Center for American Progress

Here's three things worth looking at, but not really meriting a full blog post:

• Kay Steiger at Pushback reminds us that today is veterans day with this excellent post about three major veterans issues.
• The Center for American Progress takes note of Millennials' pro-government philosophy and concern with the economy. There's no new data here, but this report does pull together the most relevant strands from a variety of reports they issued earlier in the year. It's a good Cliff's Note/summary of all that work.
• Black Youth Vote is prepping for a conference in D.C. this week to "train young leaders and activists on how to impact public policy and hold elected officials accountable." BYV is a strange group to me. They're never very high on my radar and I don't know a thing about what they did this year. They are very disconnected from the other threads of youth organizing - at least the ones that I'm familiar with. Yet they always pop their heads back up now and again. Maybe they need a better communications team.
• The Center for Economic and Policy Research has done a good job debunking the anti-social safety net film IOUSA. Here's their latest effort.

The Center for American Progress recently released a report titled "Millennial Economics: It Don't Matter If You're Black or White." The report, written by Amanda Logan and David Madland, describes the Millennial Generation's view on economic policy as increasingly homogenous across racial lines.

On a range of economic issues—from support for universal health care and labor unions to assistance for the needy—minorities in the Millennial Generation are generally more progressive than whites of the same age. Young blacks and Hispanics are more likely than young whites to believe that the government can be a force for good in the economy, and that labor unions are necessary to ensure strong and sustainable economic growth, as well as support increased investments in health care, education, and other areas.

Perhaps the most unique trait of the Millennial Generation is that the gap between young minorities and young whites is shrinking. Not only are young adults today more progressive than previous generations—as a previous Center for American Progress report, “The Progressive Generation,” found—but they are more likely to hold similar views than previous generations of young adults. Young whites today are closing the progressive gap with minorities on most of the economic issues we examined—and on some issues have become more progressive.

So what?

Well one thing is obvious: as we move into the future, Millennials are in the process of solidifying their liberalism. The demographics speak to this solidification:

• Over the past 20 years, an average of 86 percent of blacks aged 18 to 29 agreed that labor unions are necessary to protect workers, while 72 percent of young whites agreed—a
  14 percentage-point progressive gap.
• Today the gap is just 2 percentage points. Forty-six percent of young Hispanics over the past two decades believed it is the gov- ernment’s responsibility to ensure a good job and standard of living for all, while just 35 percent of young whites did—a gap of 11 percentage points. Today, the gap is less than 6 percentage points.

Matt Zeitlin from pushback makes the relevant observation: -- white Millennials are diverging from their parents' more conservative views, while minority Millennials are maintaining the already liberal viewpoints of their parents. With a more united, progressive, and engaged Millennial generation, there's reason for Millennial activists and bloggers to be optimistic. Thanks to Matthew Yglesias, here's a chart demonstrating the Millennials' convergence on the issue of health care compared to older generations of Americans:

Furthermore, Millennials are breaking the lock Republicans have put on the political dialogue thanks to their devotion to quality of life issues. In 1968, Nixon succeeded in getting many whites to vote against their fears and not for their economic quality of life. In subsequent elections, Americans held political views that were formed along cultural fault lines; the Republican Party and its candidates seized on Nixon's example and for decades were successful in setting up sideshow after sideshow to distract Americans from their failed economic philosophy. But eventually it all catches up. And with the political awakening of the Millennials, that time is now for the GOP.

Here we have a generation focused on progress. Their pragmatic approach toward making things better undermines the GOP's effort to distract them with things like tales of people named William Ayers. A focus on the economy and quality of life issues is far more appropriate for meritocratic Millennials than the latest symbol forming a battleground for a Boomer-style ideological struggle. So now that economic issues are the name of the game, the liberal viewpoints of the Millennials have even greater weight.

Add into that the noted tolerance of Millennials on social issues, and the possibility of building a solid political coalition increases even more. The political awakening of Millennials is occurring at just the time we as a society need it.

Late last week, I got an email from Project Phin, announcing that they would be featured on Jay Leno's Tonight Show in a segment with Matt Damon, who is a supporter. Now, you probably have the same question I did - what the hell is Project Phin? Totally normal reaction.

Turns out I already knew what it was - a flex fuel/CAFE standard campaign from the Center for American Progress Action Fund - but I'd forgotten because the campaign was so confusing and quite frankly bizarre. Ignoring the question of whether or not young people actually watch Jay Leno (or the follow-up question of whether an over 30 audience would find any appeal in the Project Phin campaign), I went back to the site to give it another look.

On second glance, the campaign is interesting. They've got a short mockumentary in 7 parts (2-5 minutes each) about some boob's (Phin Sawyer) quest to create his own Flex Fuel/CAFE standards campaign. The videos are attached to a letter-writing campaign directed at Congress, and there are also FaceBook and MySpace groups advertising the project on SocNets. Sitting through a 25 minute mockumentary (even a relatively good one) is a significant investment of time - and I had to force myself to sit through at least 4 of the videos before I started to warm up to the campaign - but by the time I finished, my skepticism was overcome and I found the campaign to be both amusing and also somewhat inspirational.

So how are they doing? Here's the numbers they are publicizing:

Now onto the Project Phin numbers: You watched the videos more than 200,000 times. Wow! And that doesn't include the people who saw the Damon clip on TV during the Tonight Show. You sent more than 20,000 messages to Congress and hundreds of letters to the editors of newspapers around the country. Nearly 1,500 of you have joined Phin's Facebook profile and group and his MySpace communities so far, and you viewed Phin's MySpace blog over 6,000 times.

It's not clear to me that 200,000 is a total for each video, or needs to be divided by 7, which would be a solid though less impressive 28,500 for each video. Since 20,000 letters were sent, I actually find this to be more likely. Regardless, the numbers are not at all shabby, and clearly the videos are hitting a nerve with some people.

The FaceBook and MySpace campaign, not so much. The number of friends on both communities is small (and composed of a lot of green organizations). The real question in measuring the effectiveness of the campaign on SocNets is "are people moving from MySpace/FaceBook to the letter writing tool?" I don't know that they are in any significant number. I also thought it was strange that there was no Project Phin Cause App or Change.org App. Global warming and energy issue groups do better on those Apps than most any other topic, and can help drive traffic to action items. That might have been a good strategy for Project Phin.

Maybe it's proof that I'm starting to age out of this target demographic that I didn't really get hooked by the campaign when I first heard about it (truth be told, I found their slogan - Flex my Fuel, Clean My Ride - to be a much better hook). But great job to the folks at CAP for trying to think outside the box and putting together what has obviously been a successful summer campaign to raise awareness and generate activism around a cleaner, more progressive energy policy.