Campaigns

I'm mostly still off the grid but had to pop back in to share this with you. Vote Vets just announced the launch of an Emerging Leaders program to help (mostly) young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan get elected to state and local office in a bid to build the Democratic foreign policy bench. Add this to the growing roster of organizations that help train new, young candidates for public office.

Here's what they had to say:

[W]e learned very quickly that the key to building a long-term, progressive cadre of national leaders with on-the-ground foreign policy experience is to have a "deep bench" as they say in sports. In order to win House and Senate seats for years to come, we have to be able to put up candidates that have years of political experience under their belts. And as we've seen over the past two, just being an Iraq vet doesn't cut it in the hyper-competitive world of Washington politics.

That's why we've devised a "farm team" of progressive candidates with hands-on national security experience. We've created a program for like-minded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans called Emerging Leaders. In this program, we recruit vets with little to no political experience and promote them in state and local races. We've also incorporated a number of Iraq and Afghanistan who have already won state and local races in the past few years. The idea is to develop seasoned leaders who are more than capable of not only running for federal office in the coming years (should they choose to), but of winning. By cultivating their political careers at the earliest stages, we'll help them to become U.S. senators and members of Congress down the road.

These veterans will eventually become the answer to the McCains, Grahams, and Liebermans of the world when it comes to the question of whether or not to start a war.

Here's the inaugural class:

New Candidates

• Stephen Webber: Iraq Vet - Running for Missouri State House
• Jason Kander: Afghanistan Vet - Running for Missouri State House
• Miranda Norman: Iraq Vet - Running for Oklahoma State House
• Richard Riggs: Iraq Vet - Running for Oregon State House
• Donald Bortz: Iraq Vet - Running for Oakland County (Michigan) Commissioner
• Alex Cornell du Houx: Iraq Vet - Running for Maine State House
• Glenn Ray: Iraq Vet - Running for Arizona State House
• Allan Branstiter: Iraq Vet - Running for North Dakota State Senate

Elected Officials

• Harold Naughton: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Massachusetts State House
• Joe Rice: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Colorado State House
• Allen Vaught: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Texas State House
• McKinley Bailey: Iraq and Afghanistan Vet - Running for re-election to the Iowa State House
• Steven Fulop: Iraq Vet - Jersey City, New Jersey City Councilman
• Steve Hobbs: Iraq Vet, Washington State Senator

In conversation, the President of one of YDA's state chapters raised a really interesting question: What would happen if campaigns stopped putting money into the senior vote and redirected that to youth?

It's a provocative question. Campaigns tend to spend no money on young people "because youth don't vote," and they expend a large share of resources reaching out to the "reliable" senior vote. When you think about it, it's a little ass-backwards. Voting is a habit and seniors tend to be full-on addicts in their turnout rates. If we stopped spending money reaching out to them and encouraging them to get to the polls, would they turnout anyway? Probably. It seems highly unlikely they would quite voting cold turkey. Couldn't that money be better spent reaching out to people whose voting habits are not so "reliable" and whose partisanship is still up for grabs?

It's not an all or nothing proposition. You don't need to stop spending ALL money on seniors, but perhaps adjusting the proportion spent on seniors and that spent on young people might yield better returns on investment overall? What would happen if half the money spent robo-calling, direct mailing, and door-knocking seniors went to contacting young people?

Conversely, if we did see a big drop-off in senior turnout under such a campaign, doesn't that speak to the importance of doing outreach to ALL demographics? If less resources and contacts means a smaller senior vote, the same is true of young voters. You can't claim they're unreliable and not worth resources if the very act of withholding resources is what drives down their turnout numbers . . .

It would be interesting to run this as a field experiment in a super-safe Democratic seat. I don't think we will, but it would be a good piece of data to have.

And so it begins, a summer of articles about campaign interns and graduates hopping on the campaign trail. Welcome to the summer youth vote narrative.

