Election // Current

The Great Teabag Disaster in New York

On a night when conservatives expected a landmark victory in New York’s 23rd congressional district, the movement’s anointed candidate, Doug Hoffman, instead went down in a startling defeat to Democrat Bill Owens. The official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, had dropped out days before and thrown her support to Owens after the conservative movement backed Hoffman in a campaign to destroy her, attacking her as a closet socialist with a cynical, hidden agenda—the same terms they have used to demonize President Barack Obama.

Hoffman’s rejection by rank-and-file voters in a solidly Republican district dampened the conservatives’ mood on an otherwise upbeat night and raised serious questions about the movement’s attempt to purge moderates from party ranks. Now, many of Hoffman’s right-wing cheerleaders are struggling to explain their dubious gambit, while others fear repercussions for their zealotry.

With endorsements from the National Rifle Association, the National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican Party elders Newt Gingrich and New York Rep. Peter King, Scozzafava was assured an easy victory. Then Hoffman declared his candidacy on the Conservative Party line. Hoffman was a lawyer and Tea Party activist who did not live in the district and, according to the local Watertown Daily-Times, “showed no grasp of the bread-and-butter issues pertinent to district residents.” Offered as his only selling point: ideological purity.

Hoffman instantly became the point man for the national conservative movement, dedicating himself to fulfilling the right’s dream of a complete purge of moderate elements in the GOP. Campaigning in a local constituency of mostly Republican regulars, Hoffman behaved as though he were running in a presidential primary. He slammed Scozzafava for supporting abortion rights and gay marriage, substituting the hot button issues that had electrified the national Tea Party movement rather than the bread and butter concerns of the working class district he campaigned to represent.

Hoffman’s appeals to cultural resentment attracted zealous support from a who’s who of far-right icons, from Fred Thompson to Glenn Beck, from Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin. The former Republican vice presidential nominee recorded a robocall for him a week before Election Day. Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor of Minnesota, sought to establish his conservative credentials in advance of an expected 2012 presidential run by endorsing Hoffman. The National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay religious right group, commissioned a poll supposedly proving Scozzafava’s support for gay marriage had doomed her (the sample size was only 318 likely voters). Meanwhile, cash poured into Hoffman’s coffers through conservativeoutfits from the Club For Growth to the American Conservative Union.

More @ link

http://maxblumenthal.com/2009/11/the-great-teabag-disaster-in-ny-23/On a night when conservatives expected a landmark victory in New York’s 23rd... more

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What Yesterday Says About Young Voters

http://www.futuremajority.com/node/9147

Watching election returns last night proved to be a very interesting evening. What became consistent was the impact of the lack of outreach on the youth segment of the electorate and the diminished rate of enthusiasm.

In Virginia

“Only 1,973,868 of a total 4,955,755 voters participated in the gubernatorial race — “a miniscule number when you consider there were 3.7 million voters in the 2008 election,” said Isaac Wood, assistant communications director at the University Center for Politics… He added that generally one-third of Virginia voters in presidential elections choose not to participate in gubernatorial elections, and that, as such, yesterday’s voter turnout was even lower than usual.”

One difference this year than in 2008 was young voters had a candidate at the top of the ticket who actively sought their vote. This isn’t generally the standard in other elections, despite our efforts to teach candidates otherwise. Outreach is so important, asking young people for their vote is key, and peer to peer outreach is a must. All of these things happened nation wide in 2008, in large part because the Obama campaign placed a high importance on getting out the vote for young people.

Let’s also not forget the huge outreach done by non-party groups like HeadCount, Rock the Vote, and state youth groups around the country. I did receive a “Go Vote” email from HeadCount yesterday but didn’t receive a text messages from Rock the Vote, and no facebook reminders from any groups. There just wasn’t the kind of work done this year that was done last year from national youth groups. (I did receive an email from Rock the Vote saying they did send texts out to target areas, no word on if those target areas were NJ and VA but not Maine or who they “targeted”).

This was echoed in a brilliantly articulated piece in the Washington Post

“It doesn’t seem to have been enough, and one immediate lesson from these off-off-year elections is already clear: Democrats have a lot of work to do to bring Obama loyalists to the polls, particularly the young. Early exit polls suggest that the share of the electorate represented by voters under 30 will be cut roughly in half compared to 2008. No one expects that young voters will be as excited by this year’s election (or by next year’s midterms) as they were by Obama’s own candidacy. But Democrats are more dependent on young voters than ever before – something I wrote about earlier this fall. Virginia should bring home to them the imperative of mobilizing the millennials with more than just a nice ad toward the end of a campaign.”

