Cross posted at Future Majority

John Edwards and Barack Obama released their education plans this week. Both are proposing solid first steps to reduce the burden that rising tuition places on students and eliminate some of the most egregious abuses of the government/corporate lending system.

The plans are both good (and I'll post a head to head review of both plans later this week) but I'd like to see the candidates take it a step further.

Cross posted at Future Majority

The media life of the CTYD YouTube video was informative to watch. It's the first time (that I can think of) that a democratic youth operation successfully used new media and the blogs to get out a story that didn't have a coordinated national push already behind it.

Cross posted at MyDD. Please recommend.

One of the things I want to do through the course of this primary is track the "youthroots," or "under 30" grassroots organizing on behalf of candidates - campus groups, high school groups, or other identified youth groups (like Punx for Dean in '04). I want to not only track these groups, but look at how they organize their members, how they coordinate with each other, and how they coordinate with the "official" youth operations of the campaigns. The end goal being to compare, contrast, and establish best practices for youth outreach.

Cross posted at Future Majority

Mike Gravel may be the crazy grandfather in the Democratic presidential primary, but he's also a potential rallying point for a whole bunch of folks who voted Nader in 2000 and think Kucinich is a toothless joke. He's had some solid appearances lately - particularly on the Colbert Report and during the Democratic debate, where he was a jolt of energy in an otherwise soporific event.

Cross posted at Future Majority

I'm a little embarrassed that I found out about this from the Midday Open Thread over at Daily Kos, but Linkin Park has a new video that's got a political/social edge to it. I loathe Linkin Park, and there's a lot that's not great about this video - there's no coherent thread connecting the various social and political problems it depicts, and there's no "ask" or action item at the end.  In short, it's no Mosh, but its encouraging to see nonetheless.  At this time in 2003, artists were petrified of getting entangled in politics, and a video like this - as unfocused as it is - would have been unthinkable.  

Seeing this video got me thinking, who will Rock the Vote in 2008?

Cross posted at Future Majority.

The Harvard Institute of Politics released their spring survey of young voters this week.  The survey has a sample size of 2,923 young voters - defined as 18-24 year olds - and was roughly split 50/50 between college students and non-college youth.  For reporting on the horse race, I'll refer you to this piece in The Hill and this piece by Jason Fink, at Future Majority. (Hint: Obama and Giuliani are up, Edwards is WAY down.)  

Cross-posted at MyDD and Daily Kos

In 2004, John Kerry made a huge mistake. While touring colleges and universities,he delivered long-winded speeches about medicare and social security to audiences of teens and twenty-somethings whose main concerns were rising student debt, shrinking employment opportunities, and their friends, busy fighting an ill-conceived land war in Asia. As a result, one of the more popular sites during the '04 election was called John Kerry is a douchebag but I'm voting for him anyway.

Cross posted at Future Majority

The Democratic Strategist has an interesting piece in this month's issue on how the Democrats can capture the partisanship of the "MySpace Generation."

Cross posted at Future Majority

The compelling "Hillary 1984" video recently introduced on YouTube represents "a new era, a new wave of politics ... because it's not about Obama," said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. "It's about the end of the broadcast era." - Full Article

This strikes me as right, but it's amazing to me that, in all the great discussions of the anti-Hillary Vote Different ad remix, no one is following this train of thought to its logical conclusion.

Everyone is convinced - rightly I think - that this represents the beginning of the end for top-down campaign messaging - or at least a significant shift in the balance of power. Supporters and critics alike now control the message in a remix free-for-all that is more powerful than stale, traditional political advertising, and this represents a radical advance in the public' ability to participate in the democratic debate. Hallelujah, the broadcast era is over!

. . . so why do we keep trying to measure the impact of videos like Vote Different with the same metrics as we do those same stale campaign ads we're so eager to replace?

Krempasky (emphasis mine):