millennials

Guess what? John McCain is old, doesn't understand (but is aware of) the internet, and has little to no appeal to young voters. Latinos don't admire him for his stand on immigration, and despite being a veteran, the military thinks he's not concerned enough with the real needs of the troops. But don't take it from me:

• PEW Hispanic Center reports that McCain is losing the Latino youth vote (25% of the Latino population) 73 - 16%.
• Army Times smacked him down for suggesting that we ration health care for Veterans.
• CNN reports that McCain is having trouble connecting to young voters, and young Republicans agree.
• The Boston Globe says McCain is internet-illiterate.
• Even Perez Hilton agrees.

McCain campaign response:

The McCain campaign said it plans to increase the senator's presence on sites such as Facebook and MySpace in addition to the candidate making appearance on shows that appeal to younger viewers -- such as "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and the "Late Show With David Letterman."

Newsflash. John McCain has been on the Daily Show more than any other politician, he has a Facebook page, and he was on Saturday Night Live recently. It's not that he doesn't have a presence in these venues already. It's that no one cares because he is wrong on the issues.

Bumped. Bergeris putting out some good stuff. --Mike

Crossposted at Politics of the Common Good.

In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy called on Americans to serve. Sadly, those words -- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" -- have become cliche today. We hear them, but most of us drive right by that message of sacrifice without really pondering what it means.

Those words have faded from our collective conscience. The presidency of George W. Bush has reduced "service" to fighting bravely in a war that should never have been fought in the first place. Commentators and other bloggers have noted many a time that Americans were not asked to sacrifice once after the events of 9/11. Immediately after the attacks on our country, the Bush administration focused on Iraq rather than observing and noticing the spirit of goodwill among American citizens as well as citizens of other nations. After invading Iraq in 2003, the phrase "serving our country" was usually used with reference to joining the Armed Forces.

Even after the war had begun, the Bush administration's policies and behavior indicated a philosophy antithetical to the Kennedy call for service. With the nation mired in a mess in Iraq, President Bush never once veered from a policy of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, forcing the burden on those Americans barely able to get their proverbial feet under them. With the price of oil skyrocketing, President Bush chose to visit Saudi Arabia to request that oil prices be lowered rather than approach Americans and ask them to sacrifice for the American economy. This is the same man, by the way, who declared that America was addicted to oil. When a drug addict admits to an addiction and then begs his or her supplier for more, that's not responsible sacrifice -- in fact, it's not sacrifice at all.

Now, in 2008, we have two choices: a man who worked for low-income families on the south side of Chicago versus a man who honorably served the country in another war it should not have fought. Senator Obama has released a detailed plan for national service. Obama will reward college students who give 100 hours of service to their communities with a $4,000 annual tax credit for school. Obama will add 65,000 members to the military. He will also significantly expand AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps.

Turning to Senator McCain, we're left with very little.

John McCain, who's predicated his presidential run in no small part on his distinguished military record, frequently exhorts Americans — and especially young Americans — to serve their country. Despite that appeal, he has yet to offer any proposals to expand or transform national service outside of the military.

...

...The McCain campaign will not commit to releasing a plan for expanding service opportunities. A senior policy adviser said only that they are "studying options for national service." When asked why he does not have a service proposal, Pounder would only say that McCain is proud of his past support for service programs and has exhorted audiences to serve in this campaign.

While refusing to ask for a comprehensive sacrifice of the American people is regrettable when keeping Kennedy's call to service and sacrifice in mind, it's also not smart politics. The Millennial Generation will offer roughly 50 million voters in the 2008 election. These Americans have volunteered at record rates over the past few years. In fact, 60% of 15-25 year olds have volunteered or continued to volunteer on a regular basis (CIRCLE, via Future Majority). This generation's general mindset is to help, big. It's a generation of builders that are civic-minded and want to work together to build a better society, and thus far, community service has been this generation's most productive method of doing so. However, many political junkies have heard by now that Millennials are not only serving, but voting too. In the last three elections, Americans aged 18-29 have increased their voting rate and are on the verge of becoming a powerful voice in the American political dialogue. McCain may not have the internet in common with Millennials, but he'd be best-served politically to develop a civic service bond with Millennials.

