dnc08

Hold onto your hats. Every link today is pure youthy awesomeness and should be read. In no particular order, but with extra commentary:

• Conservative reporter Carl Cannon, writing at conservative outlet Reader's Digest, reports that pollsters are probably underestimating the youth vote this year.
• The LA Times reports that Obama wins the Xbox/Rock the vote primary, but wonders if young gamers will actually vote. As we know from the recent Pew study, the answer is yes.
• Our own Sarah Burris has an excellent piece over at WireTap grading the RNC and the DNC for their inclusion of youth. It's comprehensive and enlightening and unexpected to see where each convention excelled and where they inevitably fell short.
• There is a lot of chatter lately among youth organizers about finding ways to reach high school students. One answer may be Channel One, the news/advertising network played in so many homerooms across the country. The channel recently launched One Vote 2008 to cover the elections. Now if we could only get our folks in front of their cameras . . .
• Youth Vote '08 covers the launch of Generation WE, a new study on Millennials. We'll have more about this in the coming days.
• In the Washingtonian, Garrett Graff thinks that Millennials will cost McCain the election.
• Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising is now available for download.
• Rock the Vote's new poll gets some coverage from UPI and The Nation.
• In cooperation with PayPal, MySpace deploys a new system to raise money for nonprofits through its network.

A story I found published on a Philly Fox TV station's website irritated me for two reasons. The first involved lazy journalism. The second involved Howard Dean.

Leave it to a Fox News outlet to misrepresent (or leave out) facts about the youth vote. Not very surprising.

However, it is important. And it's something, as Mike regularly reminds us, that we need to be on top of from now through Election Day and its aftermath.

So, let's practice:

The enthusiasm of these young people seems so genuine- so real. But will it translate into a trip to the polls come November. There's reason for doubt.

In the 2000 presidential election, just 32% of eligible 18-to-24 year olds voted-- compared to better than fifty percent turnout for all eligible Americans.

Four years later, the youth vote was way up- to 42% but still well below the overall turnout of 55%.

I don't see a line anywhere that discusses the obstacles young people face in registering to vote and actually pulling the lever.

I also don't see any acknowledgement of a positive trend that extends past 2004. 2006 and the 2008 primaries come to mind.

And furthermore, we should not be holding youth accountable for other people outside the youth demographic deciding they want to participate in elections.

Turnout vs. Share: There's a sub-theme to be aware of here as well. There are two ways of measuring how a demographic performs during an election. These are turnout and share of the electorate, and the media has a hard time distinguishing between the two. Turnout means the hard number of people participating. In the IADP data above, 4,836 18-24 year olds caucused. That's the hard turnout number for that age demographic. You'll also notice that the data states that 18-24 year olds made up 3.9% of caucus goers in 2004. That's the share of the electorate for that age demographic. These two numbers can present very different pictures of demographic performance. The 2004 general election provides us with an excellent example.

In 2000, 18-29 year olds made up 17% of the electorate. That was their share of the electorate. In 2004, 18-29 year olds once again comprised 17% of the electorate. The "logical" conclusion is that the youth vote did not increase, and that was what the media reported on November 5th, 2004. Of course, this was wrong. If one examined the actual turnout numbers, it quickly became apparent that there was a huge increase in youth participation. In fact, 4.3 million more 18-29 year olds turned out in 2004 than did in 2000. That increase didn't appear in the share of the electorate data because turnout increased among all age demographics. In order to get a sense of what happened with young voters this year, we'll need to examine not only their share of the electorate, but also the hard turnout numbers. The media missed this in 2004, and the campaigns and youth advocates will all be checking this data to make sure that the campaigns and press don't make the same mistakes twice.

Yes, the article is the product of some local journalist who needed to meet a deadline and probably didn't have time to dig deeper. But that's where we need to come into play.

Let's turn to Howard Dean's comments about the importance of the youth vote.

"We need real change in this country, and young people aren't afraid of change," said Dean.

