdf) in it's bi-monthly series polling young voters. Overall, not that many surprises. Highlights include:

• 77% 18-29 year olds are paying attention and watching the debates. This compares with an average of 64% for the entire electorate. (Rasmussen)

Generic Ballots

• On the generic ballots (Rasmussen), Democrats hold a 16 point lead over the Republicans (55 - 39) in the Presidential race and a 30 point lead over Republicans in the generic Congressional ballot (57 - 27). There was a slight decrease in support for both parties in this Congressional ballot. It's (probably - actual MoE is not provided) just outside the margin of error so it may represents an actual decline in support for both parties, which would make sense seeing as Republicans policies that were voted against in 2006 are still in effect and the Democrats have been ineffective at mitigating them.
• On the hypothetical Presidential match-ups, Democrats continue to dominate for the most part. What was interesting is that Clinton routinely wins by larger margins among 18-29 year olds against all Republican opponents, and both Barack Obama and John Edwards actually lose among young voters when pitted against Giuliani, who has long been the Republican favorite among young voters in these polls.
• Within the Democratic Primary, the polling confirms trends we've discussed quite a bit here recently. Data culled from PEW shows Clinton leading Obama and Edwards nationally among 18-29 year olds 42 - 32 - 6%.

New Hampshire

• Most young voters in New Hampshire will be voting in the Democratic Primary (45 - 32%; 24% not sure), and they are choosing Clinton by what I eyeball at about 45 - 20 - 10% (it's a graph, not hard numbers within the polling report.). On the Republican side, Giuliani wins among young voters with about 37% of the vote compared to about 22% for John McCain.
• The poll also confirms the conservative streak in Gen X. They are the only demographic in which more voters plan to vote in the Republican than the Democratic primary.

Iowa

• In Iowa, Hillary is dominating among 18-29 year olds (Rasmussen), with 40% of their vote compared to about 23% for Obama. Interestingly, Obama walks away with the Generation X vote, beating Hillary by 33% - to about 24%, and when CBS/NYTimes looked at Iowa, Obama won the under 45 vote. It appears more and more that Obama is not the candidate of Millennials, but of Generation X, in so far as that demographic votes Democratic. Considering that they are the most conservative generation in America, what does that say about Obama? Is he "safe" because of his "post-partisan" appeal?

South Carolina

• Rock the Vote is also providing our first look at South Carolina for young voters, and it's neck and neck for Clinton and Obama, with Hillary holding a slight edge of about 41% - 39%. Since I'm sure that's within the margin of error, we've got a statistical dead heat. The trend of Gen X choosing Obama also carries over to South Carolina. Obama is cleaning Clinton's clock among 30-39 year olds by about 51% - 35%.

Hillary Clinton announced her student campaign program the Hillblazers Thursday at Wellesley. She joined many of her fellow candidates in focusing on college students which I certainly applaud her for.

According to the Sacred Heart University Institute

"Among young Democrats, Hillary Clinton was the top choice to win the Democratic primary (54%), followed by Barack Obama (24%), and John Edwards (8.4%)

But when examining support for Sen. Clinton among college grads vs. high school grads only, you see more of an even spread with Obama.

The Clinton campaign has done a lot to tap into support among women but not quite enough with young women and there are noticeable differences between the other campaigns that built a youth focused infrastructure early and quickly - particularly the issues they choose to focus on when talking to young people. Tip: Its not always about college affordability.

The email that Sen. Clinton sent to supporters speaks of her years at Wellesley as the times that

"inspired me to change the world"

a message I am sure resinates with today's college students and the 18-30 demographic. I'm sure I speak for many when I say that we feel powerless in the face of so many problems facing our country.

A few of my friends in several states have heard from the Clinton campaign as possible state directors for the Hillblazers program and I noticed one at a party a few nights ago recruiting excitedly. Many of these folks are state YD directors and directors of their University chapter of the YD's which is disturbing given the fact that they should be remaining neutral. This program is sure to be a success among already passionate Clinton supporters and will certainly increase her voice on campuses.

While I doubt that she will steal away support from the already energized and organized Obama supporters - in the event that Clinton is the nominee her infrastructure now may help earn street cred with the BO folks in the future (which I am in no way saying I would want to occur).

