Young Democrats of America

Update: A correction has been issued for this piece. Two young people did address the convention on Monday and Tuesday. Read the full correction here.
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My final write-up on the DNC.

On Thursday, Senator Obama finished the long primary process and accepted his party’s nomination in front of 75,000 supporters. In no small part, Senator Obama stood on the podium at Invesco field thanks to the hard work, and votes, of millions of young voters, many of who cast their first ballot in support of his campaign.

Turnout among young voters in the Democratic primary was double the level recorded in 2004, and young voters broke heavily in favor of Senator Obama. In the Iowa caucuses, young voters performed on par with the "reliable" senior vote, and were widely credited with providing Senator Obama’s margin of victory.

That trend continued at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, in which young people played a larger-than-usual, though still not proportional, part in the proceedings. Young people made up a record 16% of all official participants in Denver, including 631 delegates. This represented a huge increase over 2000 and 2004, when young people made up 9 and 11% of convention participants, respectively.

As Crystal Strait, political director of the California Democratic Party and active Young Democrat noted during a press conference by the DNC Youth Council, young people were still not represented in the convention at the levels in which they participate in Democratic politics. Young people made up 19% of the Democratic electorate in 20004, and under the DNC Charter, should also make up 19% of the delegates at the Democratic Convention, 3% higher than the record levels found in Denver.

Off the convention floor, though, young faces could be found in abundance. The College Democrats of America held their own national convention in Denver, concurrent with the DNC. The group flooded the city with hundreds of student activists who came for trainings, speeches from top DNC officials, and perhaps a chance to view Senator Obama’s acceptance speech live.

During the day, panels coordinated by the DNC Youth Council – a board consisting of leaders from College Democrats, Young Democrats, Democrats Work, and Future Majority (myself and coblogger Kevin Bondelli are both members), as well as all members of the DNC under age 36 – provided access to elected officials and party leaders like Howard Dean and Scott Kleeb, as well as advice on best practices for organizing young voters or running for office.

Non-partisan youth organizations, such as the Bus Federation and Rock the Vote, were also in attendance, throwing parties at night and flooding the street with viral campaigns during the day. It was hard to walk down the street without noticing Bus Federation volunteers dressed as vampires, angels, or devils to raise awareness about Trick or Vote, their national Halloween GOTV canvass. Often not more than a few yards away, Rock the Vote street team members handed out cryptic black postcards with white numbering. The numbers changed each day, and represented important statistics on young voters.

Despite this unprecedented youth involvement at the convention, young people were more likely to be seen than heard by the delegates and party officials in Denver.

Though they are the official youth arm of the Democratic Party, the College Democrats were unable to provide the vast majority of their membership in Denver access to the first three nights of the convention. The Young Democrats and DNC Youth Council had similar problems obtaining credentials for their members early in the week, and young Democratic organizers in Denver needed to rely on their state parties or personal connections to obtain credentials to the Pepsi Center. The situation was much improved for Thursday night's events at Invesco Field, for which party youth organizations were mostly able to provide access to their members.

Most surprisingly, the one place young voters were completely absent at the Democratic National Convention was at the podium. During my four nights at the convention I did not see one young voter or youth organizer – from CDA, YDA, SFBO or otherwise – address the convention. Young Democrats looking forward to Chelsea Clinton’s introduction of her mother as a kind of passing-the-torch to the next generation moment were disappointed when the former First Daughter’s role was reduced to narrating a video about her mother’s life.

Thursday at Invesco Field was no better. Not one young person took the stage that night – not even during a brief period in which the party introduced half a dozen “regular folks” to talk about the problems they face. It was a curious and conspicuous omission considering the economic plight of “Generation Debt.”

The closest the Party came to including young people during the night’s proceedings came during the speeches of Al Gore and Sen. Obama, both of whom acknowledged the unique role of young people in pushing for change during this election.

To the extent that this is a change election, it is also generational election. Age was the greatest predictor of how someone would cast a vote in the primary process. Unfortunately, the convention organizers chose to talk at young people this week rather reward them for their activism with a place at the podium. Young voters are pushing the Democratic Party towards victory, yet it appears that the convention organizers still adhere to the old adage: children should be seen, but not heard.

