In response to the commenters from yesterday, I thought that I would use my last day here at Table of One to talk about young people and policy. Typically, politicians don’t talk about youth-centric policies. It was even a running joke among some old Music for America colleagues that John Kerry would go to college campuses in 2004 and talk about Medicare (or whatever the “hot” issue was during that media cycle). It was the use of students as props for the latest talking point, not as a constituency to be taken seriously in itself.

This is something of a chicken/egg problem. Politicians don’t talk about youth-centric policies precisely because it is their belief that young people don’t vote, and young people don't vote because they don't hear anything relevant to their lives in the policy discussion. This week I’ve focused largely on the new infrastructure that exists to get young people to vote precisely because I think it’s up to us to break this vicious cycle. If we turn out, politicians will take notice and our issues will be addressed. I agree with the commenters that thanks to the campaign of Sen. Obama, who made young people a priority from day one, this problem is now being attacked from both sides, but it remains to be seen if Obama’s campaign template will become a model or an aberration this cycle.

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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.

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Obama may not have clinched the nomination last night, but he continues to ride a wave of youth support. Last night young voters in Ohio chose him 61 to 35 percent over Sen. Clinton. In Texas, he won the youth vote 58 – 42 percent. The youth vote is up in every contest thus far – sometimes double, triple, and even quadruple the levels we saw in 2004. In most states, the number of young voters participating in the Democratic contest outnumbers their Republican peers 2 – 1. Obama is riding this wave – and certainly he is amplifying it – but he did not create it.

We’ve talked about the Millennials and about the conservative youth factory. Now it’s time to take a look at the last five years and see just how Millennials altered the playing field to match their conservative counterpart. This is a Cliff's Notes version, to be sure, as this post covers in 1000 words what takes three chapters to describe in my book.

I would argue that the growth of the progressive youth movement thus far has come in two stages.

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Yesterday we talked about the Millennials – who they are, what they believe, and the characteristics with which demographers and generational theorists attribute them. Today I want to talk about the political playing field onto which Millennials emerged in 2002 and 2003.

There’s a saying that if you are under 30 and conservative you have no heart, but if you are over 30 and liberal you have no brain. The implication is that people’s political ideology changes as they grow older. This is a nice bit of conventional wisdom, but like so much other conventional wisdom it’s also false. Partisanship is a habit instilled early in life, which is why reaching out to young voters is so important – it builds the base of your future coalition. Unfortunately, during the late 1970s through the beginning of this century, Democrats almost completely ceded the playing field to conservatives.

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It’s a little bizarre these days, writing about the youth vote. Ever since Sen. Obama’s upset in Iowa the youth vote has dominated the news, and that is a change to be sure. I’ve been working in or writing about youth politics since 2003, and for five years it has been an uphill battle to convince people that we really are seeing a sea-change in youth participation. Fast forward less than two months, and what was once an impossibility is now a given. The genie is out of the bottle, but most people still don’t understand the significance of what is happening, and even fewer understand where it came from.

So that’s what I’d like to do with my time with you here at Table of One. Over the next five days, I’d like to talk about the history of the youth vote, why Barack Obama is just the very visible tip of the iceberg that is today’s rising youth participation, what it all means for the Democrats, and how the broader progressives movement can capitalize on this youth wave to secure a progressive future majority far into the 21st Century. This will be, in miniature, the same argument I lay out in my book, Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority.

I’d like to begin by sketching out a portrait of young voters themselves – the Millennials. Who are these young voters that are shaking up Democratic politics? Where do they come from and what do they believe?

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