Washington, We Have A Jobs Problem

The jobs report for August showed another 216,000 losses. That's far less than previous months, in fact the smallest in a year, but still not very good. The unemployment rate jumped up to 9.7%, and it'll basically be a matter of time before we're at 10%.

The AFL-CIO released a stunning report about young workers, showing their struggles in the past decade, where they have less jobs, worse jobs and no security.

Some of the report’s key findings include:

31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it.
Strikingly, one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.
Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.
A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can’t afford it.
When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for in the current financial downturn.
By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.
Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there’s not an election going on.
The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.

At the low end, workers are often paid under the minimum wage and cheated out of overtime pay.

This is just not sustainable. A thin layer of the super-rich exploiting a permanent underclass, with many out of work or unable to gain independence, will not result in a workable society. Social unrest is a more likely outcome.

We cannot forget this. The Democratic Party is becoming reliant on the professional class instead of the working class, and it leads to policy that doesn't help workers. The shrinking unionized sector, and the inability to create policy to reverse that trend, will come back to hurt the so-called "party of the people."

Labor's lack of clout to pass EFCA in even the most overwhelmingly Democratic -- and progressive -- Congress in decades is an indication that we already have a successful progressive movement in which labor plays only a modest role. Union support was less crucial to Obama's nomination and his general election victory than it was to any previous Democratic president, which is why he's not obligated to twist arms to pass the bill. Many Democratic victories in 2008 were in states and districts where labor is weakest, like Virginia and North Carolina. And I know dozens of engaged liberals who have no idea why EFCA matters.

The new progressive coalition follows the lines of the "emerging Democratic majority" that Ruy Teixeira and John Judis predicted in their 2002 book of that name: minority, professional, and younger voters, with help from a large gender gap. This is a coalition that can win without a majority of white working-class voters, whether union members or not. (Those who were union members were always solid Democrats.) In many ways, that's good because it helps to bring an end to the culture wars that limited the party's ability to speak clearly about matters of fundamental rights and justice.

But it's also dangerous. A political coalition that doesn't need Joe the -- fake -- Plumber (John McCain's mascot of the white working class) can also afford to ignore the real Joes, Josés, and Josephines of the working middle class, the ones who earn $16 an hour, not $250,000 a year. It can afford to be unconcerned about the collapse of manufacturing jobs, casually reassuring us that more education is the answer to all economic woes. A party of professionals and young voters risks becoming a party that overlooks the core economic crisis--not the recession but the 40-year crisis--that is wiping out the American dream for millions of workers and communities that are never going to become meccas for foodies and Web designers.

I think the lack of connection between Democrats and the working class reflects itself in all these jobless recoveries we're seeing. Policy just isn't made for the median income, but of, by and for the rich. It's a very dangerous situation.

Calitics Press Clippings

Sandy Banks, the LA Times local editorial writer, had a peculiar connection to the Emanuel Pleitez mailer incident - it turns out her daughter appeared in one of the photos that Gil Cedillo pulled from Pleitez' Facebook page to smear him as a party animal. She writes today about the mailers.

The ad was supposed to frighten Pleitez supporters into Cedillo's camp, and it did scare off some voters.

But others saw it as a desperate attempt to tarnish not only Pleitez, but also the hard-working young people associated with him.

The "Animal House" photo that includes my daughter was taken at a gathering of Stanford students during their study abroad semester in Santiago, Chile. Some of those young women are now in law school or working on PhDs. Others are teachers, nurses, directors of nonprofit groups. Hardly the stuff of "Girls Gone Wild." [...]

...young voters lit into the tactic on political blogs, pointing out that the so-called gang sign in one photo is the symbol of Voto Latino, a national voter outreach program.

And the woman pictured making a V with her fingers alongside Pleitez is Rosario Dawson, who starred with Will Smith in "Seven Pounds" last fall. Either Cedillo didn't recognize the popular young Latina or thought she was throwing a gang sign as well.

That made Cedillo look foolish. But it also put young activists on notice.

"This is an embarrassing ad," one poster wrote on the Calitics political blog. "Everyone in the Facebook generation has photos like this. Will every Young Dem that decides to get into politics have to deal with this kind of garbage?"

I have to give respect to my friend Dante Atkins, who broke this story and drove it from the very beginning, raising its profile enough that future campaigns will have to think twice about using such a stupid tactic in the future. Atkins' posts drove the media narrative of that race, and Cedillo had to respond and defend his gutter tactics.

He deserves praise, and I wish Sandy Banks mentioned him by name.

What's Happenin', Blood?

This reminds me of my dad coming to my room to "hang" with me and check out what "the kids" are into:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.

Does Clifton Davis from That's My Mama write Steele's lines? "Off the hook?" "We are going to cut the capital gains tax, can you dig it to the max, jive turkeys?!?!?" If you want an RNC Chair to relate to youth, it might be good to offer them, and I know this is crazy, policies they like, instead of references ripped off from "The Taking of Pelham 123."

I think this article was written so TBogg could make fun of it.

Innovations

The Obama campaign's old-media strategy has been fairly stale, but they are implementing some very innovative practices that look to the future of campaign communications.

I think the Kerry campaign announced their Vice Presidential selection via email, but Obama is taking this a step further by texting the announcement. It's a gimmick, to be sure, but the goal is to obviously sign up a list of a million or so texters to deliver instant communications throughout the election season. More and more young people are using text messages as a primary form of communication, so this is simply smart. I could see them doing "text banks" to put messages out or GOTV.