Over at The Pace, Young Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Acker responds to the post I wrote about "doing more with less" and the shortage of funding in youth organizing this year.

There are great lessons to be learned from 1992. In 1992, Bill Clinton won on the heels of the youth vote and then never talked to young voters again. He didn’t address the issues they cared about (beyond general economic stewardship) and he didn’t court their vote in 1996. It doesn’t take a genius to then guess that young people didn’t turn out in 1996 – they didn’t. And not only did we lose those young 1992 voters in 1996, we lost them, period.

This is my huge fear about this election. There is huge potential to capitalize on enthusiasm among young voters for Obama in this election. But there’s also an even greater danger of a cult of personality movement. The downsides are obvious if we lose – young people may become disillusioned altogether and weaker youth organizations, who could not maximize their potential in the Year of the Youth Vote, won’t have the capacity to re-energize them for issue advocacy work and future elections. But, if we win, Obama will then have to carry the mantle while also nurturing competing interests (and if you think young people’s power at the ballot box is still weak relative to older generations, our power of persuasion – organized by us, for us – is nearly non-existent). He will also inevitably disappoint all or some of his supporters, as no one’s star can shine that bright forever (even his).

Young voters will have to hold Obama, and others elected on our heels, accountable. But how can we do that in an only Obama-led movement? How can we try to move an agenda that may be at odds with the Administration’s priorities? How can we win primary challenges or have more young people run for office against older, safer, more seemingly reliable incumbents?

Great points all. Al's point about Clinton and the youth vote in the 90s is spot on, and a parallel can also be drawn between today and the Republicans of the 1980s. Conservatives have invested heavily in leadership building and voter registration. As a result, we got Reagan, Rove, Grover Norquist and Bush Sr. Then they stopped investing in voter registration and turnout and we got Clinton. Youth voted heavily for Kerry and now we're voting Democratic 2 - 1.

Things seem great, but they won't always be. The progressive movement is about to make the same mistake the Republicans did and assume that because the youth vote is in the bag this election cycle it will always be that way. How soon we forget.

Over the weekend Michael wrote about the vote pledge and peer-to-peer program kick-off at the Young Democrats of America conference in Nashville. During the conference there was a lot of excitement about the program and I had great attendance at my trainings on using the internet to collect vote pledges. However, as Michael stated earlier, not everyone is sold on the idea of vote pledges, but I am going to show why they should be.

The concepts of peer-to-peer and vote pledges were developed after extensive research on marketing behavior and social psychology. Social psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini from Arizona State University explains the power of commitment and consistency in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion:

Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.

The process of a young person signing a pledge to vote for a Democrat in November is a commitment to take that action, and they will be much more likely to actually do so in order to be consistent: "Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand."

The power of word-of-mouth and peer-to-peer will lead young people to take the commitment of pledging to vote. The ability to use peer influence to encourage action in places where young people live and hangout, both on and off-line, enables the Young Democrats to reach a large number of potential young voters and have them take an action that dramatically increases the likelihood that they will vote in November and that their vote will be for Democrats.

The vote pledge itself provides a great deal of value. The Young Democrats are able to collect the information from those that sign the pledge in order to follow up and remind them of their commitment. With the difficulty finding good contact information for young voters due to increased mobility and exclusive use of cell phones, this data is extremely valuable.

During the YDA Conference state chapters and caucuses set goals for the number of vote pledges that their organizations will collect by the election. Research shows that groups are much more effective when they are seeking a specific goal as opposed to a vague or generic goal. Instead of just having the goal of YDA chapters being the very vague "increase youth turnout," they have a concrete goal of "collect X number of vote pledges." This combined with the strength of commitment and consistency explained earlier will result in a successful coordinated volunteer program across the country with metrics that will allow the organization to judge success.

Sold yet? Go to www.yda.org/votepledge and sign the pledge yourself, and don't forget to spread the word to your own social network encouraging them to do the same.