I've been skeptical of the value of Second Life - as both a type of social network and more particularly as a campaign resource - for quite a while. It's never struck me as a place that is highly populated by a desirable audience that isn't reachable as part of another, larger (or niche) audience. And I've never seen the real value in it as anything other than a novelty.

Social Web guru Clay Shirky is putting stats to that claim. Any campaign interested in pursuing a Second Life strategy should read his recent article dissecting the hype that surrounds Second Life.

If we think of a user as someone who has returned to a site after trying it once, I doubt that the number of simultaneous Second Life users breaks 10,000 regularly. If we raise the bar to people who come back for a second month, I wonder if the site breaks 10,000 simultaneous return visitors outside highly promoted events.

Second Life may be wrought by its more active users into something good, but right now the deck is stacked against it, because the perceptions of great user growth and great value from scarcity are mutually reinforcing but built on sand. Were the press to shift to reporting Recently Logged In as their best approximation of the population, the number of reported users would shrink by an order of magnitude; were they to adopt industry-standard unique users reporting (assuming they could get those numbers), the reported population would probably drop by two orders. If the growth isn't as currently advertised (and it isn't), then the value from scarcity is overstated, and if the value of scarcity is overstated, at least one of the engines of growth will cool down.

If campaigns really want to get into this game, I'd suggest they figure out a way to into the other MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. The number of real users is astronomically higher, the bonds between users are knit into tighter communities, and there's probably a lot more fertile ground to be tilled.

Sidney Blumenthal writes a nice summary piece in Salon which ties together a lot of the threads we follow here:

While voters under 30 were the most favorable age group in 2004 for Kerry, casting 54 percent of their votes for him, Democratic House candidates in 2006 received 60 percent of their votes, compared with 38 percent for Republicans. Nationally, partisan identification breaks 38 percent Democratic to 35 percent Republican, but among those under age 30 the percentages are 43 to 31 in favor of Democrats. This pattern runs as strongly in the West as in the East, the Midwest and the Pacific states, a clear indication that the Western states are heading out of the Republican camp -- out of alliance with the deep South's Republican states and into coalition with the broad majority.

Blumenthal also notes how at the state level (Governors, legislatures, etc) Democratic candidates did markedly better than in 2004 on average. For instance, in 2004 Iowa went for Bush by less than 1%. Three weeks ago a Democrat won the Governors race by 10 points.

This is no doubt partly due to a general public distaste for all things Republican (and possibly the weakness of John Kerry's candidacy in '04), but to me it strongly indicates that the 50-state strategy is leading to better Democratic branding and candidates in many places. We're building a network party that operates with greater agility and authenticity than the old Beltway/Broadcast model, and the work has only just begun.

This week the owner of the site e.politics sent me a link (via Young Philly Politics) to a new section on the site titled Online Politics 101: The Tools and Tactics of Online Political Advocacy. Though the guide is a work in progress it is still one of the most comprehensive guides to online political advocacy that I've seen. Some of the items on the site probably seem like no-brainers to some of us, for example the notion that a campaign website should have a consistent look on every page, but take a look at a few start-up Congressional races (which I did while compiling the list of vets running for Congress for Blue Force) and you quickly realize that campaigns are in desperate need of even the most basic advice. Luckily for future Congressional campaigns e.politics has created a one-stop-shop for online advocacy information, with advice ranging from simple to advanced and from broad to very specific. Here's the press release.

Given the enormous cost to George Allen of his "Macaca" moment, it's no surprise that CBS News would take a look at
Politics In The Age Of YouTube. What is surprising is that I couldn't find the damn CBS video on YouTube so that I could avoid CBS's annoying embedded player to watch the segment. Ah well, at least I can still get my Friday morning fix of the Bangles and Twisted Sister! And No, We Aint Gonna Take It!