The other innovation, which they've done consistently since the primaries, is this idea of mass phone banks, which will get a new makeover in Denver.

On Thursday, August 29, 80,000 people will line up to enter Invesco Field in Denver. Greeting them at the gates will be a squadron of federal agents with magnetometers. Security is important; everyone will be carefully screened.

Even with a few dozen magnetometers, though, the queues will be long. 80,000 people will be antsy, sweaty, excited, bored. Presciently, Obama's convention planners realize this.

They're drafting a plan to pass out thousands of cell phones, and with them, lists of persuadable voters from their database along with their home telephone numbers. The idea is to encourage the line-waiters to use their time productively and in service to the cause. One giant phone bank, in other words, waiting to pass through the mag lines.

That's a brilliant idea. Campaign events don't necessarily turn voters around; but they aggregate masses of supporters in one place, and that makes them a perfect time to engage them in mass action. Obama's campaign has really innovated in this area, creating almost flash mobs of citizen participation. With Obama's strategy predicated on massive turnout, this is actually crucial to victory as well.

Meanwhile, at the Old Fart Saloon, this enthusiasm is wanting on the Republican side.

Republicans aren’t exactly planning to avoid the convention in droves. But compared to past conventions, lawmakers, lobbyists and candidates aren’t beating a path to St. Paul either.

Of the 12 Republicans running in competitive Senate races — five of whom are incumbents — only three have said they will be attending the convention. Six are definite no-shows, and three are on the fence.

“Nobody likes a funeral,” said a Senate Republican press secretary who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing “the overall climate of general malaise about the party” as the reason for hesitance on the part of Republicans.

I know the media wants everyone to believe this race is close, but the enthusiasm gap makes it hard for me to believe.

UPDATE: I missed this the first time around (h/t kos):

"I would definitely say that people aren’t as excited about going to Minneapolis as they were about going to New York City," said Matthew Keelen, president of the Keelen Group, a D.C.-based lobbying firm. "Minneapolis is a nice city, but it doesn’t quite have the environment and reputation of a New York City, and I think 2004 was a unique convention and a lot of it had to do with where it was," he said.

They hate middle America. No good cigars or lobbyists there, I guess. What a bunch of hypocrites.

California Supreme Court Helps Bend The Long Arc Of History Toward Justice

It's really a great day for California.

In a monumental victory for the gay rights movement, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage Thursday in a ruling that would allow same-sex couples in the nation's biggest state to tie the knot.

Domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage, the justices ruled 4-3 in striking down the ban.

Outside the courthouse, gay marriage supporters cried and cheered as the news spread.

Jeanie Rizzo, one of the plaintiffs, called Pali Cooper, her partner of 19 years, and asked, "Pali, will you marry me?"

"This is a very historic day. This is just such freedom for us," Rizzo said. "This is a message that says all of us are entitled to human dignity."

If it were up to me, government would be completely out of the marriage business. They could stop penalizing single people for being single with tax incentives for married folks and return that savings to everyone broadly. And the restrictions on hospital visits and health care dependents and next of kin are frankly weird. But if you're going to bestow those benefits on married couples then you have to bestow them on gay couples. This is a basic civil right and nobody in our country should be treated like a second-class citizen.

There's going to be a "defense of marriage" constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would vacate this ruling and the court would not be able to change it. So there's a LOT of work to do to keep the momentum going. But Digby is right: this is a situation where the youth movement can make a difference in this state.

This is one state where the huge youth turnout could really make a tangible difference in real people's lives immediately. If they come out in the numbers we expect in November, I believe we will defeat this on the ballot, no matter how many reactionary wingnuts get excited about it.

It's fitting that in an election year where we are dealing head on with all these issues of race and sex that we're going to have a showdown on gay marriage in the most populous state in the union. The chances have never been greater to defeat the forces of bigotry and discrimination. It's a risk, but there will probably never be a better time to take it. Bring it on.

I also think this will help the entire Democratic ballot - that's right - in November in California. The Yacht Party will rue the day they pushed wedge issues like this. A good day all around.

Two Data Points That Will Change California Permanently

One is national, the other state-specific. Both of them explain why we're starting to see traces of jelly in the knees of Republicans as they try to figure out how they're ever going to win an election again.

Nationally, the new party identification numbers by age group are out from the Pew Center. These are incredible.



Democrats now hold a 25 POINT advantage among voters aged 18-29. It is generally assumed that partisan identification hardens with each passing election, and by the time you get someone to vote with a party for the third time in a row, you've got them for life. Over the next five to ten years, we could get that advantage for an entire generation. This is the chickens coming home to roost (if I can use a phrase so intimately involved with Rev. Wright without accusations of being an angry black liberation theologist) for 30 years of failed Republican policies, and nowhere is that as acute than in California, where Republicans are on the wrong side of the environment, the economy and health care.

The local set of numbers is even more striking.

Forty-nine percent of California's children between 12 and 17 have at least one immigrant parent, a phenomenon that could dramatically change the composition of the state's electorate within several years, according to a report released Tuesday.

Of these 1.2 million kids, 84 percent are U.S. citizens, either because they were born here or were naturalized, said Rob Paral, a Chicago-based demographic researcher who prepared the report, "Integration Potential of California's Immigrants and their Children."