He urged this college crowd to get involved-- knock on doors, make phone calls and- most important of all- get out and vote.

"You are a great generation," Dean told the crowd, "It is your time. Don't blow it."

What a pep talk. I always love going into a big moment being reminded not to fail as if there's a decent chance that I very well could.

I think the reason this frustrates me so much is that Governor Dean, while having an improved track record with youth outreach compared to previous party leaders, didn't exactly embrace young Democrats when it came time to back up the rhetoric with actions during the convention. As Mike wrote in his posts from Denver a few weeks ago, there were a few younger speakers, but none that were placed into any national spotlight. The charter continues to refuse the youth caucus the same access at the convention that other caucuses within the party enjoy.

So the warning against "blow[ing] it" is not only ineffective; it's ironic. We're being told not to screw up when we haven't been given the injection of confidence to excel. We don't need reminders about how important this race is for young people. We need the party to show us they understand how important it is for young people.

Even though Trojan Condoms launched its Evolve America tour last April, the safer sex campaign still made quite an appearance at both the Democratic and Republican conventions. Calling it the "condomvention" Trojan's bus rolled into Denver, Colorado for a huge party the first night of the festivities.

With special guests including Ja Rule, Spike Lee, Alan Cumings, Josh Lucas, Tony Goldwyn, and Gloria Reuben, the party started with open bar and a little comedy.

The Evolve tour targeted delegates, sexual health advocacy groups, policymakers and the presidential candidates themselves, urging them to acknowledge safer sex issues and get them on the political and social agendas.

According to the International Business Times, the tour is designed to engage Americans directly by pledging to use a condom every time and sign a petition for change. This, they say, is in light of:

"condom advertising restrictions on network prime time television in effect, and over a billion dollars spent on abstinence-only education that does not advocate condom use..."

There are two tours continuing from the conventions. Evolve Yourself and Involve Yourself plan to crisscross the country through the final months of the Presidential campaigns.

"Trojan Evolve is a call to action," says Jim Daniels, Vice President of Marketing for Church & Dwight Co Inc. "We're quite literally going city to city asking Americans to pledge to use a condom every time, sign a petition for change and help turn the tide on the unhealthy state of sexual health in this country."

See my video on the campaign below and take the pledge at TrojanCondoms.com

Editorial rant: Why is it that we don't see Democrats hitting the GOP on how these programs didn't work and opposing them because republicans still want to do abstinence only education?? if 90% of American is for comprehensive sex education ... then why aren't we standing up and saying - so are democrats and republicans aren't. Just curious why more people aren't pushing this issue given new facts, data, the Trojan tour, and .... need I mention the VP's own little at home experiment?

Crossposted from Wiretap Magazine

Our own Michael Connery at the DNC Youth Council Avail at DNC08. (sorry if the audio is bad)

It's come to my attention that at times when I was not physically at the convention, young people actually did speak at the podium. Specifically:

• Amanda Kubik, a 27 year old delegate spoke at 7pm Eastern time on Monday while surrounded by young delegates.
• Katherine Marcano, a 23-year-old supporter of Barack Obama from IA spoke about health care at 8pm Eastern on Tuesday.

I watched on TV on Monday and didn't see Kubik, and I was on a security line on Tuesday when Marcano spoke. My piece was wrong and I should have double checked the schedule. Apologies to all.

I will still stick by the fact that I'm personally disappointed that a young person didn't have a more high-profile speaking slot. 8pm and 7pm Eastern are 6 and 5pm in Denver with the time change. At those times most people were just starting to head over to the Pepsi Center, which tended to fill up around 7pm local time. In comparison, the head of the College Republicans is slated to address the RNC not long before John McCain takes the stage (or so they tell us, the schedule is in pretty heavy flux here in St. Paul).

Nevertheless, it was incorrect for me to say that no young people were at the podium during the convention and I regret the hyperbole. Especially in so far as it detracted from my main argument - that youth still do not have full representation within the DNC.

Ari Melber wrote a thoughtful piece in the Washington Independent in part responding to my blog post recapping the Democratic Convention. Ari had a valid critique of my final thoughts on the lack of youth at the podium addressing the convention:

There was, however, at least one major youth speaker on Thursday night at the stadium. Ray Rivera, 29, a Colorado state director for the Obama campaign, addressed the 80,000 person crowd — twice. He was promoting, naturally, a text message organizing program, which recruited 30,000 new numbers that night alone. There was a big map and everything. I followed up with Connery, but he was not impressed. He emailed from the Republican National Convention:

"I don’t count Ray Rivera’s time on the stage. He may be young, but his purpose on stage was not to represent youth at the convention, it was to list build for the campaign. He was not there as an advocate for young people on the many pressing issues we face, and even if he were, one slot in four nights would still be skimpy representation considering what young people have done for Democratic candidates since 2006."

So there. It doesn’t count and even if it did it’s not enough. But that vision is a bit too cramped.

It is good that Obama entrusted his operation in a key state like Colorado to a young operative; just as it was good for Obama to put so much faith in young web organizers who upended U.S. politics with their online strategy, social networking and web fund-raising. Joe Rospars, Sam Graham-Felsen and Chris Hughes, for example, are all 27 or younger.

In many ways, empowering young people without putting them in youth constituency silos is better than just checking the youth box with some official speaker. Rivera had a huge — probably nerve-racking — role on the Big Night to actually do something in his official role, albeit related to the youth vote, rather than just giving a quick talk about how Barack inspires students.

I actually agree with Ari that it is amazing - and more important in the long run - that young people like Rivera are given prominent campaign positions instead of "siloed" away in a constituency group. My fight wasn't with the Obama campaign, which is the example that a lot of us hold up to other campaigns in terms of breaking those silos down and including young people in a meaningful way.

My fight was with the DNC and the Convention Committee. The DNC is explicitly run as a constituency organization. You have multiple caucuses - AAPI, Black, Women, LGBT, Youth, etc. all fighting for attention - and resources - from the party. In fact, there are rules within the DNC Charter that require the DNC to provide certain levels of access (as delegates) to the convention to most of these groups. Those rules were very recently expanded to include LGBTQ, but young people were explicitly left out and the DNC opted instead to issue non-binding "recommendations" on youth participation.

YDA actually fought with the party over this in 2005/2006, and are planning on doing so again in the next few years. This is why young people were 16% of convention participants instead of the 19% that equals their share of the Democratic Electorate. It wasn't that there wasn't enough interest among young people to fill the delegate slots, it was that older party officials with more connections crowded them out.

Those affirmative action rules don't apply to speaking slots at the podium, and access to the podium is not an area in which young people can just "crash the gates." They need to be explicitly granted access. My point was that when given the option of featuring young speakers or not, of granting that level of access or not, the DNCC chose not to do so. It's not as if young people don't have important issues that are age specific that should be provided equal time at the convention. Seven speakers came out on Thursday evening to specifically address economic concerns and problems that they face:

American Voices Program

• Roy Gross – Michigan Teamster car transport driver affected by decline in car manufacturing
• Monica Early – New to campaigning, this Akron mother & grandmother is an Obama volunteer
• Janet Lynn Monacco – Struggling small business owner from
• Melbourne, FL with health issues
• Teresa Asenap – Albuquerque, New Mexico public school worker concerned about economy
• Pamela Cash-Roper – Unemployed nurse and lifelong Republican from North Carolina
• Barney Smith – Marion, Indiana plant worker - lost job of 30 yrs when plant moved to China

Is it really too much to ask that one of these speakers be a young person struggling with student debt or lack of health care? Or a non-college youth struggling to raise a family in the Bush economy?

Nevertheless, Ari is right that my critique is somewhat parochial when viewed in the context of how Obama is changing this dynamic. It is more important that young people are put in positions of power within campaigns and the Party structure without the need to section them off in a "youth silo." And I hold out hope that Obama, riding a wave of youth support, and a staff that does in fact have many young people in key positions, will make that a reality throughout all levels of the party.

But it's equally important to note that Obama is still the exception here, not the rule, and my purpose was to point to the tension that still exists within the party when it comes to giving young people a seat at the table. The convention speaking schedule was a visible symbol of that shortage of access young people still have within the party despite all of Obama's changes.

I was pretty much off the grid last week in Denver during the convention, and since Sarah, Mike, and others have authored some excellent coverage on the convention, I am going to stick to this single post with an overview of my thoughts and experiences.

CNN iReport of Isaac Robinson

Outside of Forest Room 5 on the Saturday before convention Jose Williams AKA Mr. Man, a CNN iReporter, interview YDA Labor Caucus Chair and Political Director for the Michigan Teamsters Isaac Robinson. I was enlisted to actually film the interview, which is now available online.

Crystal Strait and Francisco Domenech Re-elected

At the YDA National Committee meeting, which actually ran ahead of schedule, DNC Woman Crystal Strait of CA and DNC Man Francisco Domenech of PR were re-elected unanimously.

Interview with Moby

At the DoSomething/Flashbooth party at Jet I had the chance to ask Moby a couple of questions about the election. Unfortunately, I was without video camera so I don't have live footage. The interview went something like this:

Bondelli: Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions Moby.

Moby: No problem.

Bondelli: What are your thoughts on the involvement of youth in this election?

Moby: It is amazing and inspiring.

Bondelli: What role do you think musicians can play in engaging voters?

Moby: Well I think that depends on the genre of music and their audience. Different things will work better for certain musicians. It is up to the artist to find out what works with their audience.

Bondelli: Thank you for your time.

I Get Quoted in the NY Times

Shortly after my interview with Moby I was approached by Julie Bosman, style reporter for the New York Times, for an interview. I ended up being quoted in an article about Denver's Convention night life being lackluster. Here is my quote:

“The one thing that Democrats have learned is that if anyone can lose an election, it’s the Democrats,” said Kevin Bondelli, the owner of a design and consulting firm in Arizona. “In the last eight years, we’ve become a lot more respectful of the Republican political machine.”

Youth Orgs and Great Marketing

Mike has a lot of full posts about the marketing campaigns done by Rock the Vote and Trick or Vote, but I just wanted to add my thoughts in general. I was really impressed with how these organizations took advantage of the Convention and used it to make Democrats aware of both young voters and their organizations.

Trick or Vote, in my opinion, did the best job of this. Throughout the week people in Halloween costumes were attending events, hanging around the convention center, and talking to attendees all over the place. The Trick or Vote party did exactly what organization parties should do: combine a bunch of people meeting and drinking with an actually sell of your organization. Once they showed their excellent videos at the party, everybody was sold.

Youth Seen but Not Heard

Mike wrote an excellent piece about this, so once again I will offer my additional thoughts.

This is the impression I get from older establishment Democrats within the party. They think it is great that young people are showing up to the polls in huge numbers for Democrats. They like to see the young energetic faces at their events. They do not want to have to share power, influence, access, or even speaking time with them.

This is going to continue unless something is done about it. The youth of this party have reinvigorated it, and there should be some reflection of that within the actual party. I am going to address what I think needs to be done in an upcoming post.

I'm still pretty exhausted, but I'm trying to upload things as quickly as possible and cut them for blogs.

One event I was able to attend while at the Democratic National Convention was the HRC Concert Rock to Win featuring many performers including Kansas's own Melissa Etheridge, Cindy Lauper, frequent Kansas visitor Rufus Wainwright, Thelma Houston, and Margaret Cho.

The concert began with a short press conference where all agreed that young voters were essential to the election in November. Cindy Lauper said it was important for all people to vote, and that was a key component for her concert with the HRC as well as her national True Colors tour.

"Hopelessness comes out of helplessness. We put the tour together to give information to the people, because information is power, and I strongly believe that this nation was built on the power of the people."

Lauper's endorsement for Barack Obama was announced officially a few days prior to the Democratic National Convention.

"I believe we are at a crossroads and the next ten years will determine the future of this country. . . In particular, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is closer than ever to gaining full equality. We are teetering back and forth right now, and we need to act together to push us in the right direction. What we are asking for is only fair and right. We as a society, LGBT or straight, can show that civil rights are important and discrimination is wrong across the board through our vote. I believe by voting for Barack Obama we will do just that."

Melissa Etheridge agrees, and is frustrated by the mainstream media's focus on what she deems an imaginary rift in her party with regard to LGBT rights. Etheridge had previously asked Senator Hillary Clinton a tough question at the HRC's candidate forum this time last year. Etheridge said she felt "thrown under the bus" in the 1990's during the Clinton administration because of policies such as Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act both supported by the Clinton White House.

When asked about the rift Etheridge adamantly disagreed any existed with regard to the old Clinton administration or any rift from the primary candidates.

"I think it is a dangerous thing that the media has been focusing on 'The Divided Democratic Party: Hillary/Obama' I think that is not true. . . We had an awesome woman and an awesome man to pick from . . .and we came up with Barack Obama and we are all united behind that. And its a fallacy, its a lie, to put out there that we are not."

Lauper agreed encouraging people not to vote "insane."

"I would say, if you want to vote for your pocketbook, which maybe you might. Think of if it's been picked already."

The Human Rights Campaign also spoke briefly about their program that trains young activists, giving them organizing skills that can build a movement of LGBT sensitive political and non-profit workers across the country.

"Generation Equality (GenEQ) is the current crop of high school and college aged Americans. GenEQ is more supportive of queer equality than any generation ever - from widely supported issues like hospital visitation for same-sex couples and workplace fairness, all the way to full marriage equality. But achieving full equality takes action. HRC's GenEQ helps queer youth go from being out to being active by providing the skills, tools and knowledge to make full GLBT equality a reality.

I also caught Melissa Etheridge's performance on the DNC stage Thursday evening.

David Brooks: Douchebag.

I've posted a ton of stuff about Trick or Vote and their viral street efforts during the DNC in Denver, but they were not the only youth organization with a clever marketing scheme to spread the word about their activities at the convention. Rock the Vote also had an innovative viral campaign on the streets of downtown Denver this week and I think they deserve a shoutout.

On Monday, the first day of the convention, I probably met at least two or three people on the street wearing black T-shirts with the number 81.6% written across the front in white, handing out identical black and white post cards. It definitely piqued my curiosity, even if I didn't stop (I'm super bad about stopping for canvassers). On Tuesday, I encountered them again with the number 13.3 emblazoned on their black T-shirts. The shirts and handouts were eye-catching, and on both days people were definitely stopping to talk to the volunteers about these mysterious numbers.

I think it was later that day that Bondelli explained to me the dynamics of the campaign. Each number represented a statistic about young voters. The campaign had a new number each day, culminating on Thursday, when the number was election day:

• Monday - 81.6%: the percentage of registered young voters who turned out in 2004.
• Tuesday - 13.3: the millions of young Americans without health insurance.
• Wednesday - 1,049,398: the number of 17-29 year olds who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
• Thursday - 11.04.08: the day that young voters will decide their future

This is very reminiscent of the "November 2nd" campaign in 2004 in which (supposedly millions) of black T-shirts with the day of the 2004 election printed on them were created to increase visibility around the election, especially among young people.

This whole campaign seemed to attract a lot of attention in Denver. I don't know if Rock the Vote plans on rolling out a similar nation-wide campaign in the fall, but I could see it being an effective way to message about the election and youth participation during the final three or four weeks before the election. Maybe 1 T-shirt/message per week used by all the volunteers for the non-partisan (or even partisan, if they wanted) campaigns?