Howard Dean

In 2004, there was very little going on within the Democratic Party in terms of reaching out to young voters, and a lot of new blood entered the system and started up their own organizations. Very little happened within the party infrastructure (the revitalization of YDA being the exception). This outsider boom in youth organizing is the heart of what my book is about.

More and more, I don't think we'll see a similar dynamic this year. One reason is that organizations that garnered funds from wealthy donors over the past four years will continue to reap those rewards and scale up those programs, many of which the donors are invested in. The second, and equally significant reason, is that the Obama campaign is sucking up all the oxygen in youth activism this year. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. Merely that the entrepreneurial, grassroots youth activism that happened outside of the party in 2004 (particularly after the collapse of the Dean campaign), is happening inside his own youth operations this time around.

But what happens after that? What happens when Obama is no longer on the ticket - either because Clinton wins the nomination or because come November 3rd the campaign is over (or good or bad)?

When Dean lost, his army of followers created a new organization - Democracy for America - which has continued to do the work that Dean started in revitalizing local Democratic grassroots and eventually took over the party when Howard Dean was elected chairman. When the election ended in 2004, many of the youth organizations didn't quit, but carried on into the midterms and some are still with us today. They have become institutions, relevant beyond any one election. Will the Obama campaign morph similarly? Will all these new young people get fed into existing institutions such as the Young Democrats, The League, Campus Progress, Young People For, and more? Will they start their own organizations to keep Sen. Obama accountable to his campaign promises and to assist him in passing his policy proposals long into his administration?

That, I think, will be the true test of Obama's movement. Does it understand itself as such and will it create new (or join existing) institutions necessary to keep that movement alive. Or is it about an election, and will it fade as soon as its standard bearer is off the ticket? Obama's amazing online/field operation is empowering people and building an army of a campaign like nothing we've ever seen. But can that be sustained, and how can it complement or join the existing movement that is also dedicated to changing the Democratic Party?

I don't expect anyone - even the campaign - to have an answer to this yet. But it's something they (and we in the youth organizing sphere) need to be thinking about.

Last night I managed to catch an Obama rally at a local high school. Here's the scene:

As you can see, it was decently crowded when I shot this video, and it became even more so by the time the Senator arrived to speak. The crowd was pretty pumped - or "Fired Up; Ready to Go!" - as the Obama campaign and its supporters like to say.

There was nothing new, at the event, and really it was almost indistinguishable from an Obama rally I attended during the summer in Washington Square Park. The candidate didn't say much of interest and the speech seemed to lack substance for me. It was really just an event to pump up the base, reinforce the campaign's narrative of Hope and Change, and - most interesting to me - to emphasize the role that young Iowans can play in deciding today's caucus. I most definitely did not leave the rally "Fired Up and Ready to Go," but I can certainly appreciate the importance of what Obama was doing and I'm impressed by the way in which he seems to be getting young people invested in political participation and legitimizing that participation among the political class.

That said, I left the event fairly underwhelmed on anything but the most intellectual level. I can appreciate how amazing it is that Obama is drawing such huge crowds compared to the other candidates, and that this is outside the norm in some ways, yet it all seems too familiar and somewhat quotidian. Maybe I'm spoiled by Dean, who drew similar enthusiasm, or maybe I'm getting too cynical (and it's only my second cycle!), but I just can't get fired up by these rallies anymore. I had a much greater emotional investment in Dean's primary campaign than I do in this one, and while I can appreciate the enthusiasm of the supporters of those campaigns, and I'm sure thousands of young voters feel about Barack the way I did about Dean, I just don't feel it.

Thankfully, they do, and hopefully it will pay off tonight.

What will be the youth vote narrative come January 4th? It's not an easy question to answer, and indeed it's something that can and will be shaped in large part by a number of factors: the caucus results, historical data, conventional wisdom about past caucuses, the campaigns themselves as they spin the results, and youth advocates.

Here's a run-down on what I see as the variables in play that could affect how the youth story is reported. I've loosely ranked them in terms of how important/influential I think they are.

This is a long one. Join me on the flip.

I just finished watching a speech that Howard Dean delivered recently at Johns Hopkins University. In this speech, Dean said all the right things about the youth vote. He noted that Millennials are the largest generation in America - bigger even than the Baby Boom - and the most diverse. That we are turning out in disproportionately high numbers compared to Gen X when they were the youngest generation. The chairman noted that people choose their party affiliation early in life, and talked about the importance of bringing young voters into the Democratic Party.