The report predicts that as these children turn 18, they could help fuel a rise in immigrant voters by 2012.

The combination of these two numbers spell total doom for Republicans. Young voters are moving rapidly to the Democrats, and millions of California children are reaching voting age, mindful of Republican demonizing on immigration issues and the pain they've delivered to their families. Now think about potentially 30% of the electorate being made up of these children and their legal immigrant families.

The wave is coming, my friends, the wave is coming.

Mass Student Walkout In Alameda

This is a really big deal.

Hundreds of students have walked out of their classes in Alameda in a protest over the state's proposed budget cuts.

Students from Encinal High School marched off campus and straight to the school district's headquarters.

Tuesday night, the district school board voted to cut $200,000 out of sports programs and to increase class sizes on some campuses to save money.

This got national cable news coverage today, by the way.

I'm not saying this is akin to protesting the draft in the Vietnam War era, but the similarity is that when you threaten the livelihood of a whole mass of people, you awake a sleeping giant. And society actually has a compelling interest in providing a full platter of school programs to create a well-rounded and engaged class of young people. It won't be long before these students are joined by teachers and parents on the streets.

Republicans can keep their heads in the sand or they can take note. The governor's already flopping like a fish, bringing it down to the "it depends on what your definition of tax increase is". He knows that his political legacy is on the line and that you're going to anger the whole state if you try to balance the budget on the backs of students. Democrats need to simply defend the principle that the state is worth paying for. The public will be with them. The ghost of Howard Jarvis is being slain.

P.S. High school seniors vote, they've been energized by the excitement in the Democratic presidential race, and they should be targeted furiously by legislative Democrats.

Two Good Candidates

This is an important point:

There's no doubt Democrats are torn between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the early exit polls show they are not bitterly divided: 72 percent of Democrats said they would be satisfied if Clinton won the party's nomination, while 71 percent say the same about Obama.

That's what I see when I talk to actual Democrats, particularly those who don't spend all their time on the Internet. Not only do Democrats like both candidates, not only do they think they are going to get to vote FOR someone instead of AGAINST the Republican this year, but the primary is improving that view. I don't think either of these two are saviors, which is why I think a movement that will hold them accountable is the most important thing (as disclosure, it is for this reason I voted for Obama today). As frightened as Democrats are about a brokered convention and hurt feelings, it should be known that these two candidates are overwhelmingly acceptable to Democrats, and a longer primary contest (which would wind up with a scant 7 or 8-month general election instead of 9), if it's played fair - and I think there's an overwhelming desire for it on both sides to keep it fair, considering how negative campaigning has generally turned out in this race - will actually put Democratic ideas in front of the electorate in very positive ways.

This is a good example of what I mean:

As voters in 24 states go to the polls today, many express a deep pessimism about America's future. A Gallup poll last month found 73% of adults were dissatisfied with the state of the nation. A recent Associated Press-Yahoo News poll reported that 44% of Americans expected no real changes in Washington, no matter who's elected.

In more than two dozen interviews on the campus here -- in a state with a hotly contested Democratic caucus -- students largely shared that gloomy outlook.

But in a paradox that intrigues analysts -- and could well shape the election -- they still feel inspired to vote.

"They do think America's going to hell in a handbasket," said Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington. "But they have some feeling of hope, some feeling of idealism."

Sophomore Dillon Fisher-Ives put it this way: "As hopeless as voting might seem, not voting is worse."

We know the country is broken and that the political system is broken. Instead of turning away, we're going to work to change it.

Yes We Can

This is an amazing music video, maybe the best use of celebrity talent I've ever seen employed in a campaign. Obama's rhetoric does have a poetic quality to it, and putting it to music is just natural. Add in the viral nature of putting the song on the Internet, and the bold call for social justice and the desire to become our better selves, and I think it's just a real gem. It also adds to the generational, creative class nature of the Obama campaign that we're seeing in recent days.

Here's a story about the making of the song:

The Black Eyed Peas' frontman, songwriter and producer known as will.i.am, along with director and filmmaker Jesse Dylan, son of another socially active musician, Bob Dylan, released a new song Friday that attempts to do just that.

The music video "Yes We Can" premiered on ABCNewsNow's "What's the Buzz" on Friday. It was inspired, will.i.am told ABC's Alisha Davis, by Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign and in particular by the speech he has gave after the New Hampshire primary.

"It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me to be sitting here on ABCNews and making a song from Obama's speech," will.i.am said.

"The speech was inspiring about making change in America and I believe what it says and I hope everybody votes," Dylan said.

It's pretty special. I don't know that the country can be collectively inspired by a particular anymore, there are simply too many media choices these days. But this is one way to gather interest in civic engagement that is completely outside the box.

An Evening With Debra Bowen In Downtown LA

Last night I was fortunate enough to be present at a small-group discussion with Secretary of State Debra Bowen hosted by the California League of Conservation Voters. Despite this being a hectic time for the Secretary of State (E-12, in her parlance), she took a couple hours to fill us in on efforts leading up to this year of three separate elections.