As I mentioned yesterday, if Day 1 at YDA was all about internal business and caucuses (activities which do, btw, continue throughout the conference), then the second day was all about action. As I've written in the past, YDA is still undergoing a transformation from a networking organization that provided manual labor for state parties and candidates into a chapter-based field organization focused on peer-to-peer GOTV of the often neglected youth vote. Day 2 was all about pushing that peer-to-peer program. Here's Tony Cani, YDA's political director breaking it down:

As Tony explains, the vote pledges - and the establishment of metrics for attaining pledges on the state level - are the focus of the day. The pledge cards - which declare the signatory's intention to vote for a Democrat in the fall, is really just the entry point to a whole series of "touches" - via text message, facebook, phone calls and door-knocks - that end with the person pulling the lever for Obama in the fall. It's also a way for YDA National and YDA chapters to measure their work - providing valuable information about the capabilities of the organization as well as data that can be used for fundraising purposes during the next cycle.

Most of the day is structured around trainings in peer-to-peer- organizing as a way to gather vote pledges. These include community service projects (the Democrats Work model), concerts and festivals (the MFA/Head Count model), campus organizing, online organizing (with a focus on Facebook and state blogs) and more. The day was capped off with a field exercise in which 10 teams competed to gather the most vote pledges as possible - online and on the streets of downtown Nashville - in the span of one hour.

Not everyone was thrilled with this use of YDA time. As I've written before, not all YDA members and chapters are bought-in to the new, peer-to-peer model, and there seemed to be some resistance to the idea of the vote pledges. At the YDA conference I attended in New Hampshire last Novembe, at the YDA Fall Conference, very few attendees participated in the field trainings. Instead, many chose to ditch YDA and canvass for their preferred presidential campaign. This time around participation in field training activities seemed to be on the rise, though still below a majority of conference members. The culture of the organization - who it's members are and how they view YDA's place in Democratic politics - continues to change, but it seems like they're still a ways to go before everyone drinks the peer to peer Kool Aid.

So real quick on the campaign committee. First a bit about what it is. National YDA - which raises money from large donors like the Democracy Alliance - has a program through which they partially fund state chapters. This is called the State Partnership Program. State chapters wishing to participate in the program draw up a plan, submit it to YDA National where it is vetted. Successful applicants will receive half the funding for their plan from National YDA and they are required to raise the rest of the funds themselves.

These state partnerships are in turn funded in two ways: through the Party Building Committee and the Campaign Committee. The Party Building Committee funds organizational overhead like Executive Directors and staffers and non-campaign activities that help build a chapter. The campaign committee funds specific projects to get out the vote around elections. These campaign proposals were the main topic of discussion.

Participants (mostly regional representatives) had a few main concerns:

• Was YDA running out of money and unable to afford supporting new/more campaigns?
• Could YDA open up the funding process (transparency!) and let states that have made proposals know where they stand?
• Could some kind of review metric be established and enforced to make sure states were living up to their commitments?
• Could guidelines be established that would push states to make their programs self sustainable, freeing up YDA money for other state campaigns?

In all these instances members wanted more information available and wanted to spread that information amongst the membership to alleviate unwarranted fears/gossip, and help chapters help themselves. For instance, thus far the committee has approved 11 of 26 campaign proposals. A few members were pushing the committee to release a ranking of the proposals so chapters could know where they stand in the process and could potentially use an "endorsement" by YDA National of the strength of their plan to raise money locally. (For instance, if the "12th" best plan - and first "unfunded" state - knew that but for funding shortages, they would receive money from YDA National, that's a selling point they can use to raise local money. Again, greater transparency was pushed as a good policy to strengthen the organization.

A word on the money question. I don't want to leave readers with the impression that YDA is running out of money and is broke. That seems to be the fear among some chapters but everyone tells me it's not true. But there does seem to be less money in play this year overall that in 2004. My guess is that, excluding non-electoral organizations like Young People For and Campus Progress, which don't do fieldwork - there is far less youth money available or in play right now than there was in June 2004. Maybe it's because of the ongoing primary or Obama's success with youth, maybe it's donors feeling burned (and it should be noted that as far as I can tell the Rappaports - one of the major youth donors over the last 4 years - have yet to give to any youth orgs). But just when we should be increasing youth funding to begin locking in Millennials for the next 40 years, the funding seems to be drying up or at least on hold.

Sorry I'm not live-blogging much from YDA. I'm having issues with the WiFi and can't get reception anywhere except in the hotel lobby. Here's my thoughts on Day 1.