The Millennial brand of service seems identical to Kennedy's: service and policy to build, with politics and elections to protect. Kennedy not only called on Americans to sacrifice; he also asked citizens -- national and global -- to hold accountable those Americans in power.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love...

Many Americans immediately link the "Ask not what your country can do" quotation with Kennedy; but they don't realize that in the same speech he offered a compact of sorts. If the American citizen will do all that he or she can do for his or her country, those of us in power will promise to maintain the same work ethic, the same ethical standards, and the same dedication to bettering the national community as the citizenry. That promise, linked with Kennedy's allusion toward sacrificing for the unknown ("a good conscience our only sure reward") is not only the national service we need, but the closest thing to patriotism I can think of.

John Edwards's statement early on in the primaries calling us to be "patriotic about something other than war" is relevant, but it's only a start. We need to build off that statement by working together in service to "the land we love." Many volumes have researched and described the connections between service and leadership; it's a pretty natural linkage. Any contender for the highest office in the United States should have a plan on restoring the patriotic duty of sacrifice and service -- not just militarily, but all throughout our society.

Bumped. Great story about how college students created effective, on the ground change on their campus without protesting and by using the internet and available levers of power. --Mike

Crossposted at Politics of the Common Good.

Many blogs focusing on politics and the Millennial Generation have written about comments made by former public officials, New York Times columnists, and others that criticized Millennials for their lack of activism (equating activism with the 1960s-style protests) and that encouraged them to get offline and start demanding change.

Al Gore's comments about the Millennials:

"I can’t understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Mr. Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman's comments:

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges — Auburn, the University of Mississippi, Lake Forest and Williams — and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

...

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Ole Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

...

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Sally Kohn (Director of the Movement Vision Lab at the Center for Community Change) had something to say as well, in an essay published in the Christian Science Monitor:

Today's American young people feel a deep connection to people in Tibet and Darfur, want to hold corporations accountable to environmental standards and worker justice, and value the role of government in meeting our shared needs. Yet the Internet tools that help Millennials appreciate our interconnectedness may actually erode the community values they seek.

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Internet activism is individualistic. It's great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and '70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there.

This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society – the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) – won't politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

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To avoid eroding the values Millennials so appreciate, and to truly influence the world around them, they must transform their online activism into off-line communities and build an effective movement for change. From church basements to campus meetings to voters' doors, Millennials need to add face-to-face action to their innate sense of community.

All of these comments are ignorant and miss many things.

Georgia10, from DailyKos, wrote a fantastic rebuttal to Kohn's essay this past Sunday, pointing out many of the mistakes Kohn makes in coming to her conclusions. Mike, here at Future Majority, has taken down these intellectually lazy comments many a time.

But in this post, I wanted to show an example, a case study, of student-created positive change that happened on a college campus without the kind of demonstrations Thomas Friedman and Al Gore seem to advocate.

Harvard University's president, Drew G. Faust, has just announced a commitment to reduce Harvard's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by the year 2036. From the Crimson:

Faust announced the formation of a student and faculty task force in February to study cuts in Harvard's greenhouse gas emissions, giving the committee until the end of the academic year to outline a set of recommendations.

In a statement today, Faust praised the group's recommendation for a 30 percent cut as "ambitious and far-reaching" and "reflecting both the urgency of the climate problem and Harvard's opportunity to show leadership in addressing the issue." The sizable reduction target and the very aggressive timetable make the goal among the most ambitious that any university has committed itself to.

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Student organizing efforts in recent months have focused on pressuring Faust to sign a pledge committing Harvard to "climate neutrality."

While Hunter said that student activists "still would have preferred" such a pledge, they were pleased with the outcome because the task force's recommendations will put Harvard "on track to achieve climate neutrality even before the 2036 timeline that the EAC originally advocated."

While reading about this effort, I decided to dig a little deeper. I e-mailed the Crimson editor-in-chief Paras Bhayani (a contributor to the story) to ask whether or not the student organizing efforts had started as a result of Faust's pledge or whether they had led to it. Paras noted that Faust's task force (which included four students) was a result of the student organizing:

The organizing efforts have been going on for years so they predated Faust's task force by some time (indeed, they actually predate her presidency!).

For example, the initiative that got the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (the central part of the university) to commit to an 11 percent reduction below 1990 levels was a student enviro-sponsored referendum that ran as a ballot initiative during the student government elections. There was also a student push to get Faust to sign the university presidents' commitment to climate neutrality. As a result, the task force included four students.