Following up on Mike's post which looked at Black America PAC's $1-million investment in getting Black Youth to vote for candidates who want to invade your privacy, deny you contraception, and increase sales in coat-hangers, this article notes that this money would probably be better spent convincing Eagles fans to root for T.O. and the Cowboys when they come to Philly. I'm sure that the Democrats will take this information to heart and will start focusing on young voters, and young African-American voters in particular. OK, that last part was a joke. A sad, sad, joke.

Reporting for Personal Democracy Forum, activist/writer Greg Bloom, whom Alex has quoted on this website for his work covering the "strip mining of the grassroots," recently attended a training session by the New Organizing Institute.

The New Organizing Institute is a unique grassroots program that trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations. The Institute is being created by experienced online organizers in conjunction with MoveOn.org to fill an urgent need in progressive politics.

The mission of the NOI is:

• To train and support a new generation of technology-enabled campaigners.
• To consolidate and disseminate knowledge gained in the field of political technology and online organizing.
• To conduct new research and post-campaign investigations that employ results-focused, systems thinking to make progressive campaigns and organizations more efficient.

Greg hones in on what was good and bad about NOI and its training sessions. Well worth the read.

Last night I recorded a podcast with Dana Fisher, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and author of the recently published book: Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns is Strangling Progressive Politics in America.

The podcast should be up on the site early next week (Monday or Tuesday) and I'll be posting a review of the book at the same time. It's an excellet study on how canvassing operations like The People's Project - despite their ability to quickly and efficiently build lists and raise money - are detrimental to the longterm health of the progressive movement. We touched on a lot of topics during the podcast - the history of canvassing and the operating models of these organizatios, the (lack of) utility of canvassing as an "entry point" into progressive politics for young people, Republican and Democratic GOTV strategies in 2004, community and local infrastructure building (something that these canvassing operations have allowed lazy Democrats to refrain from doing), and I'm sure much more.

The book was published yesterday, and I recommend anyone interested in learning about these canvassing organizations and the (mostly negative) effects they have on the progressive movement pick it up. More next week when the podcast is ready.

Three stories about Millenials in politics, and one piece of advice in this week's news roundup.

• Chris Bowers at MyDD is promoting a diary by his former student David Slavick, who is running to be the Democratic State Representative for Pennsylvania's rural 109th district.

  The Push for Progress in Central PA: The Front Lines of '08

  Despite the fact that our campaign fund is dwarfed by the $134,685 raised by incumbent Millard in 2004, we have actually raised more money from local donors than he has in his entire career. This fact is a great indicator of our chances in this race, given that many people in Columbia County have undergone great hardship this year and do not have much disposable income, giving greater symbolic weight to their contributions.

  With less than 80 days, our hard in this campaign work is paying off. The grassroots has invigorated our local party and we are ready for the fight in 2008. We are bringing our message of hope, vision, and progress to all parts of the county, despite the recent national emergency level flooding. We have active volunteers in every precinct in Columbia County. Our county party has made great strides in recent months, nearly doubling the ranks of Democratic committee people, and each of the new committee members embrace a progressive vision for America. Our vision for a better Pennsylvania is spreading like a prairie fire.

  David is a 27 year-old alumnus of Pittsburgh Law - which makes him a "cusp" millenial (like those of us that run this site).

• Campus Progress is running a story this week about college students who graduate and run for office in their university towns. The piece mostly focuses on 20-somethings running for legislative and city council positions, but also includes an aside about students and graduates running for municipal positions such as elections judges. Almost two dozen such graduates ran in Philadelphia municipal elections last year, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian (UPenn's student paper).
  

  Nineteen Penn students are now elected Philadelphia officials, according to initial figures from Tuesday's municipal elections.

  As a result, they will be in charge of making sure elections run smoothly in the coming years.

  Of these students, six Democrats and one Republican will serve as judges of elections.

  Equally important - student involvement in the elections, as well as polling locations within walking distance of campus, all improved voter turnout for an off year among Philly students.

After the jump - bad experiences among the college dems, and friendly advice for campaigning in hostile territory