politico

Politico published an op-ed piece this morning examining both parties' use of younger messengers on television to attract the 35-60 crowd. Martin Frost, a former Democratic representative from Texas and the author, attempts to rationalize this.

Both parties know that the key electorate in the 2012 is voters between the ages of 35 and 60. Younger voters are likely to stay with President Barack Obama, but older voters are a battleground to be fought over on traditional issues like Social Security and Medicare.

It is these voters between 35 and 60, increasingly identifying as independents, who are expected to be the true battleground in both Obama’s re-election and the Democrats’ effort to re-take control of the House.

Emphasis is mine.

It's pretty simple: if the Democrats and the Obama campaign make similar assumptions about young voters and the campaign takes the youth vote for granted, the 35-60 year old vote won't matter.

This week Politico published an article discussing the "wane" in student political enthusiasm on American college campuses this off-year cycle. Erika Lovley juxtaposes this lack of excitement for the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia with the heightened political participation last fall.

Before we get into comparisons, let's acknowledge that youth are going to need to show up in these races if Democrats want to hold on to these offices. Increasingly, youth voters are forming the heart of the Democratic coalition, along with Latinos, African-Americans, and women.

But I have three issues with this analysis.

1.) The comparison is off -- it might as well be comparing apples and oranges. Off-year elections (non-presidential elections, especially non-mid-term elections) are notorious for low turnout. What we should be paying attention to are youth turnout rates for 2005. Both Virginia and New Jersey showed double-digit increases in dense precincts from 2001 to 2005, for example. The big question should be whether or not students and other young voters can build off that increased 2005 rate, or at least maintain it.

2.) Where is the mention of the kind of campaign being run? It's not much different from the health care debate? These campaigns, especially the New Jersey race, are down in the mud, dirty affairs. If we're trying to get youth interested in politics for the sake of public service and other noble-minded ideals, the structure and style of the campaigns being run aren't a great match. And if we do want to compare with Obama's campaign, well, there's not much of a comparison there.

3.) Repeat after me: The increase in the youth vote does not originate with Obama's candidacy. We have tried and tried again to debunk this, but apparently it's just not taking.

Just a day after Erica Williams tried to set the record straight about young people and healthcare, we get this POLITICO piece entitled, "Young adults sit on sidelines of health debate." This title is a real shame, because the article chronicles many noble efforts by young leaders and organizations in working on healthcare reform. It's as if POLITICO came to the piece with the perspective that young people are not involved, instead of investigating the rich involvement on the ground and online. Like, the opposite of journalism. At any rate, what POLITICO may be getting at is that young people aren't visible to older Americans. Fair enough, but that's a two-way street. Erica wrote a great commentary on CNN.com, which is totally read by older Americans. She explains that young people don't want to get involved in the theater of politics.

Young people were such a vital force during the election, not simply because of their own voting turnout but because of their ability to reach out to their elders and persuade them. And what could be more needed now?

But if health care reform matters so much to young people and their voice is so crucial in the debate, why the silence? Why does it appear as if young people aren't interested in the debate that will inform so much of their future?

Well, if we are gauging America's overall interest in the debate by the aforementioned displays of partisan yelling, screaming and death panel-ing at some town halls, no wonder we think young people don't care. Those sideshows were a clear turnoff to a population that voted overwhelming for less partisanship and "drama" in its politics.

Or perhaps it is because this administration did little in the early stages of the debate to engage and activate a "fired-up and ready to go" base of young people that saw health care reform as a top concern at the polls. Obama rarely highlights the fact that reform would provide protections against price differentials that often result in discrimination based on age and gender.

As if to prove Erica's point also translates to journalism, the POLITICO article starts off with this bit:

Getting old and sick isn’t a hot conversation topic for much of generation Y, an age-phobic group that fights time with Botox, suffers quarter-life crises and actually hosts Over the Hill parties for 25th birthdays.

Does these ideas come from a national poll? A focus group of POLITICO interns? Who created Botox, anyways? And why does this characterization make no sense to me?

As we saw in the past few election cycles, young voters respond to candidates that speak about issues. I daresay that MTV/Facebook townhalls asked much more candid and pointed questions than what we've seen in the healthcare townhalls. Young people are taking the high-road, eschewing politics as usual, and doing what the American spirit does best - they are getting it done themselves. POLITICO is just adding to the theater by resurfacing memes about young people that I thought were done away with (but never will?).

Erica's last point about the Obama administration being slow to engage is true. Even while the talk coming out of Dem Congressional leadership is positive, it seems empty without action on their part. FM co-blogger Kevin once mentioned, "young people are not your free intern army," and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said yesterday at the NCoC conference, paraphrasing Tocqueville, "In France, when there's a problem, the people go to the government. In America, they create an association." So, since our party leadership won't put the money or the time into energizing the young voter base around healthcare reform, it's a good thing Millennials are already taking up the cause.

The POLITICO article insists that there is a lack of youth energy, and the below excerpt is my favorite characterization of this point.

One D.C. health reform group representative described a recent health care policy conference where participants from youth organizations were literally falling asleep at the table.

“They’ve got a life ahead of them that seems 1,000 years long. ... They don’t believe they’re going to die. They don’t think they’re going to get sick,” said Center for Healthcare Decisions Executive Director Marge Ginsburg. “They understandably have very little health care experience to draw on.”

Ginsburg’s group tried to run a series of health reform focus groups involving 20-somethings but eventually told its recruiting company to stop taking applications.

“The fact is, they didn’t have much to say,” Ginsburg said, adding that a number of participants assumed most health care reform wouldn’t benefit them for years.

Young and old alike fall asleep at conferences, so I'll leave that aside. More to the point, there is a much more sophisticated outlook on healthcare than whether it will benefit you or not. In fact, young people know that healthcare reform will benefit them right way - their parents' health, as we learned from Roosevelt Institution's Rx Summit earlier this year. Family values are important to young people and they worry about whether or not their mother will be dropped from her insurance for a pre-existing condition or loss of employment. This issue of young people caring not just about themselves, but about their families, is something that is missing from the mainstream coverage of the health discussion. Furthermore, a youth-led group called Young Invincibles is working to combat the notion that young people can somehow do without health insurance (and healthcare reform).

Healthcare reform is full of human stories and policy details, and the point is that there are so many. Black and white frameworks don't do the discussion justice. Some journalists have fallen into that trap, or perhaps created it, restricting their perspective to their own bubble.