Not only were the students engaged; they used technology to do it! A Facebook group called "The Harvard Climate Change Colloquium" had 161 members as of today's post. The Harvard Environmental Action Committee, which appears to be the primary climate change organization on campus, has a very nice and organized website with a lot of information for students, faculty, staff, and anyone else that might be interested, from events and resources to contact information.

Here is an effort in which Millennials identified something they wanted to be changed, they worked within the system, were patient, compromised a bit, and came out with a pretty good commitment. Technology was used to organize this effort. This wasn't a Facebook group or a website merely dedicated to hosting diatribes about Harvard's use of greenhouse gases. The technology was a vehicle for an organized, interpersonal effort offline that was successful.

I understand that some Boomers have the natural instinct to march in streets, demanding change. After reading Nixonland, I can understand why they had to do that. The society and establishment was not responding to any petitions for change. Working within the system was not an option for them because, to them, there was no system.

But we do have a system. Even if John Mayer laments the system's molasses-like qualities, we do have a system with which we can work. Harvard has proved this.

The other thing we can take from this is that Internet activism is not limited to the web. As the National Conference on Citizenship report notes, internet use is a signal of engagement among young people.

Contrary to predictions that the Internet might replace face-to-face participation, the survey finds no trade off. In fact, the netizens are much more likely than other people to attend public meetings in which there was discussion of community affairs (38 percent versus 23 percent), attend a club meeting (72 percent versus 47 percent) or take part in a protest or demonstration (31 percent versus 15 percent).

Student organizers used the tools they needed in order to better organize their offline efforts. The real change ended up taking place face to face in some meeting room on Harvard's campus. As Paras pointed out, because of the students' efforts that predated Faust's presidency, they were given four seats at the table at those task force meetings. Students showed that they were more civically engaged than merely clicking a mouse or typing on a keyboard.

Cross-posted at Politics of the Common Good.

Peter Panepento, writing at the Outside Erie blog, writes about a problem that’s overlooked in the effort to reenergize downtown Erie.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the efforts to spruce up and revitalize downtown (and that is a crucial effort). But we haven’t paid much attention to the next ring of development surrounding downtown before we reach the wealthier suburbs. Many of the vacancies alluded to in Ian’s piece are the direct result of the retail development boom on upper Peach Street and the shift in wealth from the edges of the city into Millcreek, Summit, Fairview and the like. For decades, places like Liberty Plaza were central to folks who were doing their weekly grocery shopping, their trips to the drug store and to specialty shops like jewelry stores and sporting goods operations. But many of those folks with disposable income have moved out of that part of town and into bigger homes in the burbs. And the retail explosion on upper Peach Street has attracted all of those dollars. The stores that remained in the inner ring have slowly struggled and died — leaving behind the carcasses of buildings that have no demand. I fear that situation will only worsen for awhile. As more anchors like Value City leave town, shoppers have fewer reasons to trek to the remaining stores in those areas. Soon, the vacancies will creep further out from the inner ring and the sprawl into the suburbs will continue.

First, I think it’s great that we do have people like Peter writing about these issues. We have seen many downtowns of northern cities, especially those in the Rust Belt, decline over the late ‘70’s, ‘80’s, and ‘90’s.

Too many times there are factions in these local communities that turn a blind eye to the common good and, instead, focus on their own interests in efforts toward redeveloping and modernizing these small towns and cities. A case in point would be my hometown of Salem, Ohio — it has a lot going for it, probably more than most of the officeholders there realize, but no one can agree on anything, and so it usually misses the boat on many opportunities.

One thing that’s encouraging to me is that Millennials are tending to want to live/work back in the city. Those post World War II suburbs, built when the car was rapidly becoming a staple of American culture and society, are suddenly a bit too far for comfort now that gas prices are $4.00/gallon and higher. Moving young people back into urban communities (I say urban to include not only big cities but small towns as well) will hopefully inject some new life into these communities, given our civic-minded characteristics.

I’m glad that Peter pointed out that the outside core of big cities like Erie are also waning and get little attention, but I do share Peter’s view that, in Erie’s case, we need to focus on reinventing the downtown. The success of that effort would then form the tailwind for the secondary effort of revitalizing the outskirts.

