Young People in Politics
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center between October 2007 and March 2008 found that 58% of voters under the age of 30 identified or leaned more towards the Democratic Party, compared with only 33% who identified with the GOP. It seems that the Democratic Party's current lead in identification among young voters has more than doubled since the 2004 campaign, from 11 points to 25 points.
This is significant considering the vast number of young people supporting the Obama campaign last year, whether it was volunteering for the Obama campaign through small-donor fundraising (made simple with the effective use of my.barackobama.com and other social media tools) or helping to get the vote out on Election Day itself. One such person who decided to get involved was Rahaf Harfoush, who upon hearing Will.I.Am's Yes We Can video, decided to join the Obama campaign at the Chicago HQ, and then went on to write the book Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand detailing her experience with the Obama Campaign.
Rahaf's presentation below certainly helps to break down the elements of how the Obama campaign effectively utilized social media to engage people on the issues that matter to them. My friend Mark Kuznicki has some great commentary on this presentation and how it relates to social media here.
Yes We Did: Strategic Insights from the campaign that redefined modern politics
View more presentations from Rahaf Harfoush .
On a personal note, and to keep a long story short, some friends and I decided to go on a road trip across the United States in February last year, and through the my.barackobama.com website, we were fortunate to attend an Obama fundraiser in Washington DC hosted by the LGBT Democrats of DC on the last leg of our trip.
As the Pew Research Centre survey also point outs:
"The current generation of young voters, who came of age during the George W. Bush years, is leading the way in giving the Democrats a wide advantage in party identification, just as the previous generation of young people who grew up in the Reagan years - Generation X - fueled the Republican surge of the mid-1990's."
And they also have this to say about voter identification across all age groups:
"Since 2004, identification with the Democratic Party has increased across all age groups. Four years ago, 47% of all voters identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 44% identified with or leaned toward the GOP. In surveys from October through March, Democrats held a 13-point party identification advantage (51% to 38%)."
These numbers should be of concern to any person involved with the GOP right now.
It seems that week after week, we hear of issues and antics that do not showcase the Republican Party in a positive light at all. Aside from the sex scandals of Mark Sanford and John Ensign, or the political bombshell dropped by Sarah Palin dominating headlines news in recent weeks, young people in the GOP have also been making news recently. Namely Audra Shay, the 38 year old Army veteran, mother and event planner from Louisiana who was recently elected as head of the Young Republicans, despite revelations of derogatory comments on her Facebook wall which Shay seemed to tacitly support and even encourage, comparing President Obama to known terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, and African-Americans to 'mad coons'.
With Sonia Sotomayor's US Supreme Court confirmation hearings taking place this week, Jason Mattera, spokesperson for the Young America's Foundation whose motto is "The Conservative Movement Starts Here," is another young Republican who has found himself in hot water recently. Mattera posted the following violent racist rhetoric on his Facebook, in reaction to the first batch of senatorial statements about US Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor: (note: David Weigel first broke this story on the Washington Independent)
After this story was picked up by Think Progress, Mattera posted a response yesterday on HotAir.com, justifying his comments by pulling the "Sonia Sotomayor grew up in The Bronx. I grew up in Brooklyn. She’s Puerto Rican. I’m Puerto Rican. She’s purportedly from a rough area. So am I" card.
Give me a break.
Mattera then ups the violent, racist rhetoric by first apologizing that Sotomayor would not "shank" Scalia on the bench, she would instead shoot him up in a drive-by. And I am supposed to find this statement funny how?
What is interesting to note is that in my message to Mattera above, in no way did I mention my political leanings, all I did was express my disappointment in his comments and that he should have known better.
In any case, with Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States, I seriously doubt that having grown up in The Bronx makes Sotomayor somehow better qualified for the Supreme Court. Perhaps what makes her qualified has something to do with her having worked hard all her life, graduating summa cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B in 1976, graduating from Yale Law School with a J.D. in 1979, and her years of experience as a lawyer and as a judge, where she was appointed to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and then to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998 by President Bill Clinton.
To go back to the motto "The Conservative Movement Starts Here," if Mattera and Shay are indicative of the young leaders rising within the Republican Party, perhaps the conservative movement has already stopped dead in its tracks.
It seems that David Eaves may be right, writing in the Neo-Progressive Manifesto:
Dear conservatives on the Left and Right – and those beholden to them.
We would like to break up with you.
Every day, we see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. It's been a long time coming but we have irreconcilable differences.
Posted on Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009
