political parties

Clear back on February 4, 2009, Mike wrote a post about being asked whether or not Michael Steele, Chair of the RNC, could serve as a bridge to the youth vote for the Republican Party. A story posted this morning on TPMDC sheds some light on Steele's struggles with the youth vote, even within his own party.

22 year old Thomas Shultz, a student at Brigham Young University, is fed up with Michael Steele, so he's starting a petition drive to kick him out of the chairmanship of the RNC.

On Monday, Shultz launched ReplaceMichaelSteele.com, an online petition he hopes will centralize what he sees as general opposition to Steele among rank-and-file Republicans across the country. He, like a lot of establishment Republicans here in Washington, said Steele's tenure has done more harm than good to the GOP as it gears up for the presidential election in 2012.

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Shultz is not a voting member of the RNC, nor are young Republicans like him expected to play much of a role in the selection of the next RNC chair, whomever it may be. But for Steele, who has sold remaking the party as more accessible to groups who traditionally stay away from the GOP -- like young voters for example -- a cornerstone of his tenure, Shultz' view that the RNC chair is bad for the party can only be seen as a setback, even if only a minor one.

Shultz wasn't ready to say that young Republicans have turned on Steele entirely, but he said the ambivalence toward the RNC chair wasn't reserved for higher age brackets.

"I think there's definitely a consensus that's building that he needs to go," Shultz said. "He's a solid individual. I just question his ability to lead us to victory in 2012."

The story here isn't necessarily that Michael Steele is in turmoil; that's a perpetual state. This development is discerning, rather, given Steele's habit of playing up what he claims to be a connection with grassroots voters, resolving "to [build] an enduring majority party -- from the grassroots up," and his plans for an "off the hook" hip-hop makeover of the GOP.

This development suggests he's not even winning the Brigham Young vote - quite troubling for someone dedicated to attracting youth to the party and growing the GOP's grassroots.

Ben Goddard at The Hill comments on the current generation gap in politics. His discussion reminds us of the coalition-based, yet impatient methodology Millennials use to solve problems.

They have not generally gotten involved with candidates or issues because “Millennials perceive politics as a polarized debate with no options for compromise or nuance,” in the words of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. They don’t want to be limited by political party affiliation. They care about issues important to their “community” and will work with anyone who can get something done.

But [Millennials] are impatient. That is why so many seemed to drift away from President Barack Obama as the healthcare debate dragged on and partisanship in Washington got out of hand. For nearly a year and a half their parents’ and grandparents’ generations argued over what — to many — seemed like petty details. They tuned out not because they didn’t care but because they were bored.

Now that there actually is a healthcare bill, it will be fascinating to see if they are willing to re-engage. The Obama campaign showed how to communicate with and motivate this generation in 2008. Re-engaging them will be crucial to the president’s reelection and, arguably, to Democrats’ congressional future. There are 44 million Millennials eligible to vote, which is about 20 percent of the electorate. Most of them are independents — at least in their voting patterns. Recent polls show independents drifting away from the Republican Party as a result of the angry debate in Washington. The Millennials could lead that bloc of voters back into the Obama/Democrat fold if the president can show that together, they are making a difference. Millennials make up a big community confident in their ability to make change and willing to get involved if the president and congressional Democrats send them the right pithy message: Yes, we did.

Goddard's assessment is the first I have encountered that accurately captures the Millennials' move away from Democrats this year. It's not that they are becoming conservative. It's that they are looking at an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress -- a Congress they have more of a stake in than any other in recent history, given their turnout rate in 2006 and 2008 -- and seeing few issues of theirs discussed in a substantive manner. When the focus is on bitter, personal debates -- personality rather than the problem itself -- any notion that representatives and senators might be interested in problem-solving is out the door.

And now we get to why that impacts our country. The obvious answer is rooted in that generational pact seen in American society for centuries -- that each generation is responsible for ensuring that the torch it passes to a new generation burns brighter. We know that the life-long adoption of civic habits like voting are dependent on youth engagement. The more a young person votes when he or she is first eligible, the more he/she will continue to vote later in life. Furthermore, from a large-D Democratic perspective, given the obvious electoral benefits of adding a large, engaged, liberal generation to the voting rolls, the Democrats should be thinking of everything they can do to appeal to young people. In V.O. Key's terms, the PIG (Party-in-Government) must mind the PIE (Party-in-Electorate), designing ways to better communicate the process so that it doesn't interfere with young voters' appreciation of the policy output. Easier said than done, but it must be done.

Bottom line: if we fail to engage a group of young people who are interested in being engaged, we're not only letting them down, we're letting our nation down.

Sorry everyone -- I was on the road for most of the day, and I had attempted to schedule these posts, but apparently they didn't go through. Things will be better next weekend! --Craig

To answer the question in the title, I argue that no, charisma and party-building should not be mutually exclusive.

At Democratic Strategist, J.P. Green examines the Democratic Party's relationship with charisma and the Republican Party's simultaneous relationship with party-building. Green argues that while the Democrats were distracted from party development efforts by Kennedy's charisma, Republicans got to work in the 1970s, launching direct mail efforts, building a large communications infrastructure, and starting multiple think tanks. Green's main point is that we can't let that happen to us again.