I'm still playing a bit of catch-up and just came across this excellent and thorough rebuttal by Georgia10 to Sally Kohn's op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor excoriating Millennials as a generation of individualistic, ineffective online activists.

Kohn responded to Georgia in the comments, saying (in part):

Still, I think it is critical that we place internet activism in context --- yes, valuable as one new tool in a broader toolbox of strategy but one with limitations. Mouseclicks and Facebook pages replacing door knocking and house meetings removes an important element from our political activism: relationships. Power is about relationships; and challenging power is about the ability to mobilize relationships toward a common purpose. This is what Alinsky was talking about (as Georgia10 cites); this is the lesson of every political and social movement before and after.

The emphasis here is mine because that is the crux of what is wrong with Kohn's argument. Sally is setting this up as an either/or proposition and creating a false dichotomy. There is no hard evidence showing that internet activism decreases offline activism. This is not a zero sum game in which there is a limited amount of activism and every minute spent "clicking a mouse" replaces a minute that would have been spent knocking on a door.

In fact, the opposite is true. According to a report on youth civic engagement in 2006by CIRCLE (pdf):

Internet Use and Civic Engagement

We separately asked about the frequency with which people go online, whether for news or other purposes. According to our survey, 69% of young people reported using the Internet at least a few times per week, and 41% reported using it daily. In general, those who use the Internet at least a few times per week are more engaged than those who never use it, while those who use it daily are the most engaged. For example, among those who do not use the Internet regularly, 72% are disengaged, and 23% have not participated in any civic engagement activities we measure. In contrast, among those who use the Internet daily, only 49% are disengaged, and only 10% have not engaged in any civic activities. That remains true even when we take into account the effects of education.

The term engagement here measures a variety of indicators, including voting, community service, community problem solving, boy/buycotting products, canvassing, holding political conversations and more.

Statistics aside, there is hard evidence all around us that online engagement can produce just the sort of on-the-ground, community activism that Kohn desires. In 2006, tens of thousands of young immigrants and 2nd generation Americans took to the streets to protest harsh, anti-immigrant legislation in Congress. Those mass protests, which received national attention in the media and undoubtedly played a role in beating back the Sensenbrenner Bill, were organized primarily via MySpace and text messages. Without the internet, one of the largest and most successful student protests in our recent history - and one that did not address an issue of great concern to white upper-middle class elites - would not have occurred.

In her reply to Georgia, Kohn says that we need to consider the internet in context. I couldn't agree more, I just wish she'd taken her own advice.

I'm heading out shortly to tape for GritTV with Laura Flanders. We're doing a one-hour panel on the youth vote and a half-hour segment on Youth to Power. Be back online this afternoon.

• At Campus Politico, Ben Adler notes that summer break is putting a crimp in plans to register and organize students.
• At AlterNet, Courtney Martin talks about growing up a Millennial and how race and gender play differently on the campaign trail for younger voters.
• Republicans have a new blog dedicated to reaching "Generation Next" online. It involves crayons.
• Salon notes rising youth turnout, and while they are still skeptical, admit that young voters could be a factor in November.
• Barack Obama has 1 million supporters on Facebook.
• The "American Dream" as our parents knew it is dead, argues Anya Kamenetz, but she's got some suggestions on what a new American Dream might look like. Long live the American Dream!

Update: Jesse Singal from Campus Progress writes in to tell me that they will be shutting down the old CP community blogs and that PushBack Blog Network (PBN) will be a slightly edited, technologically superior version. Makes sense. More when PBN officially launches in the next few weeks.
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Campus Progress just launched PushBack, a new blog community dedicated to giving Millennials a voice in politics. The idea seems to be that the mass media chronically gets the youth vote/activism story wrong and they oftentimes fundamentally misunderstand the habits and trends of Millennials. Pushback will, well, pushback against those narratives through a new blog network run by and for Millennials.

I'm entirely in agreement that the mass media narratives about Millennials need to be challenged vigorously and corrected at every turn. I'd say that's a good portion of what this site has been about these past years, and I certainly welcome the company. At the moment, though, it's not entirely clear to me yet how Pushback is different from the community blogs at Campus Progress. Many of the same names are blogging and the content is far broader than a rapid-response vehicle might suggest.

