I was going to write a blog about how young people are too materialistic to make our voices heard. I deleted the whole thing; instead I’m thinking “why does the youth even care if we seem uninterested?” It’s true that fewer people age 18-25 vote than other age groups but politics has never been the young adults’ bread and butter. Yes we care, but sometimes, I’ve felt, it’s only because we are supposed to care.

I grew up knowing the politics was important, it mattered who got elected, it mattered what they did in office. When I got to college and got involved politics began to seem more stale, as if there was nothing I could do to make a difference. I remembered the sayings “every vote counts” and that “one person can make a difference.” It didn’t work for me, I no longer felt the jolts of democracy’s rapid, ground-moving progress. Politics seemed stagnate.

After some time doing work for environmental organizations on campus (where I could sense the progress) I felt as though I was unfair to politics. I was no longer a Political Science major and my time committements to campaigns had decreased. Then it hit me. One day, a saying by Max Weber, one that I had encountered many times in my adult life, drifted back into my head. “Politics is the strong and slow boring of hard boards.” It hit me like a ton of bricks, or hard boards in this case. Change is possible even if it will take me a lifetime to move a mountain an inch, that will be MY inch. I will have done that.

No wonder the youth seem so uninvolved. It’s a challenge, at as a young adult, to pick something that one can spend a whole lifetime moving. I presume that older people look upon young people, who have moved only a few mountains and only a cummulative couple inches, and they don’t remember how daunting a task change is.

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I find incredibly fitting that forty years later before another critical California primary the last of the brothers Ted Kennedy and JFK’s daughter Caroline would endorse Obama. If you haven’t yet had the chance to watch Caroline Kennedy’s ad please do so, it should make any democrat proud.

And this time, it is not just a dream. This hope is real, young are turning out and voting in numbers never before seen. In Iowa voters 29 and under made up 22% of caucus goers the same percentage as those over 65 and 4 points higher than those 30-44. Young people were among the most likely to vote. So far as I know this has never happened before in any election at any level anywhere in my lifetime.

It’s not just young people either, Independents and more than a few moderate republicans are turning out in droves and changing their registration so they can support Obama. That is a winning recipe for November and for the chance to actually govern. Consistently I hear from independents, greens, republicans, and people who have never voted that Barack Obama is the one politician they like or the one democrat they could support.

Recently I was in Reno canvassing for the Nevada caucuses. I was in charge of making sure people in a 6 block by 6 block neighborhood went and spent 2 hours in a local library for Obama. I went and knocked on doors in the snow, talked to people in the street and left door hangers in the dark. There were 316 registered democrats in the precinct and they expected 40 to show up. 181 people caucuses there, more than half of them under 25. For many of them it was the first time the voted in their lives and a quarter were independents and republicans who changed their registration to caucus for Obama. The caucuses started 20 minutes late because so many of them (more than half) needed to register.

This is how we win in November, Obama has shown an incredible ability to win among voters and in areas democrats do not normally compete in. He can build up the party and the country instead of tearing down the other side. He uniquely understands this moment in America and the lessons of the our past. I hope all of you will join me in voting for him this Tuesday

Yesterday I wrote about a shift among democrats towards Obama on Electability. However, this is not merely a perception I believe Obama is in fact the most electable. This is because he has a unique ability not seen in my lifetime to win over independents and cross over republicans and to turn out new voters and young people. I am certain that he can expand and strengthen the democratic party in a way not seen since JFK.

Every two years I hear people talk about how young voters are going to turn out. When I first came to Berkeley I worked on the Dean campaign and then the Kerry campaign, both touted their strength among young people. We had meetups and house parties, and “vote or die”. Yet at the end of the day young people choose death and turn out was only high only by comparison to previous elections.

It’s not that young people never turn out; President Kennedy created an entire generation of dedicated new democrats committed to progressive ideals and public service. He inspired a young man named John Kerry to serve his country in Vietnam and then fight to end his generation’s unjust war. There’s another famous story about a brief handshake with Kennedy inspired the young William Jefferson Clinton to a lifetime of public service. Many of us here remember fondly the Clinton years of our childhood, his 92′ race was the last time young voters turned out in respectable numbers. I still remember watching the 92′ debates with my parents; I was only 6 but even then I was inspired.

