There Are Young Republicans... Really

A few days ago Chris Hayes interviewed (above) Alex Smith, national Chair of the College Republican National Committee, an arm of the NRC. He found it interesting that her group spent a great deal of money on an indepth survey and analysis that basically proves her party is alienating young voters at a faster and faster rate. Not just alienating them-- but making them positively loath the party. "Our focus on taxation and business issues," warns the report, "has left many young voters thinking they will only reap the benefits of Republican policies if they become wealthy or rise to the top of a big business. We've become the party that will pat you on your back when you make it, but won't offer a hand to help you get there." When asked for the best way to describe the Republican Party the most common phrases young voters came up with were "close-minded." racist," "rigid," "old-fashioned." Igor Volsky at Think Progress analyzed he analysis. Short version: the College Republicans could have saved there money and spent more effectively on paying college students to not vote.

[A] close reading of the 90-page report finds that young people have strong disagreements with Republican policies-- including large parts of former candidate’s Mitt Romney’s platform-- and are far more likely to support progressive positions. Here are 11 examples:

1. GOP economic polices are to blame for the recession. “Although ‘Republican economic policies’ is the factor least likely to be viewed as playing a major role in causing the crisis, this is mostly due to young Republicans in the sample hesitating to pin blame directly on their own party, and an outright majority of young people still think those Republican policies are to blame-- hardly an encouraging finding.”

2. Lower taxes will not create jobs. "In the August 2012 XG survey, there was not a strong consensus around the virtues of lowering taxes and regulations on business. Only 34% of respondents in that survey thought they’d be better off if the corporate tax rate were lowered, and only 36% thought such a move would make it easier for young people to get jobs."

3. Increase taxes on the wealthy. “Perhaps most troubling for Republicans is the finding from the March 2013 CRNC survey that showed 54% of young voters saying ‘taxes should go up on the wealthy,’ versus 31% who say “taxes should be cut for everyone.”

4. End the attacks on women’s reproductive health. “[T]he issue of protecting life has been conflated with issues around the definition of rape, funding for Planned Parenthood, and even contraception. In the words of one female participant in our Hispanic voter focus group in Orlando, “I think Romney wanted to cut Planned Parenthood. And he supports policies where it would make it harder for a woman to get an abortion should she choose, even if it were medically necessary. That goes head in hand with redefining rape.”

5. Expand universal health care coverage. “Many of the young people in our focus groups noted that they thought everyone in America should have access to health coverage. In the Spring 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics survey of young voters, 44% said that “basic health insurance is a right for all people, and if someone has no means of paying for it, the government should provide it.” … As one participant in our focus group of young men in Columbus put it, “at least Obama was making strides to start the process of reforming health care.”

6. Provide comprehensive immigration reform. “The position taken most frequently by young voters was that “illegal immigrants should have a path to earn citizenship,” chosen by 35% of respondents… Some 19% chose “illegal immigrants should be deported or put in jail for breaking the law,” while another 17% took the position that “illegal immigrants should have a path to legal status but not citizenship.”

7. Cut the defense budget first. “Indeed, a large number of respondents pointed to the defense budget as the place where cuts should start. In the survey, 35% of respondents thought that “we should have a smaller defense budget and leaner military,” including 49% of young independents.”

8. Democrats are more responsive on student loans. “Many focus group members did think that Democrats were responding to the student loan crisis. “I think they’re more in tune to what we need right now with student loans, getting a job, fixing the housing market and the environment,” observed one participant from Orlando, with another adding that he had “heard Obama once say, oh, he has student loans, he went to school, he knows what we’re going through.”

9. Climate change is real. “Ultimately, while voters may say they are concerned about climate change, they rarely list it among the issues on the top of their minds.”

10. Bush’s wars blew up the deficit. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan themselves, however, were largely viewed as having been a net negative for the U.S. In fact, during focus group discussions about the recession, one respondent said she felt that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had contributed in part to the economic crisis.”

11. Marriage equality for all. “Surveys have consistently shown that gay marriage is not as important an issue as jobs and the economy to young voters. Yet it was unmistakable in the focus groups that gay marriage was a reason many of these young voters disliked the GOP.”

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson also went through the analysis with a fine tooth comb. Hos most notable conclusion: "It is not that young voters are enamored of the Democratic Party. They simply dislike the Republican Party more."

And when younger voters-- not counting young neo-Nazis or young racists-- wind up liking a Republican-- invariably a libertarian type-- the Republican Establishment can't figure out how to deal with that person. Justin Amash (R-MI)-- often dubbed "the new Ron Paul"-- has a following among young conservatives. So Boehner kicked him off all his committees to teach him a lesson about being more of the kind of a Republican zombie that young people despise. Only 8 Republicans bucked Boehner and Cantor to vote against the Republican plan to double the interest rate on student loans-- and most of them are far right fanatics (like Louie Gohmert, Tom Cotton, Tom Graves and Marlin Stutzman) voted no because they thought the Republican policy wasn't harsh enough!

Most young voters see this is a typical Republican

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How To Lose The Youth Vote-- In England And In America

Eric Pickles has been a Member of Parliament from Brentwood and Ongar since 1992 and once served as Chairman of the Joint Committee Against Racism and later as Chairman of the U.K.'s Conservative Party. After the drubbing the Conservatives took at the polls yesterday, Pickles told right-wing jackass Robert Woollard, who chairs Conservative Grassroots and has been stridently demanding that David Cameron forget about marriage equality for gays, that he should stop moaning and "start recruiting people slightly younger than himself."