But the site looks great and the content is interesting so far. I've added them to my RSS feed and to the "Breaking News" feed. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Gallup has a new poll up looking at various demographic dynamics in the Obama-McCain general election matchup. Here's what they're showing for the different age demographics/generations:

There are two interesting things to note here:

1. As DemFromCT notes, Gen X appears to be losing it's conservative voting habits and turning to the left. This supports similar data reported by PEW earlier this year, and is super bad news for Republicans. Gen X - particularly the older members - have long been one of their most reliable voting demographics. In 2004, Bush won 30 - 44 year olds (Gen X and younger Boomers) 53 - 46%.
2. Obama's advantage among Millennials echoes what we saw in 2006 when young voters chose Democrats 60 - 38%. In 2004, Kerry won young voters by a much slimmer 54 - 45%, and young voters were 17% of the electorate.

If Gen X votes Democratic, or splits it's vote in November, and if young voters make up 19 or 20% of the electorate and vote for Obama by a 23 point margin, this is going to be a blowout up and down the ballot.

Cross posted at The Nation.

After 17 months of campaigning, with five grueling months of primaries and caucuses, the Democratic nominating contest came to a close last night when Sen. Obama attained enough pledged delegates and super delegates to clinch the nomination. Hillary's non-concession speech notwithstanding, Barack Obama's coalition of young voters, independents, african americans, and what Chris Bowers calls "creative class" Democrats proved stronger than Clinton's older Democratic coalition. Obama is the nominee and, in the best possible world, will move on to become the next President of the United States.

This was an historic campaign on any number of levels - not least because of the glass ceilings that both major candidates breached with their impressive campaigns and photo-finish. It was also an historic campaign for young people, who emerged as major players in the race after over-performing in the Iowa caucus (pdf) and providing Senator Obama with the boost he needed to win the nomination. While race and gender divided the Boomers and alienated Democrats from themselves, such culture-war issues played little role in the decisions of young voters at the ballot box. Instead, Millennials of all race and ethnicities - men and women - voted overwhelmingly in favor of Senator Obama, making age one of the most accurate predictors of support in the race.

Obama's victory is our victory. Young voters walked precincts in the heat and snow for Obama. We caucused and cast our ballots. We contributed what we could and helped to out-raise one of the most impressive money-machines in Democratic politics. We designed posters and made videos. We recruited our social networks via Facebook and MySpace, and convinced our parents to switch their votes. In some states, like Iowa, we were the difference that pushed Obama over the edge. In others, we were part of a coalition that contributed to victory or kept the Senator competitive when he might otherwise have lost by a large margin. Senator Obama's nomination is the coming of age of a new generation in progressive politics, and here are just some of our credentials (from Rock the Vote - pdf):

• Over 6 million young people cast their ballots in this primary contest, more than double the turnout from 2004 or 2000 (the comparable years for Democrats and Republicans, respectively).
• Young people greatly increased their "share of the electorate" and were the driving force behind rising turnout.
• Young people voted Democratic more than 2 - 1.
• 4.9 million young voters cast their ballot for a Democratic candidate.
• Within the Democratic primary, young voters increased their share of the electorate from 9.4% in 2004 to 14.3% in 2008.
• With just a few exceptions, the media narrative has reversed. Whereas 5 months ago the youth vote barely registered on anyone's radar (except perhaps to mock Obama's strategy as a fool's errand), it is now regularly praised in the mainstream media. Time Magazine labeled 2008 the Year of the Youth Vote, and Business Week reported on the growing "YouthQuake."

This is only the beginning. The youth vote has increased in every major election since 2004 and by every indicator this is a trend which will continue.

Thanks to the long primary season, both the Clinton and Obama campaign contacted and registered new voters in every single state in the nation. Many of those new voters were under the age of 30. Combined with Obama's youth fellowship program and 50 state voter registration strategy, which will continue through the fall, and Howard Dean's own 50 state strategy, youth participation in the Democratic Party will grow by leaps and bounds over 2004.

But the DNC isn't alone. This summer and fall they will be joined by outside efforts conducted by partisan and non-partisan youth organizations alike. These groups - such as Rock the Vote, the New Voters Project, the Young Democrats, the Bus Federation, Swing Semester, and The League - will register over a million new voters online and make hundreds of thousands of contacts in the field. They will conduct non-traditional outreach to under-served groups that most campaigns miss, and they will put a cultural spin on political action that could turn new voters into life long activists.

