We come from all walks of life. Some of us are students, some are workers, and some are jobless. Some of us are laden with student debt. Some of us work to support our children, some work to support our parents. Some of us have had to postpone starting a family, and some of us have had to move back in with our parents just to make ends meet. But we all have one thing in common — we are the young voters of California. And it’s time for us to flex our muscle at the polls, take control of California’s future and fight off the right wing’s attempt at a hostile corporate takeover of our state.

Our generation has been hit disproportionately hard by the recession. According to a recent report from the AFL-CIO, a third of all adults under age 35 cannot pay their bills, and 70 percent don’t have enough saved to cover even two months of living expenses. We just can’t afford to sit back and wait for things to get better, because if corporate candidates like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina triumph on Tuesday, things will undoubtedly get worse.

These Wall Street candidates have spent hundreds of millions in order to buy this election, and if elected, they plan on doling out massive tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals and corporations in California, while at the same time slashing the vital services, education, health care, unemployment benefits, civil liberties and much-needed jobs for young people trying to enter the workforce.

So what’s at stake in this election?

Our jobs. Both Whitman and Fiorina have extensive track records of outsourcing tens of thousands of jobs as corporate CEOs, and Whitman’s plan for California centers around laying off 40,000 state workers, which could cause our unemployment rate to jump a full percentage point. Whitman also believes in the categorically untrue concept that giving tax breaks to the rich will somehow create jobs. It didn’t work when Bush did it, and economists agree that the concept is totally bogus.

Our education. Meg Whitman plans to cut another $15 billion from the state budget, and nearly half of the budget goes to K-12 and higher education, which would inevitably mean more draconian cuts to schools and universities that have already been decimated under Schwarzenegger.

Our health care. Carly Fiorina vowed to repeal the new health care law that has allowed so many of us to go back on our parents’ health insurance while we finish school and look for work in this tough job market.

We can’t allow these extreme right-wing candidates to trample all over our generation. We’ve got to take matters into our own hands, and the best way we can do that is to hit the polls en masse on Tuesday, just like we did in 2008. Let’s not forget, it was the young people – both voters and volunteers — who secured Obama’s triumphant victory. And we have the power to do it again, if we commit to vote and getting others out to vote as well. As the President said last week to more than 37,000 Californians at a rally at the University of Southern California:

You’ve got to talk to your friends.  You’ve got to talk to your neighbors.  You’ve got to make phone calls.  You’ve got to knock on doors.  You have to make sure that you are as fired up and as excited now as you were two years ago – because the work is not yet done.

If you’re like me, you’re sick of the tired rhetoric from the media that young people just don’t vote as often as older adults. It seems like that message has become a self-fulfilling prophecy – many young people mistakenly feel like their votes don’t count as much, and subsequently they’re less inclined to vote.

But with an election as close as this one, our votes are more valuable today than ever before. If we do the expected and stay home on Election Day, we’re essentially handing the reins over to the mega-wealthy corporate shills whose Big Business agenda will make their super-rich friends even richer, while the rest of us are left fighting for the crumbs. It’s on every single one of us to vote, and do everything we can to get out the vote to our friends, family, co-workers, classmates and neighbors.

Writer Mike Hardcastle said it best:

Don't vote and you effectively kiss away your ability to have any influence as to how the issues play out in your world, and dude, that's just lame.

(It’s great to see Mike Connery posting here – and his point about AB 1819 is excellent. – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

Cross posted from Future Majority.

The level of douchebaggery exhibited by the California Republican Party is astounding.  The SacBee reports that a recent bill brought before the state assembly would seek to allow 16 and 17 year olds to “pre-register” to vote, making them automatically eligible to vote when they turn 18.  Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill, and many seem to have over-exerted themselves in trying to explain why it’s such a bad idea:

The bill passed the Assembly and was sent to the Senate last month on a party-line vote, 45-31, with no GOP support.

Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, criticized the bill as a Democratic power play.

