college republican

I'd like to welcome Rachel Krause to the FM team. Rachel is a high school student interested in progressive journalism and she'll be compiling our Quick Hits from now on. --Mike

It'd be an understatement to say its been an interesting last few weeks. Bloggers and journalists have been busy sounding off on topics, such as the inauguration, Obama's plan for young Americans, and expectations for the 44th President.

• A New York Times editorial features Obama's call for young Americans to volunteer, including his plan to increase the size of service programs. It covers just one of the many ways youth can get involved.
• Newsday takes an interesting approach to Obama's call to "put away childish things"...and he's not referring to the youth vote.
• At the New Republic's blog, The Plank, Ben Adler notes that the Democratic Party should not take youth for granted, and gives a shout out to Future Majority.
• The American Spectator asks college Republicans what they think of potential RNC chairman, Ken Blackwell. The results may surprise you.
• Hip Hop Congress argues that Obama is not the first "hip hop President", and tries to argue that voter registration organizations don't create generational movements.
• Washington Post launches a database consisting of political who's whos.

In our previous posts, we detailed our huge trip to central Pennsylvania which was a huge success. We sent 151 members into the battleground state last weekend where we knocked on a total of 10,520 doors in places like Bloomsburg, Hazelton, Stroudsburg, and Wilkes-Barre, having over 3,000 coversations with undecided voters.

Now the College Democrats of NY are ready to roll once again as we are working on plans to send 40 students from the New York City area into Nashua, New Hamsphire next weekend. More details about our upcoming trip still to come...

Bumped. Welcome College Democrats of NY! Thanks for posting, and come back often. We'd love to keep up to speed on all that you are doing. For everyone else, be sure to also check out CDNY's posts on their election activities this year. --Mike

cross posted on the CDNY blog: http://collegedemsny.com/blog/

As President of the NY College Democrats, I am proud to say that we have a booming organization in the Empire State. A quick google search of NY College Dems yields tons of blog entries and our amazing website which our New Media Director JF has brilliantly put together with tons of pics and links to our 50+ chapters across the state. Meanwhile the NY College Republicans are nowhere to be found. It is difficult to find their webiste and they dont blog at all. They don't even get any mention in the NY media.

This past weekend we sent over 150 students from NY into central PA to canvass for Obama. We were located in 4 different offices: Bloomsburg, Hazelton, Stroudsburg and Wilkes- Barre and not a single college republican was to be found either from NY, PA or any other state.

Much has been made of an op-ed post by College Democrats of America National Council Vice Chair Lee Drake who talked about the high budget of the national college republicans and their lack of ground troops helping McCain. I couldn't agree more with him. The College Republicans do indeed have a significant fundraising advantage over us but the College Democrats have a huge advantage when it comes to mobilizing our troops for Obama on the ground across the country.

In fact, College Democrats make up much of that fundraising gap by working with the Obama campaign and the DCCC, DSCC to help pay for transportation costs for campaign invasions into battleground states and regions to get Democrats elected.

Earlier this fall I challenged the NYS College Republican chairman to a debate and they rejected the challenge, claiming that they wanted to focus on campaigning. While that's perfectly reasonable, I have yet to see or hear college republicans in NY campaigning for any race in large numbers.

Perhaps nationally they are hiding because they think McCain is a horrible candidate who doesn't adequately represent young voters.