In the final two weeks for voters to be eligible for the February 5 primary, there was a surge of registration. At a "midnight registration drive" in Sacramento, over 1,500 citizens registered to vote in one day (sadly, registrars in places like Los Angeles County resisted efforts to do the same because it would be "inconvenient" for them to update their voter rolls). While she had no prediction on turnout in the primary, Bowen was confident that there will be a lot of excitement and potentially a good turnout. One drawback is the fact that decline-to-state voters have to opt-in to receive a ballot for the Democratic primary (they are shut out from the Republican primary). When I asked Bowen about this, she replied that counties are required to actually notify DTS voters of their rights, and that some precinct locations will have signage notifying them to that end, but that this is insufficient and her hands are tied by state law to some extent. The parties who want to welcome DTS voters into their primary have a big role to play in this. The Democratic Party, if they want to expand their base, should make a legitimate effort to let DTS voters know they can vote in the primary. It will have the effect of getting them in the habit of voting Democratic and give them a stake in the party. There are also legislative reforms, regarding mandatory signage inside the polling place, changes to the vote-by-mail process (nonpartisan voters must request a partisan ballot), that can be taken.

Bowen's great achievements since taking over the Secretary of State's office include an insistence on voter security, and outreach to young voters. On the security front, despite the howls of protest from county registrars, Bowen will be limiting precincts to one touch-screen voting machine (for disabled voters) and will be undergoing increased security and auditing procedures. A lot of these measures will be behind the scenes, like delivering voting equipment in tamper-proof bags so that evidence of changes to the equipment will be obvious. And the auditing procedures, with an open testing process, may delay voting results, but are crucial to maintain confidence in the vote. A court recently ruled in favor of Bowen and against San Diego County in implementing these changes, but she expects an appeal. As Bowen said, "Since cavemen put black stones on one side and white stones on the other, people have tried to affect election results." But she is doing whatever possible to make sure those efforts will be supremely difficult in California. None of her provisions so far are slam-dunks; it's hard to create something foolproof, considering that memory cards for many machines can fit in your pocket, and so many machines are hackable. But Bowen is making an excellent start.

Bowen was cool to this idea of voter fraud, which has been pushed by conservatives for years. She described that there has only been one documented case of voter fraud in recent history, and that it's a high-work, low-reward strategy for cheating. Efforts to stop this non-existent problem include voter ID laws, expected to get a boost with the Supreme Court likely to allow the one in Indiana to go forward, despite Constitutional concerns. While Bowen deflected many attempts to get voter ID laws enacted in California while on the Elections Committee in the Senate, she believed that such attempts would never pass this Legislature.

As far as reaching out to young voters, we all know about Bowen's use of MySpace and Facebook to keep young voters informed (and yes, she also reads Calitics). But one measure she talked about last night struck me. On February 5, over 140,000 California high school students will engage in a mock election, featuring a Presidential primary and three mock ballot initiatives: 1) should the vehicle license fee be ties to auto emissions, 2) should voting be mandatory, and 3) should government do more to stop bullying on social networking sites. This is an ingenious way to get people interested and excited in politics at an early age, and sounds like a model program.

We have a long way to go on national election reform; Bowen noted that only three Secretaries of State (her, and the two in Ohio and Minnesota) agree that there needs to be a federal standard for national elections. What we need to do is elect more competent professionals like Debra Bowen and keep pushing the debate in the direction of reform and voter confidence.

The Winner of the 2008 Election...

must be we the people.

People are justifiably excited by the high turnout in New Hampshire, following the record turnout in Iowa, which portends a record turnout nationwide. People are excited about the prospect of a candidate who represents a generational shift and can attract new voters to the process.

(I'm not discounting the fact that the New Hampshire results will not determine the race; they likely will not. I do think that Armstrong and fladem are completely discounting the fact that Edwards is poised to stay in the race until the convention, and a series of third-place finishes will Clinton potentially skips Nevada and South Carolina to retool, will have a cumulative effect. Also, going relentlessly negative is a dumb strategy in my view. Clinton actually has a decent enough message, good enough to win, but looking petty and blaming the media will derail it. This is also extremely damaging for the Democratic Party heading into what will be an important and tough general election, and it's beyond me why any candidate would even consider going nuclear, being so cynical against a
candidate running on hope. It just reinforces Obama's argument.)

But I've come to the conclusion that the Democratic candidate, should they get into the White House, is less material than how he or she harnesses this growing movement toward progressive solutions to the challenges we face. I think any of the top three could be up to this task. It's up to them, however, to tap into this movement. Let's be very clear. Iowa has an open primary in the sense that they have same-day registration. Not one independent or Republican voted for Barack Obama in Iowa; they all had to sign up as Democrats. A lot of young voters don't have a political party but self-identify ideologically with progressives. This is not a bipartisan or post-partisan movement. This is a movement that invests a lot of power in one man to push a progressive agenda. Barack Obama himself is starting to acknowledge this, which is a relief to many who thought he wasn't giving the progressive movement the ability to help him set his agenda.

Obama's speech underwent another subtle shift, too. There was much more emphasis placed on the word "progressive," a much more explicit recognition of Obama's potential meaning to a particular ideological movement. He spoke of "Independents who recognize that the current course we're on is not working, and are ready to form a coalition with Democrats for progressive change," chided the observers who said there was no way all these diverse individuals would turn out "for a progressive Democrat." I've not heard that word so oft-repeated at his rallies before. Indeed, the whole speech seemed the product of Obama's thinking about how he could use his political potency to shift the center in America to the left. "We will send a message," he said, "that we will not only end the war in Iraq, not only bring our troops home, but we will change the mindset that got us into that war in the first place." In some ways, it's that grandeur of ambition that separates Obama from Clinton. Even before he said so explicitly, many progressives I know spoke of his ability not to change policies, but to change minds -- to do for progressivism what Reagan did for conservatism. Clinton, they agreed, was competent and well-meaning, but lacked that potential.