“For all their sweet-tongue talk about doing what’s right for the country, that’s baloney,” Adams said.

“The truth is, when you’re young you tend to think like a liberal,” he said. “As you get older and wiser … you tend to become more conservative.”

Aside from the fact that the last statement is utter nonsense (pdf), how cynical, and how wrapped up in your own personal power do you need to be before you can make these statements without a little piece of your soul dying with them?  I know that Republicans like to suppress the vote, but I never expected them to be so blatant about their motives.  Usually they at least try to cloak it in their own “baloney” about “voter fraud” or some other fantasy menace.  

One of Assemblyman Adam’s GOP colleagues was more subtle:

Assemblyman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said his opposition to AB 1819 has nothing to do with partisan politics. The state should excite teenagers about voting, not play a useless numbers game by amassing forms from disinterested students who can’t cast ballots for two years, he said.

“(I want) to have a citizenry that is informed, engaged and interested,” Niello said. “If you have that, they’ll register to vote – and they’ll vote.”

So the state should “excite teenagers about voting” (whatever that means), but shouldn’t actually allow them to register to vote.  If the state GOP really believes that youth will naturally vote Democrat (not necessarily a given; see: Ronald Reagan), in what way is this not playing the numbers game?

The state should do whatever it can to increase registration rates among all voters, including youth who participate at lower rates precisely because many lack a valid registration.  Anything else is playing politics with the voting rights of the electorate.

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.

Well, Day 1 of the CDP convention is pretty much wrapping up at this point, well, save for the hospitality suites. The caucuses went pretty much as you would expect them. Steve Westly was at the computer caucus, Karen Bass made an appearance as the Speaker-elect in the Progressive Caucus, and Carole Migden was pretty much everywhere with two people with signs following her everywhere. It was all rather royal entrance-ish (Disclosure: I do some work for Mark Leno).

The progressive caucus recapped all of the committee work for the past few months. The election integrity is working hard to have the back of Secretary of State Debra Bowen as she fights for elections we can trust. Marci Winograd discussed the massive prison bond package, and the subject of Bob Mulholland came up again. In fact, the ProgCauc passed a resolution urging the party to distribute a list of alternate press contacts, including several members of the ProgCauc’s board.

Mulholland must be loving life. I think for Mulholland, every time somebody talks about him, he grows another fraction of a millimeter. And if nobody talks about him? He slowly shrinks in his own eyes. Yup, Bob does the job of attracting fire, and he’s pretty darn efficient at the task.

Other topics at the ProgCauc included education, the war (of course) and the normal litany of bills and legislators. Dave Jones talked about a new healthcare bill, which Shiela Kuehl called the “2nd most important healthcare bill”. Not bad praise, really.

I stopped by the Youth Panel, although, at least one of the presenters didn’t get a chance to talk. But, I learned some interesting facts, like Asian-American youth are now going, in vast numbers, to Democrats. Over 45% are registered Dems, while only 16% are Republicans.  Or something like that. (Sorry, Claire, if I messed that up). At the LGBT caucus, we saw several LGBT candidates and electeds. Some are either termed out, or otherwise not returning. It should be interesting to see how many LGBT officials we have next year to continue the fight for full equality and civil rights.  I’m hoping that the marriage fight will already be concluded by the time these new officials get sworn into office, though.

Enjoy the video of the rally cries. Even 2 months after the election, a few people still have lungs to scream “Yes We Can” and “Hill-a-ry.”  Good times.  Save some of those lungs for the general, my friends. And for yelling “NO ON 98!”

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.

more…

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.

(not totally local, but I mentioned the Empower Change Summit yesterday, so I thought I’d update)

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.

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 Dante (hekebolos) and I will be there, so we’ll let you know what’s going on.

Billy Wimsatt, a major innovator in youth voter mobilization, just published these thoughts in Mother Jones magazine.  Well worth reading.

http://www.motherjon…