The YDA National Convention is split into two parts. On the first day - when most participants are still flying in - the organization takes care of internal business. Committees meet, people speak in a foreign language based on Robert's Rules of Order, and YDA generally takes care of all of it's internal business for the next quarter. All meetings are open to the public and anyone can attend. The second day is much more action-oriented and I'll have some thoughts on that later.

Yesterday I was able to sit in on two meetings - so this isn't at all a representation of the whole conference, just my limited experience. These were the meetings of the Judicial Committee and the Campaign Committee. In both instances, organizational transparency seemed to be the root topic up for discussion.

The Judicial Committee needs something of an introduction. It's been over a decade since this committee last met. The cause for it's revival was ostensibly an internal dispute regarding YDA's Bylaws and tax status, which prevent YDA from endorsing candidates, and public declarations by two of YDA's three superdelegates as to their intentions in casting their Super Ballot at the convention. In reality, it was more about the internal politics of the organization and people in leadership positions (or wanting to be) mucking up the waters in preparation for the next YDA officer elections.

David Hardt, the President of YDA (and at the time of this writing an undeclared superdelegate), referred the matter to the committee, requesting a determination as to whether Crystal Straight and Francisco Domenech, YDA's DNC committeepersons, violated the rules when they declared their intention to vote for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (respectively) at the convention. Also on the table was whether or not Francisco and Crystal should be impeached from their positions if it was determined that they had violated the organization's bylaws.

In talking to a few people, Hardt is understood to be operating as a proxy for Chris Gallaway, YDA's previous president, as well as Chris Anderson and Billy Joyner, who want to move up in the YDA leadership after Hardt's term as President ends. Crystal is seen as a top contender to be the next YDA President and on some level this was all about fucking with her potential candidacy. It's all internal politicking, which is unavoidable when you get to this level in any political organization. It's exacerbated by the fact that YDA has become a somewhat powerful organization in recent years. They have a budget in the millions of dollars now and with the youth vote surging, YDA's stature in party politics is likely only going to rise making leadership positions more powerful, more coveted, and thus more competitive. It's one of the less attractive parts of Party politics, but it does make for much more politically savvy operatives. Democrats are always getting out-played procedurally by Republicans, and this sort of thing teaches our future leaders how to play brass knuckles on that playing field. And compared to what the College Republicans do to each other this is like touch football.

After a brief scuffle over the rules as to whether or not the committee could deliberate in a closed, executive session (they couldn't), the committee unanimously voted that Francisco and Crystal did not violate YDA rules, but not before some very interesting issues were brought up regarding organizational transparency. During her presentation to the committee, Crystal stated that her declaration was not only lawful, but good in that it let the membership hold her accountable. Rather than cast a secret, unannounced ballot in Denver, she let her choice be known, as well as the reasons for that choice. Her declaration of intent gave the membership the opportunity to question her decision and monitor for any sort of improper (or at least unseemly) quid pro quo. Judging from the final vote, and the fight over whether the session would be open or closed, I think Crystal's call for more transparency in the organization was refreshing and sought-after among many of the members who attended the meeting.

The interesting upshot of this dog and pony show was that the committee determined the rules in the YDA bylaws to be contradictory and vague on the matter of how YDA superdelegates should cast their ballot. As a result, the matter was referred to the Rules and Bylaws committee to take up at a later date, opening up the possibility that the charter could be amended and new precedents could be set for how YDA superdelegates act. Assuming that the Rules and Bylaws Committee takes this as a serious opportunity to more effectively shape the influence of young voters in the party, it's a prime opportunity to initiate one of the alternative superdelegate options I've advocated, including polling the YDA membership or linking YDA superdelgate votes to the popular youth vote (proportionally or winner-take-all).

I'm running out of time here. I'll post about the Campaign Committee meeting shortly.

How could this be?! This is indeed breaking news, because it may very well be the first time FoxNews has done something right - er... correctly.

This comes on the heals of the CNN blunder in reporting a lot of misinformation about young people and the youth vote in 2008. Add to that Naomi Wolf and Courtney Martin and you're ready for your own nuclear meltdown of frustration.

There's been a pretty substantial rapid response linking to a brilliant post by Mike that details data and a fact sheet for reporters who can't bring themselves to research - and the response has been tremendous!