This is indeed a positive step. Those erstwhile independents and Republicans who signed up as Democrats to vote for Obama in Iowa need to be captured, they need to remain in the fold. And it's clear to me that the only way that happens is if they are empowered to become a part of this government, to become engaged in a very direct sense. I've worried before about how this new coalition, which has invested so much in this one man, would react if he meets up with the Republican machine and stumbles:

But the key moment for a possible Obama Presidency comes when that first piece of his agenda is blocked by a recalcitrant Republican minority that will have their heels dug in, or (worse) by Bush Dogs who still glory in knifing a progressive agenda. We are called "cynics" by believing the stated goals of a 40-year conservative movement, to destroy government, to make it so that progress can never happen, to stymie any and all efforts in that direction. There is absolutely no reason to think that they will not continue in this manner. It's the only thing they're successful at, and their message discipline and ability to stick together is near-legendary. The media isn't likely to make them pay a price for it, either.

So what happens then?

The right is already smugly saying that they may be worried about Obama politically, but not from a legislative standpoint.

"He believes he's a game-changer, but I don't believe the game has changed," said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, dismissing Obama's transformational pledges as naive. "It's captivating. It's intoxicating, but it's not going to last." [...]

"It's clear he is a phenomenon," said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a conservative scrapper who revels in Washington's partisan warfare. "He will use style and grace to achieve liberal goals, which is absolutely politically brilliant but intellectually dishonest." [...]

"Any new president is going to have a honeymoon period, and with his communication skills and the foundation that he appears to be wanting to lay -- 'Look, I'm above partisanship; I want to be everybody's president' -- I'm concerned he could push through some policy things that I fundamentally disagree with," said Rep. Jim McCrery (La.), the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Big Money boys and the special interests will will spend tens of millions this year to try and destroy a progressive populist message once and for all, too. If they succeed, risk-averse political consultants will steer their candidates away from this rhetoric and back to the DLC mushy middle. Notice the use of attack imagery here.

Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said [...]

Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.

Although Donohue shied away from precise figures, he indicated that his organization would spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it spent in the last presidential cycle. That approaches the spending levels planned by the largest labor unions.

Yeah, I'm sure it'll be a very "grassroots" organization, too.

This is not insurmountable. But it's clear that political skills and smooth talk is not going to mean a thing to the roadblocks to progress in the Republican Party. They have a long track record of obstructionism, they're seasoned and ready, and they seem to relish that position. And that's if we can manage to get a win in November.

The only way to pull this off is to not only ask for support, but to enlist those people in a greater purpose. What these big crowds show is that people are dying for greater civic participation. They see a Republican Party blocking progress and they want to do something to change that. There are tangible steps that go beyond electoral politics, that honestly are more like community organizing, that will be crucial to a Democratic President having any shot to get that agenda enacted.

This cannot be something that stops on Election Day. We have to make the change; no politician is going to do it for us. James Wolcott is absolutely right.

Is a new, improved, rejuvenated form of identity politics really going to make a dent against entrenched power?--against the horrors of factory farms, logging and mining corporations that are ravaging our environment, defense contractors, etc? All this talk of "beautiful spirit" has the narcissistic aroma of organic shampoos. I'm happy Obama is drawing young voters and that they're Democratic voters but it isn't very edifying watching the besotted bask in their own sunshine. It's also dangerously naive to think that if the right hero comes along, all differences can be resolved and old grievances laid to rest. So many of those touting Obama talk of his unifying appeal, as if he possessed special healing powers, with the partisan bipartisans (the sort of people trying to get Bloomberg to run) claiming that deep-down Americans "want the same things."

No, they don't. People want different things, or place different priorities on the things they want. Hell, the shareholders in my co-op can't agree on the same thing when it comes to building repairs, and we think a superdose of charisma is going to seal the ideological cracks of a country of 300 million?

I think any of our candidates can be up to this task, ready to fight back, prepared to take this energy and engage it. But they have to understand it. We're in for a major battle and it's going to take more than one man or woman to wage it.

Iowa Post-Mortem

Well, I was at a debate watch party that ended up not having any WiFi, so I wasn't able to update. But here are some disconnected thoughts:

1) The big winner is the Democratic Party. 236,000 Democrats came out versus about 115,000 Republicans, a 2:1 ratio, in a state where it's easier to vote in the Republican caucus, in a state with same-day registration so anyone can go to any caucus, in one of the three swing states that swung in 2004. Democrats CRUSHED Republicans here and even managed to get 30%-plus turnout statewide, for a two-hour meeting. That's very significant, and bodes very well for the future (especially because the coalition will be strong no matter who wins).

2) A hearty congratulations to Barack Obama. Independents were not decisive; Obama would have won 32-31 among Democrats, according to entrance polls (which appeared to undercount Edwards). Obama really went out and energized young people (he won 57% of Democrats under 30), and that really heartens me. I saw back in October 2006 how he excited young people at a rally at USC. He does represent an opportunity at a new coalition unlike what the Democrats have seen before. The youth vote TRIPLED in Iowa. Now can the media shut up about how young people don't vote?

3) This is also a great day for black America, a hopeful day.