After undergoing a thorough rebuilding process over the past four years, which did pay off in 2008, it might be tempting to sit back and relax, enjoying our president's charisma and believing that it will take us where we need to go.

Gallup released presidential approval numbers a few days ago reflecting the bounce Obama got from his speech Tuesday night. What's most remarkable about this is the impact he's having on Republicans, who had hopped off his bandwagon in recent weeks. Take a look:

Eventually we'll begin peeling more Republicans off the GOP base by showing them what competent government looks like. As Obama uses more and more of his charisma to communicate with disaffected GOPers, they'll begin to entertain the idea of joining a Democratic Party that, all of a sudden, has proven its worth to the country.

Our particular challenge, of course, is to provide room for these new arrivals, while continuing to better position the nation for the future (specifically, the future majority). If we want to avoid what happened to the Democratic Party a few decades ago, the 50 State Strategy, the focus on recruiting youth, and continued investment in the netroots are all an imperative part of our strategy going forward. Unfortunately, we can't have President Obama around forever; there will be Democratic presidents who are far less charismatic. Ideally, though, these presidents will be helped by a gargantuan infrastructure to continue spreading the message we all believe in -- that successful government relies on the citizen's faith and participation in the political process.

While President Obama's inauguration was an obvious sign this week that the country will be getting more progressive in the coming years, there was some quiet foreshadowing accompanying the festivities that bore witness to just how progressive the nation can be.

In the 2008 CIRP (Cooperative Institutional Research Program) Freshman Survey, an annual survey of the nation's incoming college students administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, respondents identified themselves as "liberals" at a rate not seen in several decades. But, as we know, they're not sitting on the political sidelines -- far from it. This group of freshmen is more politically engaged than any other freshman class in the last 40 years.

From the survey's website:

College freshman [sic] are more politically engaged today than at any point during the last 40 years, with 89.5 percent reporting that they frequently or occasionally discussed politics in the last year, according to UCLA's annual survey of the nation's entering students at four-year institutions.

The portion of incoming freshmen who frequently discussed politics in the last year - 35.6 percent - surpasses the 33.6 percent level recorded in 1968, itself a 40-year high mark of student political engagement. The 2008 level was also higher than in other recent presidential election years, including 1992 (29.7 percent), when Bill Clinton was elected, the survey found.

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An increase was also seen in the proportion of students who characterize themselves as liberal, which reached its highest level in 35 years in 2008, at 31.0 percent. The percentage of incoming students who characterize themselves as politically middle-of-the-road, however, has seen a steady decline and in 2008 reached an all-time low of 43.3 percent, roughly the same percentage as in 1970. One in five students (20.7 percent) identified themselves as conservative in 2008, down from 23.1 percent in 2007.

These numbers seem to indicate that parties are headed toward another golden age. The "party period" in American history sets the standard:

The period from 1840 to 1890 has been labeled "the party period" and "the golden age of parties" because the major political parties (Democrats and Whigs until the mid-1850s, then Democrats and Republicans) were the strongest they have been in American history. Party leaders used patronage and campaign practices that aroused partisan enthusiasm to gain wide membership and keep them loyal and active. It worked. Voter turnout during this period was the highest in American history: between 70 and 80 percent for presidential elections and sometimes higher in state and local contests.

Throughout history, we've learned that increased polarization leads to increased participation. While this particular survey only includes college students, history has proven the survey's accuracy in representing political trends over the years. And so, with polarization and engagement up big among the young people questioned in this survey, political participation should stay sky-high for quite some time, given polarization's connection with participation and the stickiness of youth voting habits.

However, we can't solely rely on trends to be successful at shaping the future electorate. And this is where Tim Kaine's chairmanship becomes so important. The "Party Period" described above was crafted by political machines, or local parties on steroids. In order to cultivate the partisanship that breeds participation, Tip O'Neill's localism was channeled from the future. Community picnics, socials, and rallies were prevalent, all organized by the local party. Politics invaded many areas of everyday life; many citizens couldn't avoid it even if they wanted to -- and they didn't. Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, while certainly not a machine, made the Democratic Party more tangible to people. Suddenly Democrats were being locally organized everywhere, and whether citizens agreed with them or not, they couldn't keep these newcomers from increasing the amount of political rhetoric and debate in their communities. Consequently, many more people were forced to process political ideas, leading to some sort of political identification that wouldn't have been there prior to Dean's chairmanship.

With the party four years into a transformational strategy and with a titanic generation sympathizing with liberalism at a record rate, the stage is set for the Democratic Party to define politics for a generation. But the party needs to milk this trend for all that it's worth. Dean's localism should be strengthened, incorporating increasing numbers of people into the party by becoming socially active, whether it's through volunteer work, sponsoring community events, maintaining a presence at as many small-town fairs and parades as possible, and of course, continuing to allocate dollars to regional parties that atrophied during the last third of the 20th Century.

Finally, Democrats (especially the Obama administration) need to avoid at all costs the idea that youth should be relegated to service; youth should be heavily involved in the party's strategic planning and day-to-day operations. More on that to come soon.