john tester

Mike posted the quick link for this piece but I wanted to go through and talk about all of the points that Carol Costello raises.

But first let me say that I am so exhausted from this kind of crap. It is so ridiculous that today reporters won't use the valid information they can get from a simple google search. There is no excuse for this kind of reckless journalism. It makes me think that perhaps it isn't that they get it wrong its that they WANT to report a specific story about young people and they want to fit the research to that story.

I can see why Republicans would want to do this as much as possible because suppressing the youth vote means more success for them. Which is why you saw it for the city elections in Georgia.

What a lot of people don't understand is that when you get stats like this wrong - it impacts campaigns, consultants, and candidates. It makes them think that they should not be targeting young people.

When they don't target young people they don't get young people to go out and vote.. so it perpetuates the fallacy.

Further it makes candidates have to get more republicans to vote for them which influences their policy. So basically, they have to be more conservative in their votes and the bills they push because they think that is representative of their district... when in reality... it might not be.

These things impact us at levels that go beyond turnout and elections it goes to the very laws that we are passing and the votes cast in Congress.

So here we go:

Carol Costello: "It seems like Americas Youth has a loud voice when it comes to Presidential Politics

We do. See Rock the Vote, MTVs Choose or Lose, Forward Montana, New Era Colorado, The Young Democrats of America, Traction in North Carolina, the League of Young Voters, the Oregon Bus Project, the Washington Bus, the Roosevelt Institute, the Democracy Institute of America, or the zillions of other organizations that work to get young people involved.

Carol Costello: "Republican outsider Ron Paul has a lot of young fans. And many have been so creatively effective online they've parlayed passion into cold hard cash for Paul's campaign and helped raise his profile. That's Power!"

She says this like its new. Hello... see Howard Dean... see Al Gore's Live Earth Concert.

Carol Costello: "But Ron Paul aside, the Democrats boast they have they have youth on their side...." then they run b-roll of Howard Dean quoting youth statistics.

Our candidates do tend to be younger than the 800 year old white men who are running on the Republican ticket. But dangling modifier aside.... something tells me that wasn't what she meant.

Read more.... then EMAIL CNN!

Larry Lessig is well known as a brilliant legal mind and nerd extraordinaire, but his recently posted Ted Talks video showed me a side to him I was excited to see.

Larry has our backs.

After explaining to the older leaning Ted audience what a mashup or remix was and showing some of my favorite examples, Lessig explains to them

"In my view the most significant thing to recognize about what this internet is its opportunity to revive the "read/write" culture..... digital technology is the opportunity for the revival of these vocal cords ... user generated content spreading in businesses in extraordinarily valuable ways like these (shows logos of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace etc..). Celebrating amateur culture - by which I don't mean amateurish culture, I mean culture where people produce for the love of what they are doing and not for the money.

I mean the culture that your kids are producing all the time. For what (John Phillip) Sousa romanticized when seeing the young people circled together singing songs, its what your kids are doing right now. Taking the old songs and remixing them to make them something different. Its how they understand access to this culture."

He goes on to talk about these technologies not being new, these are things that film producers have been able to do for years but it is the democratization of this technique.

"Anyone with a $1500 computer who can take sounds and images from around us and use them to say things differently. These tools of creativity have become tools of speech. It is a literacy for this generation. This is how our kids speak. This is how they think. It is what your kids are. As they increasingly understand digital technologies and their relationships to themselves." (emphasis added)

Lessig then goes on to explore the assault on creative culture with the "right vs. wrong" world of copywright laws, piracy, and the youth lead underground.

This lecture is particularly interesting given the NYTimes article about Ron Paul today about online (and also youth support) that people find so shocking. Here is a HUGE participatory campaign that has translated online action to blink and bank.

Contrasted - and on the same day - that the Clinton Campaign insults young people and Facebook users for not wearing 3 piece establishment suits and being old.

" At least two of Hillary Clinton's upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed. "Our people look like caucus-goers," Grunwald said, "and his people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook." Penn added, "Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state."

I don't think I'm alone in my age group looking for jobs where I can wear sandals and t-shirts to work. Ten bucks says this is one of the major reasons that there is a massive anti-Hillary facebook group.

Not to mention Karl Rove and Max Cleland who spoke at a conferences on the Rise of Citizen 2.0.

"He (Rove) argued that the Netroots have been largely ineffective and said MoveOn.org’s inability to end the war proves his point."

"Cleland also lamented the abundance of vulgar words on blogs and expressed shock when a friend shared with him my favorite YouTube video. The blogosphere, he said, is "out of control" and "ain't gonna win undecided voters" even though it may be responsible for increases in youth voter turnout."

I'm sure there is a George Allen, Hillary Clinton, and Karl Rove walk into an internet cafe joke to be made here somewhere. Of course, she's only recently become youth friendly. Though only technically. Perhaps, she'll learn better soon.

I think the character of campaigns like Ron Paul, Howard Dean, Webb, Tester, and others compared to very establishment, message controlled, topdown campaign- web 2.0 (aka youthy stuff) might be a necessary quality. If you're an establishment candidate like Clinton and you've already declared yourself as the winner then there is no need for any kind of outside of the box thinking. I think John Kerry would disagree (though not until after November 2004). But if you're opposing these types of candidates you can't win unless you create a backdoor, under the radar, campaign... Just ask Nancy Boyda.

Those, most often, are fueled by the enthusiasm of youth and the young at heart who are utilizing the technologies that CNN posts each night.

I hate to tell Sen. Clinton or Karl Rove this... but this is the future, this is the generation of your children, and until you embrace it you'll continue to only pull votes from the older crowds which will grow older and older as you yourselves do until eventually your own support will appear in history books rather in the tracking polls you'd like to see it in.