4) Obama goes into New Hampshire as the front-runner, and should he win there, he will continue that trend and become the front-runner nationally. I think Edwards has a firewall in Nevada. If he's not competitive there, it's over. I thought Edwards' Nevada ace in the hole was unions, but he finished third in Iowa among union households, according to the entrance poll, which again seemed to undercount him. I think Clinton is badly wounded. I know that she'd be happy to play the whole "comeback kid" thing, but 2008 is not 1992, and you can't wait until Georgia to win your first primary. Unfortunately, we're front-loaded, and that wave for Obama is not likely to crest in New Hampshire, particularly given his strength among independents.

5) I think Obama's win hurts McCain, who leaves Iowa without a bounce (he tied Thompson for third last night). With many independents likely to vote for Obama, McCain's independent base shrinks. But he might win out of attrition. Romney is very wounded, perhaps fatally. Huckabee just isn't the type of candidate that'll gain traction up there. Giuliani is now frantically trying to get back in the race up there, but his 3% tally in Iowa really looks awful. I think the winner on the Republican side in New Hampshire probably doesn't need much more than 20%.

More in a minute.

Those Goddamned Dirty Hippies

With their brand completely trashed, the Republicans have finally found their platform for the 2008 elections: the GOP is the party that doesn't spend $1 million dollars on cultural museums! "The Republicans: Proudly Defending Your Kids From Social Studies..."

When Republican U.S. Senate candidate Anne Evans Estabrook wanted to make a point about wasteful government spending, she reached for an example that has popped up in several other races: a museum in Woodstock, N.Y.

Estabrook is running a primary campaign aimed at convincing Republican voters she is the best person to beat the incumbent, Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.).

This month, she asked: "Who would spend $70 million dollars for peanut storage, $20 million for cricket eradication, and voted to use our tax dollars on a hippie museum in Woodstock? This Congress and Frank Lautenberg just did."

Lautenberg did vote to give $1 million to the Museum at Bethel Woods, N.Y., the location of the August 1969 Woodstock Music Festival and Art Fair, as well as cricket eradication. A Lautenberg staffer noted the cricket bill also included aid to New Jersey farmers and the Women, Infants and Children food program. He did not vote on peanut storage; it died before it got to the Senate.

A million dollars out of a trillion-dollar budget. This is all they've got. Seriously.

Let's take a look at an amount roughly 5,000 times that much that appears to have been completely wasted.

After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs [...]

Civilian opponents of President Pervez Musharraf say he used the reimbursements to prop up his government. One European diplomat in Islamabad said the United States should have been more cautious with its aid.

“I wonder if the Americans have not been taken for a ride,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The amount of funding for Pakistan since 2001 in military aid totals up to almost the entire amount of earmarks in the 2007 budget bill. And you can choose which is more pernicious.

But of course, this has nothing to do with federal spending or earmarks or anything; of course not, since the Woodstock museum actually never got the money. It has everything to do with demonizing those dirty hippies, and painting the Democrats as just the type who would build a monument to them. This is the same identity politics we've seen for the last 40 years.

In the summer of 1969, Estabrook was 25, married, and working in her family's commercial development business. Lautenberg was 45 and making his fortune as a cofounder of Automatic Data Processing Inc., the payroll company. Republican Assemblyman Joseph Pennacchio was 14 and "working my butt off" in a Brooklyn pizza parlor for $1 an hour, he said.

"Going to Woodstock or being a flower child wasn't on my radar," Estabrook said.

"Republicans: killing the hippies dead for once and for all!"

I know this may work for the baby boomers in the media who think America is still obsessed by these battles. But about 35-40% of the country weren't alive for Woodstock. It's just not a part of their world. And yes, young people do vote. Mostly I think that the only ones still concerned about Woodstock are those buttoned-up Republicans who are angry that they missed out on all the fun. I guess that's why they're so into free love these days.

Digging In The Dirt

Bill Shaheen, who by the way is the husband of the DSCC's preferred candidate for Senate in New Hampshire (and this is all the more reason to support Jay Buckey over Jeanne Shaheen), just playedsome dirty pool on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama's openness about his past drug use -- which Obama mentioned again at a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire -- with the approach taken by George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000, when he ruled out questions about his behavior when he was "young and irresponsible."

Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

And opening for Democratic dirty tricks, it appears.

Look, Obama's been candid about his prior drug use since before he was a Senate candidate. We have a President right now who is a reformed drug and alcohol abuser, and America has shrugged their shoulders. The President BEFORE that, who happens to be somebody's husband, admitted to smoking pot (but he didn't inhale...). Clinton's base in Iowa is older, and maybe they're playing on images of young druggies to scare people into voting against Obama. That's disgusting.

I think that the Clinton campaign is freaking out because the dynamic of the race is clear. If Obama wins Iowa, he sweeps the early states. Same with Clinton. If Edwards manages to win Iowa, it's a crapshoot, and Clinton probably has the upper hand. The Clinton directive is to stop Obama in Iowa, otherwise their inevitability argument is dead and buried. So they'll go as low as they can to do it, trying to deny students the franchise in the state, and now bringing up the spectre of Obama selling drugs. It's beneath any Democrat, and it's an implicit racial appeal besides. This is an outrage.