Also driving increased turnout the rise of the Millennials, a highly progressive, civic-minded generation that believes in the importance of being engaged, their own power to effect change, and the suitability of government as a vehicle to make that change a reality. With their preferred candidate now leading the Democratic ticket, amidst a poisonous political climate that has set the country at odds with their progressive values, there seems little chance that the trends of the last four years will suddenly and unexpectedly reverse course.

Turnout will likely rise across the board this year. The voter registration numbers so far virtually guarantee it. But if trends hold, it will be up the most among Millennials, not just to the benefit of Obama, but to hundreds of candidates down ballot in close races where a few hundred new young voters can tip the balance. The youth vote is at a crossroads. There are challenges ahead to be sure, and nothing is guaranteed, but if things continue along this path, the youth vote stands ready to finally fulfill its promise - first looked for in 1971 with the passage of the 26th Amendment.

I’ve landed in Nashville. I’m sure I’ll be seeing some of you at the YDA conference tomorrow. For the rest of you, I’ll be live-blogging as I can depending on the WiFi access, which wasn’t all that great at the last YDA conference.

Over at The Next Right (sort of an “Open Left” for conservatives), Ethan Eilon, the Executive Director of the College Republicans is saying some smart things about young people and their relation ship to the GOP. Specifically, he’s calling on the Republican Party to wake up and start reaching out to young voters. The whole thing reads very much like stuff you heard out of Democratic youth circles 4 years ago (and still do today though people seem to be getting the message).

His advice to the party is good and will be familiar to many here: go where young people congregate (online), make an effort to promote effective youth leaders in the party. Address youth issues on the stump, etc. The piece is valuable reading for anyone in either party looking to court young voters. But he’s got two huge problems.

First is the straight up math of what we’re seeing now:

Now, I'm not naive enough to suggest that we make these changes and all of a sudden we are going to win the 18-19 vote 80/20, but we don't need to. We just need to not lose it by that margin, which is exactly what current trends, if left unchecked, will yield.

That’s really the crux of it. There’s very little chance that the Republicans will eat into Democratic gains among Millennials unless the Democrats drop youth outreach altogether and/or severely mess something up policy wise. McCain was probably the best candidate choice for Republicans to make an attempt at courting youth, but eve he won’t be enough and he’ll likely have little influence down-ticket in an environment so toxic to traditional Republicans. The GOP is now in the unenviable position of doing electoral triage for a generation. It’s not about winning anymore; it’s about losing as little (young) blood as possible.

The problem is that the Republican brand is not just tarnished – that in itself is a tough hurdle to overcome (see Democrats: National Security) – but the governing philosophies of conservatism itself are rejected by Millennials. That’s why this is more than a little wishful thinking:

We need to get very serious about making our brand more appealing to young voters, and to get young people bought into the overall concept of what this party is about: limited government and individual liberty. This is not a hard sell, but when the Democrats and their affiliates are outspending us in the demographic by 25 to 1 we are going to have an uphill battle.

Culture war issues promoted by the Republican Party restrict individual liberty (gay rights, right to choose, etc.) in ways that the multicultural, tolerant Millennials find repellent, and limited government is a failed proposition. For a generation that lived through Katrina (and exhortations from Grover Norquist to “drown the government in a bathtub), limited government fails to recognize the responsibility that a government has to its citizens to provide opportunity and security. These will not be winning talking points for reaching out to today’s youngest voters.

Finally, I would just like to point out that the 25 – 1 number cited by Eilon is highly disputable. The College Republicans had well over $20 million in expenditures over the last 4 years: dwarfing spending by the College and Young Democrats (from Open Secrets):

And while it is true that Democrats have focused far more than Republicans on GOTV in recent years, the amount of money going through the conservative leadership pipeline is about 5 – 10 times more than what equivalent progressive organizations have to work with. Campus Progress thoroughly debunked similar claims made by Young America Foundation Alum Jason Mattera earlier this year (below). There are rumors that the CRNC is nothing more than a money funnel conservatives use to direct money to other “grown up” projects, and that the College Republicans actually see little to no of their tens of millions raised/spent. So perhaps there is a grain of truth here, but if so doesn’t that just speak to the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party?