As was indicated both in the NYTimes and again by Sen. John Edwards in the most recent debate, Senator Clinton has begun moving her campaign out of primary mode and more into general election mode. This turns my mind to wonder if Senator Clinton's campaign didn't consider youth outreach as important for her primary campaign but is now acknowledging it as a must for the general (regardless of whether or not voters choose her).

The other possibility is that the Clinton campaign didn't need anything special to focus on some primary youth voters because they were satisfied without spending a lot of time on that demographic.

And while I am excited to see the Clinton campaign launching this program and focusing on young people or as Mike would call it - the "youthroots" I noticed an all too common trap that they have fallen into: The assumption that youth outreach has to do with college students. As the Obama campaign corrected and the Edwards campaign avoided youth outreach doesn't start at the door of a university. We are quite a bit more diverse than that.

In case you missed the MTV/MySpace forum, you can view how the audience rated John Edwards answers to your questions:

After a few technical glitches, the MTV/MySpace candidate dialogue series kicked off today, streamed live from the University of New Hampshire, where Sentator John Edwards was grilled by college students, and held accountable for his answers by online viewers who voted their approval or disapproval of senator's answers in real time.

Billed as a new way to empower (young) voters, partners MTV and MySpace promised to deliver a new format that would allow for more participation on the part of the viewing audience, as well as a dose of accountability for politicians who frequently use these forums to deliver talking points rather than answer the public's questions. In practice, the event was a large step in that direction, though somewhat less than it could have been.

Scheduled to start at noon, the live stream started at least 15 minutes late, and numerous glitches prevented some users - myself included - from fully participating. Viewing the stream on both the MTV and MySpace site twice crashed my Firefox browser, forcing me to use Safari (and miss about 5 minutes of the forum), and Mac users like myself were locked out of the instant message portion of the event, limiting our ability to access some of the more participatory elements of the event.

Despite that, the Flektor widget that allowed users to rate Senator Edwards' responses in real time was a joy. The widget provided up-to-the-second information about how the Senator's remarks were playing among the crowd, and provided instant focusing group data on the Senator's issue positions among a highly engaged portion of the youth electorate.

The campaign must surely be happy with the results. Senator Edwards remarks frequently netted approval ratings in the high 70s and 80s, and by the end of the forum, 90% of the audience thought the Senator had provided good ideas on the many policy issues raised. Preliminary evidence from Flektor shows that over 32,000 people have viewed the widget, though Jeff Berman, Senior Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs at MySpace.com, said that official figures on participation levels would be released within the next 24 hours.

Whether or not Senator Edwards receives a bump in the polls from this highly rated performance remains to be seen. Will high approval ratings translate into new votes for the Senator, or will Senators Obama and Clinton garner similar ratings, indicating broad support among the audience for specific types of policy solutions, but not necessarily support for any given candidate? It begs the question of as to whether or not implementing such polling devices during regular debates might be a more useful tool for gaging the mind of the electorate.

Edwards' high approval ratings - and the consistent disapproval he received from a small percentage of the audience - raise other questions as well. 90% approval for what might be termed "liberal" or "progressive" policy ideas is above and beyond the most optimistic polls, which typically show youth support for Democratic ideas over Republican ideas to be at most 60-70% (pdf). Was the audience mainly composed of voters who were predisposed to like Edwards proposals? And what is the likelihood that supporters or opponents could Freep the results in future townhalls?

While the insta-polling provided viewers with a much broader perspective of the significance of Edwards answers, and established a proof of concept for an exciting and more participatory way for voters to interact with the candidates on issues, the event failed to realize the full potential of the format it is pioneering. This was probably unavoidable during this first attempt, and due in equal parts to the human moderation of the questions and the fact that an astounding number professed the highest degree of support for the Senator's positions.

In the context of a debate or townhall, the real value in insta-polling viewers opinions is two fold: to create a feedback loop that can inform questions from the audience or moderator, and to hold accountable politicians who try to dodge a question, play down unpopular positions, or steer the discussion towards predetermined talking points. Since an overwhelming portion of today's viewers agreed with Senator Edwards and indicated that he satisfactorily answered their questions, it never became necessary for moderator Chris Cillizza to hold his feet to the fire over an answer, leaving one of the great potentials of this format untapped (which is not necessarily a bad thing - no one wants politicians lying or obfuscating their responses).