Getting Desperate

By bashing the youth vote because she thinks it would give her a leg up against Obama in Iowa, and creating a negative environment through relentless attacks that allow the "Barack is a Muslim" smear to be distributed by an Iowa campaign chair, Hillary Clinton has really ended any hopes for getting my full-throated support. I wasn't jazzed about her before, but I was willing to work for a Democratic President in 2008. I don't think I can work for someone who so clearly associates with a Bush/Rove-style attack politics. Add in her general hawkishness on foreign policy issues, and her continued defense of incremental change which would be a throwback to "we did the best we can" Third Way-ism from the 90s (and like we see in California today), I don't think I could see fit to knock on one door or make one phone call on her behalf. There are plenty of better Democrats around the country that would be more worthy of my time.

This is particularly true of the youth vote, we're going to need them more than ever in 2008, and it's unconscionable to promote such an exclusionary policy.

UPDATE: Shorter Hillary Clinton: "How dare Barack Obama run for President! Doesn't he know he has to get in the back of the bus?" These attacks reveal a real hatred, and it's ugly.

Bill Clinton: Kyl-Lieberman Can't Be A Pretext For War "And Everyone Knows It."

So I spent Saturday on the campus of UCLA, at the American Democracy Institute's "Empower Change Summit," a gathering of aorund 3,000 young people, to interact and discuss the ways in which they can be a force for social change. The ADI describes itself as a nonpartisan organization built on shared values (though they are, to be honest, typically progressive), dedicated to being a leadership gateway, inspiring people to create change on their own in a bid to make democracy more relevant to people's lives. The desire for a new model of political engagement, one that exists both within and without the electoral sphere, which foregrounds values and principles and encourages public citizenship and the change we can make in our daily lives, is noble. But it was unfortunately turned briefly into a world-class spin session during the closing speech by former President Bill Clinton.

John Hart, the CEO of the American Democracy Institute and a former official in the Clinton Administration, has put together several of these summits around the country. They feature speakers and small-group "workshops" where peer leaders discuss the opportunities for involvement on a variety of subjects. One of the workshops I attended concerned voter empowerment, where ADI members unveiled "I Vote, You Vote," a social networking tool for voter registration and engagement that essentially brings peer-to-peer mobilization to the online sphere. Considering that 54% of all voters in the youth demo, according to one poll, actually went out to vote because they were asked by a friend or family member, this is an exciting effort. I was happy to see thousands of young people giving up their Saturday, united by their willingness to make a difference in new and innovative ways.

Obviously, the relationship between Hart and the Clintons (Hillary was the founding honorary chair of ADI) gives him the opportunity to add a real draw to the event. So Bill Clinton's closing address was heavily anticipated by those who files into Royce Hall. The last time I saw Clinton speak was at a campaign event in Ann Arbor in 1992, so I shared this anticipation.

There's a rough transcript here. First of all, Clinton is an exceedingly brilliant man. Without notes, he delivered a statistic-heavy speech about the challenges facing America and the world and how the next generation can help solve them. It was a speech focused on big change, about the need to deal with persistent, enduring national and global inequality; to reverse unsustainable energy patterns and resource depletion; and to understand the fact that citizens are now more interconnected than any of us can manage, yet also prone to identity conflicts. These are some of the topics that the Clinton Global Initiative seeks to counteract, through managing and "operationalizing" charitable giving into effective projects, like delivering AIDS drugs to the developing world, or green building and retrofitting projects in urban environments (there was a LOT about clean energy in the speech). But he was adamant that citizen action and nongovernmental organizations cannot supplant the need for effective government. He cited the example of Denmark, "governed by a conservative coalition," who grew their economy by 50% with no additional energy use, and a reduction in greenhouse gases, while also having the lowest inequality in the developed world, because their focus on green jobs became an economic engine. He discussed Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine and the famous blind quote about "the reality-based community," saying as a rejoinder "I spent my childhood in an alcoholic home, trying to get into the reality-based world, and I like it here." So it was a speech that was open about the challenges we face, but passionate about how we can leverage the energy and engagement of the next generation to meet them. That requires being a good global citizen, by participating both in the political sphere and through civil society.

I give that much detail about the whole of the speech so you can understand how completely out of left field this next segment came, as I quote the rough transcript:

And one last thing: we're working toward a presidential campaign. But what you need to do is make sure the election is not taken from you by triviality. I watched the debate for 2 hours. And I didn't mind Hillary being asked the immigration question, I minded that none of the other candidates were asked about it and had 30 seconds to respond. And if we turn immigration into a 30-second sound bite, the politics of fear and division will win. We have 12 million people here undocumented and most of them are working. Nobody wants to discriminate against people who have come here legally, but you can't throw out all those people either. This is a mind-boggling problem. And don't you let them turn it into a 10-second soundbite. And no president gives drivers licenses. The states do that. But that soundbite allows people to fulminate. It's a serious issue. And climate change is a serious issue. But I didn't learn anything about climate change, education, healthcare, the most urgent domestic problem that most families face, about wage stagnation, about how our young people can afford college after deliberate government policies making it harder to afford college-right now, you have a better chance of going to college if you're at the top 25% of your income group and the bottom 25% of your class than the other way around, and less if it's vice versa. No matter who you are, this is your life, and there will never be a time when citizen action can supplant the need for effective government.

The transcript misses one incredibly crucial part of that. Before President Clinton said that he didn't learn anything in the debate about climate change, education, etc. (which is a legitimate critique), he said that "I learned something in the debate about Iran. I learned why to vote for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, and I learned why not to vote for it. I learned that from Senator Biden, by the way, not from any of those who said that it could authorize the President to go to war. It doesn't authorize that, and everybody knows it."