The best analogy I think though is not John Kennedy but his brother Robert. Forty years ago he ran an improbable and inspirational bid for the presidency to end an unjust war, heal a divided nation, provide universal health-care, protect the environment and fight for social justice. He brought together a broad coalition of Americans of all incomes, races, and ideologies who believed the country and our politics needed a fundamental change. First and foremost though, it was a campaign of young people, the volunteered and the voted for him in numbers never before seen and the propelled him to a shocking win in the critical California primary and set him on track to become president. If any of the sounds familiar, no it is not a coincidence. Like so many other of my heroes RFK’s promise was ended by a gunman but I have always dreamed about what could have been had he lived and wished for the chance to see another like him in my lifetime. Barack Obama is that chance.

Hello Cal Dems, Eric here (or if you prefer President Pro Tempore). I decided it’s about time I started posting before I graduate. I was just thumbing through the SC exit polls and I discovered something incredible, for the first time Obama won convincingly on electability and his supporters almost universally believed he was the most electable.

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…On the internet. And the reason why is fascinating. It’s not that we have lower population density - it’s ineffective/nonexistent regulation. Apparently, markets (in at least some situations) actually perform markedly better when constrained by judicious regulation.

Something that might be worth thinking about in some other areas as well, perhaps.

In doing research for my Linguistics paper on the metaphors used to talk about blogs (wee!), I came across this really interesting article that none other than Berkeley’s own Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the Kos of Daily Kos, wrote for The American Prospect about a year and a half ago. Kos reflects on the time he spent in the army right after high school, and why he switched from being a presinct-captain Republican to a card-carrying Democrat. It struck me as incredibly poignant, especially with an election nearing, as people are evaluating their own beliefs in choosing a candidate to vote for. It’s a short article, so you should definitely check it out!

P.S. How meta is it that in the midst of writing a paper about blogs, I should be compelled to post one of my own? Oh, academia.

So, my very favoritest Op-Ed writer has put a piece up on his blog on the tragically misunderstood racial legacy of the Gipper (so known for his “constant and exuberant gipping”, according to a reputable source). And I have to say, I think he’s really on to something. After all, not a few other prominent Republicans have made similar statements, even into the present day. And if these weren’t just innocent mistakes, what else are we to believe? That for decades one of the two dominant political parties in America has founded its success in large part on racist appeals of remarkable toxicity? Why, David Broder would get the vapors at the mere suggestion of it. No, that’s clearly ridiculous.

…Right?

That’s something of a novel concept these days, isn’t it? By, for, and of the people. Kinda stands in contrast to the system we’ve got now, which seems to be government by the lobbyists, for the corporate special interests backing them, and of an entrenched Washington elite that recent history has shown to be catastrophically arrogant and out-of-touch. And the people? Who needs ‘em?

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Posted on www.truthdig.com

Posted on Oct 7, 2007

By Will Durst

Last week, a clandestine cadre of controlling conservative Christian captains (bunch of right-wing religious nut jobs is what I’m getting at) threatened to run from the GOP like ducks from an alligator the size of a Buick if any infidel they don’t anoint is nominated for president. And yes, a specific former New York City mayor was mentioned. Funny you should ask.

At a meeting in Salt Lake City (where else—you thought Vegas maybe?) Heaven’s Soldiers collectively decided they would rather support a burned-beyond-recognition, duckbill platypus with wire-coat-hanger hands than a certain Mr. Rudolph Giuliani. Apparently the Mayor of 9/11 is not the answer to their prayers.

Oh, they have their reasons. Giuliani’s serial inclination to appear at fundraisers in drag, resulting in his being photographed wearing a dress more often than Hillary Clinton, could be one. His brazen courting of the pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control wing of the Republican Party might be another. The fact that the Rudy clan, including both ex-wives (two too many), are campaigning for other people doesn’t help much either. A bit of a sticky wicket that: trying to swing Independents with your Family Value bona fides when your own family hates you. With megaphones. more »