Continuing where we left off yesterday, the [dot] Org Boom produced dozens of new organizations dedicated to engaging young voters and matching the leadership development pipeline of the conservative youth factory. As more organizations tried varying strategies, new best practices emerged (and continue to emerge), the number of groups in operation was whittled down, and the movement began to professionalize and specialize.

Thanks to the progressive bent of the Millennial Generation and the successes of the progressive youth movement in recent years, the Democratic Party is on the cusp of a windfall of support that could sustain the party well into the 21st Century. The potential is exciting, but the outcome is far from determined. Despite our many successes thus far, this new youth infrastructure – still in its infancy – has many holes. The gains we have made are fragile and tentative, and could easily evaporate. There are also whole swaths of the electorate that are still underserved by the current youth infrastructure. These constituencies need to be engaged if the movement is to reach its full potential.

Today I want to talk about what some of those holes are, and what the significance of all this is for the Democratic Party.

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that partisanship is a habit. This is true. Research shows that if you can get a voter to vote for your party in their fist three major elections (Presidential, Midterms), very few of those voters will ever again cross party lines. Winning the youth vote ensures a party’s political health long into the future.

As I’ve noted, 2004 was the “coming out” year for Millennials. The oldest Millennials were still only 24 or 25 years old. Breaking with previous election cycles, they chose the Democratic candidate John Kerry by 9 points. This was the first major election in which Millennials voted for Democrats. In 2006, this group voted in their second major election. This year, 2008, will be the first “third” election for a generation that is trending progressive and, as I’ve noted previously, will be larger than the Baby Boom by at least 4 million voters.

So far, young voters seem to be choosing Democrats 2 –1 in the primaries, so we have every reason to believe that these Millennials will become life-long Democrats. But we shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back just yet. This is not a short-term project, and these represent only a fraction of the Millennial Generation.

The youngest Millennials – those born in 1996 - are only 11 and 12 years old now. It will be 7 years before they can vote, and 12 years before they will have the opportunity to participate in their third major election. This is a project of decades; reaching out to young voters doesn’t ever stop. It can’t stop – not if we really want to see a more progressive country. Because winning the youth vote now does not ensure that we will continue to win it in the future. Young people are not inherently progressive, and the evidence is in the Reagan and Gingrich Revolutions, the first of which moved youth away from Democrats and the second of which reaped the long-term rewards.

This is a lesson not yet fully absorbed by the Democratic Party. Howard Dean is making the right noises about the importance of young voters, but the DNC still puts very little money into its youth programs, and the new online organizing tools that the party is developing (which are excellent in themselves) are ill-suited to address the many difficulties associated with reaching young voters. Most (though not all) of the state parties have a bad reputation for diverting funds earmarked for youth outreach to other non-youth projects, and many of them regard youth (and youth orgs like YDA and the College Democrats) as little more than manual labor.

To my knowledge, the DSCC and DCCC do not assist their candidates in reaching out to young voters – that role is typically played by organizations like Rock the Vote and it’s research arm (formerly known as Young Voter Strategies), which hold yearly briefings for (already elected) congress members and their staff. Thus far the impact of those briefings has been impressive, but minimal. Youth outreach by congressional or gubernatorial candidates, like that performed by Jim Webb and Jon Tester, are highly effective, but remain a rarity. The Obama, Clinton and Edwards campaigns remain unique in their early hiring of full-time youth outreach staff.

Most of the innovation and effort to organize young voters in the past 5 years has come from outside the party, not from within. But even those efforts are not meeting the needs of all young voters. A recent study by CIRCLE (pdf) noted that the youth vote surge we’ve seen this cycle is largely stemming from increased participation from college youth (those who are attending or have received a college degree). So far, 80 percent of young voters this cycle are “college-youth”, yet non-college youth make up a much larger portion of the 18 – 29 year old electorate. Clearly the campaigns and the existing youth organizations are not reaching this demographic.

As usual, money remains a large factor. Despite the recognized need to fund youth outreach, many youth groups still compete with each other for funds from the same few donors, and that limited pool keeps many new organizations (for instance, more state-based groups like those that have become successful in the Pacific and Mountain northwest – WA, OR, MT, and CO) from finding seed money to build a youth org in their state.

Money is a particularly big problem for Hip Hop and social justice-based community organizations that are trying to engage their constituents in electoral politics. Frequently the staff running these organizations lack the connections to DC or the donor world that can make organizational growth and sustainability a reality. These organizations – like the National Hip Hop Political Convention and the League of Young Voters – have had the hardest time sustaining their work in the “off” years. As a result, outreach to young people of color and low-income communities suffer.

In a wonderful article in Mother Jones, Peter Leyden and Simon Rosenberg called on the Democratic Party to embrace a “fifty year” strategy in which Millennials would play a significant role in building a new base for the Democratic Party. I think that Leyden and Rosenberg hit the nail on the head, but much still remains to be done. Conservatives still outspend us on youth outreach and we still lack the means to adequately engage whole swaths of the youth electorate. These are problems that remain to be solved if we want to fully realize the promise of the youth vote – looked for since 1972 - and realize Leyden and Rosenberg’s future progressive majority.