Let me again set the scene. This was a speech at a nonpartisan event, given to a group of young people who obviously have a lot of enthusiasm for Bill Clinton, and look up to him as an authority figure. I found it completely inappropriate for him to turn what was an interesting speech into what you might hear on a conference call with Mark Penn. Furthermore, note the "listen to your elders, I know better" tone here. After citing voluminous statistics throughout the speech, Clinton waves away legitimate concerns about the Kyl-Lieberman vote with a dismissive "It doesn't authorize that, and everybody knows it." No reasons, no citation of the actual text, just a nod to "what Senator Biden said" without explicitly stating what it was. Here's the first thing Biden said.

Joe Biden: Well, I think it can be used as declaration.

Biden went on to talk about how the vote caused a ripple effect of rising oil prices, driving moderates underground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, perpetuating the myth that America is on a crusade against Islam, but also about emboldening Bush to "make a move if he chooses to do so."

There's also the factor that Clinton's position reflects a continued naive view of the machinations of George W. Bush. Indeed, one of Bush's key talking points during the Iraq debate was that the Congress voted 98-0 for regime change under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. What the Congress says obviously matters, and calling a sovereign nation's Army a terrorist organization is unnecessarily combative.

But that's a bit besides the point. The fact is that Bill Clinton used his platform to very subtly and cleverly turn a nonpartisan speech into a campaign event. Clinton is an asset that no other candidate has, someone who still holds the trust of the American people, particularly those for whom the absence of true Presidential leadership has made the heart grow fonder. If he's going to advocate on his wife's behalf, which is absolutely his right, he should at least do it with some intellectual honesty, and he shouldn't wrap a critique of the media as a whole into what he really explains as a critique of the media's treatment of his preferred candidate.

Off To The Empower Change Summit

I'll be checking in periodically (Wi-Fi permitted) from UCLA at the Empower Change Summit, an event sponsored by the American Democracy Institute, a new-ish organization dedicated to youth engagement. We know that the youth vote turned out in record numbers in the past two elections, and their activism and empowerment is crucial to creating a truly progressive society. Today's event includes a bunch of workshops and speakers, including a keynote from former President Bill Clinton. I'm in as media, so hopefully I can realize my dream of yelling out at the press conference "Mr. President, Mr. President!" and being called on, and continuing to yell "Mr. President, Mr. President!"

Anyway, both hekebolos and I will be there, so we'll let you know what's going on.

The Kids Are Alright

We've seen a couple polls lately about how the youth vote is breaking strongly Democratic, but aside from the brand loyalty implications, this is important because young people these days are the most committed volunteers in America, whether for nonprofit charities or political campaigns. The biggest issue Republicans are going to have with the malaise in their party is the waning of their army of volunteers. If they go ahead and nominate Rudy Giuliani, this will be even worse, considering their army usually consists of a lot of religious conservatives.

So young people enrich the Democratic Party in a myriad of ways, not only through voting but through volunteerism and energy. And the Republicans are completely out of touch with this; otherwise, they wouldn't seek to boycott the YouTube debate, a major venue for 18-29 year-olds. And one of their top political leaders would have a clue what he's talking about.

But Romney showed some unfamiliarity with the Internet when he discussed the problem of sexual predators and children.

"YouTube is a website that allows kids to network with one another and make friends and contact each other," Romney explained. "YouTube looked to see if they had any convicted sex offenders on their web site. They had 29,000."

Actually, YouTube is the popular site that allows Internet users to upload and watch a variety of videos. The web site, which is owned by search-engine behemoth Google, also was a co-sponsor of the Democratic presidential debate held on Monday night.

The web site MySpace is the one to which Romney actually was referring. MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said this week it had found 29,000 registered sex offenders who had submitted profiles to its site and removed them.

You'd think Rupert would have briefed him.

Republicans are taking the youth vote for granted, much like they have the black vote and (increasingly) the Hispanic vote. This doesn't allow many ways left to win.

We're Young, We're Liberal, Get Used To It

This is everybody's favorite graphic of the day:



It's part of a New York Times article which tracks a trend we've been seeing for a while now, that the 18-29 generation of "millennials" is quite liberal and quite open to ideas like national health insurance and gay marriage. I do think this has been the case for a LONG time; in the 1960s, the hippies weren't exactly Goldwater-Nixon supporters. One does tend to get a bit more conservative as they get older. But Matthew Yglesias may be on to something.

One thing that writeups of these findings tend to miss out on is that the cohort of 18-29 year-olds contains a substantially smaller proportion of white people than does the 30+ cohort. Viewed through that lens, combined with basic knowledge of race's heavy role in US politics, the left-leaning tendencies of the youngest voting cohort aren't that surprising. The contrast with the substantially more conservative "Generation X" cohort is, however, telling.

And Matt's right that this is the real reason why Republicans who think strategically are scrambling to cobble together some immigration reform legislation to get Latinos to like them again, though I think they're too far gone on this already. Plus, the immigrants they legalize, who have endured taunts and calls for deportation from the very vocal right-wing of the Party, aren't likely to vote Republican anytime soon either. It's actually a nearly impossible needlt for the GOP to thread.

UPDATE: The WSJ editorial board gets this, but honestly they're powerless to do anything about it (except cage more minority voters).