In regards to the creation of a positive feedback loop, the MTV/MySpace dialogue did not seem equipped to take full advantage of the direct connection they established between the audience, the moderators, and the candidate. All the questions on which the audience voted were determined in advance, and it was not possible for viewers to adjust their vote as the candidate clarified his responses or addressed follow-up questions. In addition, while there were topical questions provided by viewers at home via IM, as well as follow-ups by Chris Cillizza, very few of these seemed to be drawn directly from the voting results or in response to remarks from the Senator. Instead of a well oiled machine taking inputs from a variety of sources - townhall members, voting data, IM submissions - and using them to inform one another and act as the driver of the conversation, what MTV and MySpace provided was an informative aggregator of all of these data sources from which viewers could draw their own conclusions.

It is possible that future iternations of the candidate dialogues will evolve to address this question and create an even more dynamic relationship between viewer, candidate and moderator. In a conversation following the event, Jeff Berman noted that MySpace would "take input from users and other people and tweak [the format] more. . . we dont' have a patent on the perfect way of doing it, and after every one of these events we will do a critical analysis to see how we can do it better next time. This is about empowering people in a way that has never happened before."

I'd say that Berman and his team are off to a great start, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they upgrade this in the future. Whatever its faults, today's forum was far more informative than any of the candidate debates we've seen thus far, and a model for all candidate forums from here on out.

I'm a little late as this has been making the rounds for most of the day, but check out the wisdom that Dick Cheney was dropping circa 1994:

On that tip, both Edwards and Hillary came out with statements this week about our War Czar's moment of tru -er- break with message discipline. I didn't see any statements on the web pages of other candidates.

I'm actually pretty surprised at Hillary. Issues affecting young people and clarity on the war are two of her weakest areas. The statement isn't particularly hard hitting, but for what it's worth, she was the first to issue any statement at all.

Unfortunately, this is also fodder for Rangel to pull out his perennial draft resolution. I understand where he's coming from - it is incredibly unfair that lower income kids shoulder the country's military burden. Especially if we're going to go jaunting off on elective adventures. Yet he's pulled this out so many times that it's more of a joke than an effective strategy for anything.

Via BoingBoing - a chart comparing the issue positions of all the presidential candidates - Democrats and Republicans.

There were a lot of great posts over the past few days that I missed while at Kos. Here's what's been going on in the past five days in our corner of the progressive movement:

• Over at MyDD, Jerome took my job and filed the weekend youth vote report, noting a new Washington Post poll of Iowa Caucus-goers that sampled a high amount of young folks. It's the first poll I've seen of Iowa that puts Obama ahead. The question becomes - what will be Obama's strategy to get those voters to the caucus, and how do you make them effective caucus-goers? You don't just show up at a caucus, you have to politick for your candidate. Can Obama teach enough young voters how to do that to make the difference?
  

  Also interesting in this poll is that Edwards practically tied with Hillary for the remaining youth support. Is he starting to gain ground among Millenials?

• If you can get past the starry-eyed rhetoric for his preferred candidate, Jacob Alperin-Sheriff has an interesting post on the Students for Barack Obama blog asking why Obama is the preferred candidate of young voters. I think the questions are right, though I don't know that I agree with his conclusions.
• Four Presidential Candidates will be stopping in to the Daily Show before the end of the month.
• Campus Progress reports on the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), a new organization dedicated to removing barriers to youth participation on election day. They've got some interesting ideas about registration vs. education and ideology. Not sure I agree 100%, but they definitely deserve a closer look.
• Hillary Clinton is now promoting the idea of a Public Service Academy. She also got slapped around at Yearly Kos during a question about Lobbyists.
  
• Chris Bowers at Open Left had two posts about the health of the progressive movement - Blogosphere Diversity and Why the Progressive Movement has Stalled.
• Rudy Giuliani's daughter became the next Obama Girl.
• Taking a look at the other side of the aisle, the young Republicans are getting restless.
• Last but absolutely not least, this was the viral video of Yearly Kos: