Plouffe's support of Young Voters in The Audacity to Win
-
-
- sarahkatheryn
- added this
The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory
Those of us in the progressive youth movement have been talking about the importance of young voter outreach for a long time now. We tried to drive home the point that young voters are not apathetic, but disengaged due to that self-fulfilling prophecy of traditional campaign 'wisdom.' Youth political organizations kept succeeding, increasing youth turnout in 2004 and 2006. David Plouffe, David Axelrod, and Barack Obama eschewed tradition by deciding from the beginning that organizing young voters to expand the electorate would be the key to victory.
"One of [Paul] Tewes's ideas was to make sure we were working every community, no matter how small. African American, Latino, high school kids, Republicans--we had staff assigned to all of the demographics, months ahead of our competition." The Obama campaign began by working hard to turn out the potential voters that traditional campaigns write off. While critics of the youth vote claim that 2008 was a fluke and just about Obama, it is clear that the campaign worked hard to organize youth that had never been asked for their vote by a campaign. The campaign knew that they "would win Iowa only on the backs of independents, Republicans, young voters, and new registrants--a scary proposition, to say the least."
The campaign was able to look at the election through the lens of a young voter. "At least 95 percent of our six thousand employees were under the age of thirty, most under the age of twenty-five." While it is not uncommon for a lot of campaign staff to be young, what was exceptional about the Obama campaign was the respect for them and the willingness to trust their instincts on what was happening on the ground.
Read the rest here:
http://www.futuremajority.com/node/9581
Those of us in the progressive youth movement have been talking about the importance of young voter outreach for a long time now. We tried to drive home the point that young voters are not apathetic, but disengaged due to that self-fulfilling prophecy of traditional campaign 'wisdom.' Youth political organizations kept succeeding, increasing youth turnout in 2004 and 2006. David Plouffe, David Axelrod, and Barack Obama eschewed tradition by deciding from the beginning that organizing young voters to expand the electorate would be the key to victory.
"One of [Paul] Tewes's ideas was to make sure we were working every community, no matter how small. African American, Latino, high school kids, Republicans--we had staff assigned to all of the demographics, months ahead of our competition." The Obama campaign began by working hard to turn out the potential voters that traditional campaigns write off. While critics of the youth vote claim that 2008 was a fluke and just about Obama, it is clear that the campaign worked hard to organize youth that had never been asked for their vote by a campaign. The campaign knew that they "would win Iowa only on the backs of independents, Republicans, young voters, and new registrants--a scary proposition, to say the least."
The campaign was able to look at the election through the lens of a young voter. "At least 95 percent of our six thousand employees were under the age of thirty, most under the age of twenty-five." While it is not uncommon for a lot of campaign staff to be young, what was exceptional about the Obama campaign was the respect for them and the willingness to trust their instincts on what was happening on the ground.
Read the rest here:
http://www.futuremajority.com/node/9581
-
- groups:
- Community
-
- tags:
- Election 2008, Elections, Election 2010, young voters