For a youth vote advocate, the speech was everything I wanted to hear. For a former Deaniac, it reminded me exactly why I supported the Governor in the first place. Yet at the same time, it's disappointing because the DNC is failing to live up to Dean's words. As Ben Adler (formerly of Campus Progress) notes in an excellent article in the Politico:

Still, even if Democrats do reap big youth gains in 2008, it may be unclear how much of this would be due to his DNC efforts, and how much Dean is merely a sympathetic witness to much deeper trends.

DNC spokespeople, citing their need to keep internal strategy private, declined to describe the specifics of the party’s youth outreach efforts in any detail, or disclose specific metrics on how well it is working. Surveys make clear that, no matter the impact of political strategies, deep currents are shaping the views of younger voters in ways that seem likely to scramble old electoral coalitions and familiar issue divides.

Adler is more right than he realizes (or is wiling to publish). There are numerous flaws in the DNC's youth outreach strategy, and any gains that Democrats see in the youth vote is more likely due to the work of outside organizations than it is the DNC or its youth arm, the College Democrats.

Operating out of the Political Program at the DNC, the College Democrats are the only vehicle for youth outreach financially and legally bound to the national party. CIRCLE estimates that 75% of 18-24 year olds will never earn a college degree, and a full 55% have no college experience at all. This is to say nothing of the fact that, according to the Current Population Survey only 21% of 18-29 year olds are currently enrolled in college or graduate school. There is very little that the college democrats can do to reach these people, and by extension, that means that the DNC is putting almost no effort into reaching more than half, and possibly as many as 79%, of all young voters.

A quick examination of the organization's accomplishments and resources reveals an organization underfunded and unable to fulfill its mandate.CDA has only two full-time staffers and an operational budget supposedly in the low-hundreds of thousands (the budget fluctuates each year and both the DNC and CDA , but are loathe to talk about actual numbers). The group has approximately $125,000 in the bank that it has raised outside of the unknown amount provided by the DNC. According to Open Secrets the organization spent approximately $210,000 between 2000 and 2004; a number wholly inadequate to the task of reaching young voters.

The hallmark of Dean's tenure as DNC chairman has been the 50 state strategy - the idea that Democrats must have a vibrant party engaging voters in all 50 states if we are to properly challenge the Republicans and build a Democratic majority. Yet were the College Democrats to follow this logic and divide up their assets accordingly, each state would only get between $5 and $10k per year. Not even enough to pay for a local staff person's salary (meaning that most state parties also lack a dedicated youth outreach coordinator.

This problem is compounded by the fact that the CDA budget is dispersed to states who agree to work in cooperation with CDA on youth outreach. Problem is, those resources (money or staff, usually available only at the height of an election cycle) often get shifted away from youth programs and into more general party operations. Some states like Michigan and Arizona have a reputation for working well with CDA and putting real effort into the youth vote, but many others make promises and then take the money for other purposes. There is little accountability in this process, and at the end of the day, no one will say (and it's almost impossible to know) how much of the DNC's youth budget actually gets spent on youth outreach.

At the programmatic level, there is little testing behind what programs CDA does execute, and many of these programs are predetermined by the DNC, not by the membership or even the leadership of the organization.

These are not new problems. In 2002, the Young Democrats left the Democratic Party for precisely these reasons. It was a gamble at the time, and for a time YDA was left without office space or even salary for its officers. Yet it was a gamble that has since paid off in spades, as YDA was able to tap into the venture philanthropy money that overtook Democratic politics in 2003 and 2004, and parlay that injection of resources into building an organization that didn't just work as ground troops for Democratic campaigns, but actually conducted serious outreach to their peers, and continually tests and refines that work. In the last 3 years, YDA has taken huge strides in building healthy, sustainable chapters across the country.

YDA used to be in much the same position CDA is now - perpetually broke and utterly reliant on the DNC and state parties. Now they have total control over their own programs and an average annual budget of $1 million (that tops $1.5 million during Presidential and Midterm election cycles). Despite a number of offers to join with YDA, CDA has repeatedly decided to stay within the DNC - unwilling to give up the guaranteed resources the DNC provides, or part with the insider connections that come from being housed within the DNC.

To be sure, Dean has not just been all talk. There have been modest improvements since he took on the chairmanship. And his words do in fact mean something - they can alter the culture of the organization and create a new conventional wisdom within the party about the importance of young voters. But Adler is right that the DNC can claim little credit for the surge in youth interest and turnout. Part of that is due to the character and beliefs of Millennials themselves, but the dirty job of GOTV and turnout has been the work of organizations outside the party structure who have filled in the gaps where for years the DNC dropped the ball. Should those groups disappear, or the prevailing political winds shift away from the Democrats, Dean and the DNC would find themselves in a very different position with regard to young voters.

If you're a reader of Newsweek, CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The National Journal, you've probably read a lot about Barack Obama and his "hidden army" of "BarackStars," young voters who will supposedly propel the Senator to victory in the Iowa caucus; a narrative pushed by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe despite a distinct lack of hard evidence (read: polling) that young voters favor Obama over Clinton to any substantial degree. You've also probably read all about Howard Dean and how young voters displayed a similar enthusiasm for his campaign, but burned the governor at the ballot box when they failed to show up at the caucus. The conclusion: young voters don't turnout and Obama's strategy is historically risky.

There's only one problem with this analysis. It's all wrong.

A little bit of research reveals that young voter participation in the Iowa Caucus did in fact increase dramatically in 2004. According to an analysis of exit polling data by the Center for Independent Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), the premier research shop for information on youth civic participation, young voter participation in the Iowa Caucus quadrupled in 2004. An estimated 21,000 18-29 year olds participated in the 2004 caucus, 17% of the total 122,000 caucus participants (pdf). That number is strikingly close to 20%, young voters' share of the eligible electorate, and stands in stark contrast to the participation figures for Generation X. 30-44 year olds comprised just 15% of the participating electorate in the 2004 caucus, despite the fact that Gen X makes up 31% of the Iowa population.

And what about the fact that all those voters were supposed to choose Dean? While the Governor from Vermont may have had a lot of youth energy, it turned out that most of his youth support was located outside of Iowa. Young Iowans split their vote among Dean, Senator John Edwards, and Senator John Kerry, and, as this chart from CNN exit polling analysis shows, gave the eventual Democratic nominee a plurality with 35% of the vote.

A more accurate narrative might read something like this: Iowa youth vote surges, picks Kerry; Gen X continues to disappoint at the polls.

So what does this mean for the Obama campaign? David Plouffe is likely right in his assertion that the media is underreporting the potential youth turnout. David Yepsen of the DeMoines Register is leading that charge , most recently with a report that the under 25 vote only represents 2% of "likely caucus goers." That figure isn't all that surprising since, in order to be a likely caucus goer, one would need to have already participated in a caucus - an impossible feat for those between the ages of 17 and 21. As Mystery Pollster notes, there are also a number of other methodological problems with this 2% number. When it gets down to it, no one really knows how many young voters will participate in the 2008 Iowa caucus, but if trends from the last three years are any indication, it will likely be in numbers equal to or greater than those from 2004.

This does not necessarily mean that young voters will lead Obama's campaign to victory, and it doesn't even mean that they will choose Obama over other candidates. The Obama campaign certainly seems to have the energy on the ground, and unlike Dean, that energy is coming from native Iowans, not out of state transplants. Nevertheless, polling still puts Hillary well within striking distance (despite David Plouffe's claims to the contrary), and a split youth vote is highly probable. What it does mean is that young voters are a highly engaged portion of the electorate - more engaged than those Generation Xers who are now in their 30s and 40s - and their votes are not necessarily tied to any one candidate. When the caucus ends and delegates are assigned, let's hope that this time the media can get the story right.

Oliver Willis jumps onto the "I Hate Young People" bandwagon, as well as the "Barack Obama's strategy sucks" bandwagon in this piece from a few days ago.

I've been reading Willis since 2004, and I love him as a smart, funny writer, but here he's repeating a lot of just plain wrong information that unfortunately became conventional wisdom. The narrative Willis is peddling runs something like this: Young people were supposed to turnout huge for Howard Dean in 2004. Dean lost the Iowa caucuses, so the youth vote must not have materialized. Therefore, young overs screwed Howard Dean and any attempt at a youth strategy is a loser for Democratic candidates.

There are a number of problems here. Youth participation in Iowa quadrupled (pdf) in 2004. Young people came out in force. Problem was, they split their vote among all the candidates. For sure, Generation Dean had trouble effectively organizing in Iowa, and those young people who voted for Dean were terrible at the politicking vital to success in the Iowa caucuses. But those were problems that were organization wide. Young people didn't "screw Dean" any more than old people, Boomers, or Gen Xers did. It was a team failure that was just as much about the national campaign as it was anything else.

Willis ends his piece by taking a swipe at social networking activism, all but applying a label of armchair activist to young voters, while simultaneously praising what he "feels" is a supercharged, hyper-efficient organization of "older" Hillary supporters out there in the world doing real campaigning. While I'm sure Stephen Colbert will be happy to know that Willis trusts his gut over evidence when he writes his columns, I'll suggest that when thousands of people show up at a student rally, the folks behind that are doing some real campaign work.

Now, all that said, I agree with Willis that Barack needs to turn all those FaceBook supporters into voters. This is the challenge in front of them. But having spoken to the campaign, this is a well understood fact. One can argue that they are failing or succeeding to a greater or lesser degree, but Willis isn't doing that that.

One final thought - I'm really resistant to the narrative that young voters are going to "carry candidate X over the top." I've been there, I did that in 2004. Young voters came out in force, and actually did pick Kerry to win, but it was a foolish narrative to be pushing. We all saw the blowback when Kerry lost and that defeat was laid at the feet of supposedly absentee young voters.

Young voters will be a force at the ballot box this year. Will they tip the balance? Maybe for some candidates downticket, maybe not for others. The real point we should focus on is that turnout is rising and young voters are an important part of the electorate - but we are just a part. I'm more interested in getting voters under 30 a permanent, respected seat at the table than having us play kingmaker for a cycle. This is a long game and swinging for those home runs is a dangerous strategy with unnaturally high expectations. We've all seen what happens when you miss, or even if you hit a double. It was stupid of Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to play that expectations game in his latest memo, and disappointing to see Willis buying into the bogus results from the last cycle.

• Embedding is disabled, but Obama is getting a shout-out from Common in his latest video. Watch it on YouTube, or read about it at the Students for Barack Obama Blog. It's not Mosh - it's more a cameo than a call to action - but it's pretty cool. And hey, it's Common. If you haven't seen it lately, Obama's been getting more love recently from the Hip Hop community. Since he graced this month's cover of Vibe (and sat for a Q&A), the traditional media is also starting to notice.
• Brave New Films has a scary new piece illustrating the similarities between the run up to the Iraq War and the current debate on Iran that is happening in the media:
  
• Speaking of the war, here's a video of Iraq Veterans Against the War speaking out at Yearly Kos:
  
• On this issue of the troops vs. the pundits, check out this piece by Paul Reickhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America over at Huffington Post (hat tip to Blue Heretic).
• DNC Chair Howard Dean continues to give big props to young people as the future of the party. Apparently his remarks at Yearly Kos are becoming something of a stump speech. Now all he has to do is convince the neolithic state parties to undo the purse strings and offer their young constituents a well-resourced place at the table.
• Finally, I don't normally shill products (and I'm not getting paid for this), but this seems like a handy tool for bloggers and activists alike. And ePolitics runs down some potential uses.

Update: I killed the video embed since Ustream apparently automatically plays every time the site loads. That's annoying. Direct link below.
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Here's the entire video of Dean's speech to the Yearly Kos Convention. I haven't had time to watch it yet, so I'm taking it on faith that it's as good as everyone says w/r/t the need to reach out to young people. So here it is sans critical commentary. Attached is a transcript of the speech courtesy of Howard Empowered.

See Howard Speak

So I'm finally at Yearly Kos. Sitting around waiting for General Wesley Clark to speak, stewing in my juices and waiting for my panels. I hate public speaking, and yet that's basically all I"m doing today.

The word is that yesterday Howard Dean delivered a keynote address in which he talked about the importance of engaging the youth vote.

Ben Adler from Campus Progress has the goods. I particularly like that last bit. Yay on you for brining up the topic Howard, but not exactly the best way to talk about demographic diversity and tolerance among Millennials:

DNC Chair Howard Dean just gave a rousing address here at Yearly Kos to the 1400 minions and hundreds of members of the media. He focused in large part on the importance of progressives appealing to young people. He noted the 20% increase in youth turnout between the last two midterms and noted that voting patterns get locked in for life at a young age. He admonished activists to always focus on the young as an investment in the future. He also rather comically pointed out that "there are white kids running around malls with pants around their ankles" as evidence that the hopes of the civil rights movement have been achieved. And Dean pointed to the long enduracne of civil rights leaders as a reminder that activism is a lifelong commitment.

The words are a bit indelicate (as Dean is often want to do), but the point is sound, and Republicans are getting scared.

Obama’s campaign draws comparisons to that of Howard Dean, most often in the context of his online fundraising and organizing.

Again, in keeping with my little formula, first an examination of the context of the race and then my thoughts on how it may or many not apply to hypotheticals involving Barack Obama. Caveat - my take on the context of the Dean movement is, shall we say "colored" by my participation in the Dean movement.

2. Dean for America – DFA was the culmination of a pushback movement against a conservative political punditry that enabled Gingrich’s slash and burn Republican destructiveness. For Dean, the progressive netroots (activist classes of 2000 and 2004) built new organizations, communication networks, and political structures precisely because the old structures had failed so badly from the impeachment of Bill Clinton leading to the midterms of 2002.

The Governor, an adversarial competitor who was unapologetic about his disagreements with the Conservative movement, and his “Deaniacs,” helped usher in a progressive wave predicated on the politics of opposition, an ethos based in part on Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 campaign.

In my mind, this case is the least applicable.

More after the bump.