Russell Simmons

Clinton may be dead in the water, but the contest goes on, notably in Pennsylvania, where voter registration closes on Monday and the campaigns and outside groups are working to get more young voters on the rolls.

The Obama campaign is working to activate it's young supporters via a mix of broadcast and field strategies. The campaign is running ads targeted at young supporters in the state to raise awareness about the registration deadline (tomorrow), and they've activated their on the ground supporters as well, notably with this video the campaign sent out earlier in the week:

On the non-profit side, Russell Simmon's Hip Hop Summit Action Network, which has done a lot of work in Philadelphia in recent years, is trying to register 15 - 20,000 young voters before the deadline.

I have not been able to talk to anyone at HSAN about their campaign, but from what I can tell it seems to consist solely of awareness raising PSAs run on local radio and featuring celebs such as Will Smith, Jay-Z, Wyclef and others. Call me cynical, but it's hard to see how radio ads = voter registrations (let along 20 thousand) without an accompanying field component. That field component may well be there, though all accounts of their work thus far make no mention of on-the-ground work.

Is all of this going to add up to an Obama win on April 22nd? Most certainly not, judging by current polls. But it could put a whole lot of new young voters on the rolls in PA, ensuring that the state deserves it's promotion/demotion from crucial swing state to solid "blue" state.

When we started this blog, one of my ideas was to aggregate some of the best (or worst) stories on young voter turnout, youth organizations, and culture and politics that run in the news each week. That hasn't happened over the last couple months - a situation I hope to change. On that note, here's a few interesting items from the last week, as well as a couple big items from the summer that I missed.

• AlterNet interviews punk band Rise Against frontman Tim McIlrath about punk and politics. The article focuses on the ability of The Warped Tour to present the band - and its political views - to new audiences. In the last 3 years, the Warped Tour - with a heavy presence from MFA and Punkvoter - has become one of the premier cultural venues for introducing young voters to progressive political ideas.
• Russell Simmons is sticking his political foot in his mouth again. Simmons (somewhat) famously gave Rockefeller Drug activists the shaft a few years back. Now, the founder of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network is supporting a Republican for Senate in Maryland. Ken Mehlmen must be thrilled. I pose this question to Simmons - how does helping the Republicans maintain control of the Senate advance a progressive agenda on civil rights, the drug war, and any number of topics?
• Fox News (surprisingly) runs a semi-decent story about youth turnout and efforts by GOTV groups to get more young voters to participate in elections. Only problem with the story is that it focuses on the efforts of non partisan groups to register voters. So what's wrong with it?
  1. For 10 years non partisan groups like Rock the Vote registered millions of new voters even as voter turnout declined. It wasn't until 2004 - when partisan GOTV groups started to spring up - that turnout rose. This article makes no mention of that.
  2. Getting young voters to turn out in greater numbers and with greater consistency will require a lot more than registration. It will require a new culture of participation springing up at the local level.
• Speaking of Rock the Vote - while I have my doubts about its effectiveness at doing more than registering voters (ie, not sure how great they are at turning out voters), kudos to this Rock the Vote organizer for writing - and getting published - this letter to the editor. More groups should be utilizing this tactic - in cultural zines, and local and campus publications - to raise their profile and correct distorted and factually incorrect media narratives.
• Finally, the Chatham County Democrats voted to fund their county's Young Democrats to help recruit new members.

Big summer items after the jump . . .