Read the rest here: http://www.futuremajority.com/node/9147http://www.futuremajority.com/node/9147 Watching election returns last night proved... more

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Does the White House Lack Youth Outreach

Jose Antonio Vargas has a piece on the Huffington Post asking what happened to all of the young people that turned out for Obama. He also asks where too is the mainstream media

"the same MSM that declared 2008 as "The Year of the Youth Vote" -- in covering how young people are impacted by the health care debate, which has dominated the news for months? (Studies show that a quarter of Americans ages 25 to 34 don't have health insurance, while about a third of Americans ages 21 to 24 live without it -- more than any other age group."

Vargas says this is in part due to the high unemployment among young people and that many employers don't offer health insurance.

"Where is the Team Obama that adeptly leveraged the enthusiasm of its digitally-plugged young troops, who scheduled rallies on Facebook, passed YouTube videos around their network and sent text messages reminding their friends to vote? Speaking last month at George Washington University, just a few blocks from the White House, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe told the college crowd: "Your generation won the election. . .Obama simply wouldn't have been the nominee without you."

He goes on to quote our friend Tobin Van Ostern who created Students for Barack Obama but who is now working with Campus Progress

"But, as far as I can tell, engaging young people hasn't been a top priority for the OFA, DNC and the White House."

Sad but true. Vargas talks about who is knocking doors for OFA and who is doing the work for the DNC but the long and short is that the work done by the campaign to do outreach to young voters, on campus, online, in their communities isn't even half of what they did during the campaign.

We were lucky to have a representative from the Treasury Department speak at the 80 Million Strong Conference and had Interior Secretary Ken Salazar talk about the outreach he is doing to young people to encourage them to get more involved in our state and national parks. Beyond that there is very little outreach to young people, particularly considering that young people were such a large portion of the voters.

"The sentiment is echoed in a blog on the popular site Tech Crunch that's gone viral in the past few days. "On the night of your acceptance speech, just before you walked on stage, 'you' sent out an email saying 'I will be in touch soon' -- but you disappeared and all we were left with was the strange feeling you get when your older brother ditches you for his cooler friends," began the post, which blogger Edo Segal wrote as an open letter to Obama."

He goes on to quote many who say that Obama the candidate ran a new and different campaign based on change, but governs in the same old way politicians always have. The New Media Strategy has also seen a major change. While it was a major facets to the campaign with their director reporting directly to the campaign manager, the White House new media strategy falls under one of the many outreach tools in the communications department.

Not mentioned by Vargas is the office of public liaison whose youth outreach representative is the same as the faith based and non-profit outreach person. Can you honestly tell me that one person can handle all of the faith based outreach and non-profits and then have time to do an aggressive youth outreach strategy? Not a chance. At the same time, faith based groups are accustom to having a seat at the table in the White House, and they know very well how it works. Youth are accustom to being ignored, so they aren't as likely to stick their neck out and demand a meeting with someone from the White House.

At one point there was a monthly conference call among youth leaders and the office of public liaison, but one youth leader who asked to not be identified said it was such a colossal waste of time that he quite participating and he doesn't know if they continue.

While the process might seem trite, the result has the appearance that youth aren't a major conceJose Antonio Vargas has a piece on the Huffington Post asking what happened to all of... more

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tagged w/ Election

The Great Teabag Disaster in New York

Election Results May Boost Immigration Reform in Congress

Young Voters Flexed Muscle to Elect Their Own, Democrats Need to Pay Attention

Karzai (the song)

Republicans set sights on 2010 after Virginia, New Jersey wins

What Yesterday Says About Young Voters

Republicans Celebrate Victory but Ignore Big Problem

Intolerance in America

Ten election races worth watching around country

Henghameh Shahidi finally is free

Obama's Democrats face first big election test

West puts pressure on Hamid Karzai to share power in Afghanistan

Afghan election panel declares Karzai victor

Sarah Palin Factor Alive and Well

Mozambique's president 1st to vote

CIRCLE Report: Peer-to-Peer Works, Registration Choice, and Absentee Ballots

Afghan challenger: "Fire the election commissin chair"

Tunisia's president likely to get 5th term

Taliban threaten Afghan voters in November runoff

Does the White House Lack Youth Outreach

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