Rob Anderson from CP went after Naomi at the Washington Post, we hit CNN on FM, and Campus Progress nailed Courtney here.

After posting Mike's piece everywhere and emailing it to CNN, NPR, and all of my own local news and radio stations I figured the last to talk about young people would be a Republican News Network who so clearly excludes young people. But they did. As you can see they addressed all of our main issues.

The only fault I have with this is that the piece likens youth to phrases like "Yo Dude" when, shocking as it may seem, young people do have a capability to converse like adults and understand complex topics.

Alexandra Acker ED of the Young Democrats of America was interviewed in the piece and later commented to me

"One thing that stood out was Frank Luntz’s outrageous statement that young people want to be addressed as “Yo, dude” whereas I had spoken about the need for candidates to take young voters seriously and talk about issues they care about."

Another interesting thing to mention is the ways in which FoxNews reaches out to young commentators like Acker when CNN's and the piece on 60 Minutes was largely dominated by older generations who are out of touch with the reality of the Millennial Generation.

Fox is notorious for connecting with younger demographics (see MySpace, the Simpsons, and FoxNews Porn) - CNN's only got Anderson Cooper and Soledad O'Brien. Let's face it almost 3/4 of their airwaves are full of old angry Lou Dobbs, Larry "he's still alive?" King, and the Jack/Wolf Playdate (and my TV is always on CNN!)

The reporter doing the piece seemed young. Probably not 25, but she's definitely younger than Lou Dobbs. And Acker said she made a real effort to understand the issues:

She "went to resources like YDA and YVS, did follow-up with me after the interview to make sure she had the Harvard quote right, but CNN just recycled the same old, tired storyline."

Acker goes on to speculate that the youth friendly ways in which FoxNews and its family targets young people is perhaps because they are more aware of our generation's purchase power. And I think she's got something there.

While I agree that Fox is bad, evil, worse than bad and evil, I think if they could make more money by supporting Democrats they'd flip parties in a heartbeat. By targeting young people, regardless of party affiliation, with products, musicians, and the like their advertisers make more money and thus the network banks a pretty sweet deal.

In many ways we're being used - but at the same time, they're the only ones talking about the importance of young people in the first place - so what do ya do?

Until we can get mainstream news sources to report these facts correctly, you have to give props to the ones who do, even when they're traditionally crazy nutbars.

Cross posted to Kos, please recommend

Cross posted at MyDD. If you like the piece, please give it a recommend.

UPDATE: Rum, Romanism and Rebellion has all the details from the committee meeting, and apparently it was even worse than I thought.

While we were all occupied with the candidates speeches at last week’s DNC winter meeting, the Young Democrats of America were politicking behind the scenes to get young voters proportional representation in the ranks of delegates to the 2008 Presidential nominating convention. I exchanged emails with Tony Cani, Political Director of the Young Democrats for America, about this issue, and here’s what went down:

Since 1974, the charter that governs the Democratic National Committee has mandated that certain underrepresented groups - women, african americans, and youth, to name a few - be given proportional representation among convention delegates. In proportion to what? To their share of the Democratic electorate. That means that if 20% of the population who vote Democrat in a given election cycle are african american, then african americans should theoretically comprise at least 20% of the delegates at the DNC. These “affirmative action provisions,” as they are called, are enforced through a series of state-level goals and timetables determined by each state’s delegate nomination/election process.

In a nutshell: In the last 30 years, this provision has not been enforced for “youth,” even though it has for women and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, and a few weeks ago, the Young Democrats initiated a campaign to change that.

As in most things where rules and procedures and technocratic maneuverings dictate outcomes, the issue is slightly more byzantine than this simple encapsulation. In response to a (pre-winter meeting) letter by YDA President Chris Galloway, the DNC presented two counter arguments to YDA’s request that the DNC enforce the Charter: first, that a 1980 resolution passed by the Rules and Bylaws Committee mandated certain goals for underrepresented groups, but that youth were purposefully excluded from that resolution; second, that the whole issues doesn’t matter anyway because in 2004 15% of delegates qualified as “youth” (and certainly that’s plenty and we should all be satisfied).

More after the jump.