It isn't only about social issues, like equality either. Maybe Pickles should suggest that Woollard and other old-line reactionaries in the Conservative Party, not worry so much about the protest votes the UKIP got in local elections and instead read Charlie Cook's piece in the new issue of National Journal, The Young And The Restless-- The Fight For Millennials.

President Obama carried the 18-to-29-year-old voting bloc by 34 points in 2008 and by 23 points last year. But a new national survey of millennial voters conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests this emerging generation might not be as locked into the Democratic camp as conventional wisdom suggests, and that young voters exhibit some of the same stark partisan divides as older Americans... [T]he poll shows that young voters’ trust in their leaders and political institutions is low and dropping.

While millennials aren’t antigovernment per se, they are very skeptical about government’s ability to effectively deal with problems. Quite simply, in their lifetimes, they have not seen government work effectively or responsively. For the most part, they don’t expect to receive the same benefits, such as Social Security, as their parents and grandparents. Their cynicism about leaders is high and getting higher.

Having said all that, I believe there is a freshness to this generation; millennials appear unencumbered by some of the baggage that previous generations carried. People of this age group seem more open to alternative approaches to dealing with policy issues than the standard more-government-is-always-better approach that Democrats are tempted to pursue as well as the government-is-always-evil approach associated with Republicans.

As this millennial cohort becomes more engaged in the political process, gaining power as the World War II and Korean War generations-- and, soon, the Vietnam War generation-- wane, its members seem more up for grabs than many analysts imagine, provided that Republicans deemphasize social and cultural positions that the younger voters clearly do not share.

Cook's a bit of a conservative hack but his point is valid: if progressives-- or conservatives or fascists-- want the youth vote, they need to address them about their issues. Right now, what Republicans and conservative Democrats who vote with them, tell worried millennials about Social Security and Medicare is that, basically, we'll keep it around for your grandparents-- and then kill it off before you and your family can benefit. This is the standard position of the GOP-- from Boehner, McConnell, Cantor and Ryan to all their garden variety anti-Social Security "Law of the Jungle" cohorts. But it's been seeping into certain Democratic circles as well. And that's dangerous-- for Democrats.

Just over a week ago I brought up the case of sleazy opportunist and wealth-oriented Democrat, Ro Khanna, running for Congress against iconic Bay Area progressive Mike Honda. Honda is one of the signers of the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter that opposes, under all circumstances, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Khanna, as well as more than a few right-of-center New Dems, uses "weasel words" right from the GOP messaging shop to describe a position that may make seniors feel less anxious but that can't help but make millennials envision a life more brutish and ugly in the near future.

We often hear Republicans-- particularly Paul Ryan and his cult followers-- saying things like “I don’t think we ought to be cutting benefits that have been promised to current seniors." The word "current" means the speaker wants to phase out Social Security for future generations, a very standard Republican Party position. But that particular quote I just transcribed, wasn't from Paul Ryan, one of his cult followers or even a registered Republican at all. It came from a certain breed of "Democrat" ungrounded in any of the principles or values of the Democratic Party. That quote came from Ro Khanna, the right-of-center Silicon Valley fundraiser/opportunist who has launched a scorched earth campaign against longtime progressive champion Mike Honda.

...When asked where he stood on cutting social security benefits, Khanna danced around the question.

“I don’t think we ought to be cutting benefits that have been promised to current seniors,” Khanna said.

A popular talking point, “keeping promises to current seniors” is what most Democrats say when they don’t want to be held accountable for wanting to cut social insurance benefits.

A majority of the country favors preserving social security and trusts the Democratic Party more with entitlement programs over Republicans, who want to severely privatize them at the expense of society’s most vulnerable.

If you think that the Social Security issue does not affect you because you are far from retirement, think again.  If you are a wage earner, you are paying into the system and basically putting money into a fund that will hopefully be there for you in the future.

As students, we are living in precarious times of uncertain job markets, rising costs of living and inescapable student debt, and we have to ask ourselves if there will be a social safety net should things take a turn for the worse.

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Why Should Young Voters Be Embracing Cynicism? Barack Obama

Keith Ellison is as crystal clear as one can be-- without coming out and trashing Obama completely-- that the president's willingness to compromise with America's mortal enemies (the Republican Party and the oligarchs and plutocrats who own them) is bad for American working families. Yesterday Alex Isenstadt explained the politics of this in a Politico piece for people who have been sleeping for the last several months. He explains how Obama has blurred the lines-- lines going back 100 years-- between Democrats and Republicans on protecting working families with popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Voters have backed the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Democratic political class, including sleazy characters like Obama, against the outrageously corrupt, self-serving, careerist Republican political class for one reason: the Democrats have stood up for ordinary people, not the rich. Obama is the first Democrat to shift-- Clinton may have even been worse-- but Obama has made the worst mess of it-- especially in trying to take end the valuable political concept that Social Security is the third rail of American politics.

The president’s shift came after an election year in which Democrats made the GOP’s embrace of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare a centerpiece of their campaigns. The offensive, Democrats say, helped them net eight House seats-- a respectable figure but short of the 25 they needed to seize the lower chamber.

Historically, polls have shown Democrats are the party seen as most likely to defend entitlement programs.

How large a role Medicare and Social Security play in the 2014 debate remains to be seen-- Democrats intend to highlight issues like immigration and gun control, with an eye toward driving minority and younger voters to the polls. But they also want to use entitlements as part of a broader message branding Republicans as overly ideological and uncaring about the middle class.

Driving home that theme, some Democrats say, will be tricky after the president’s controversial endorsement of chained CPI, a stingier way of calculating growth in Social Security benefits, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts.

“It is highly problematic,” said one Democratic pollster and veteran of congressional races, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as picking a fight with the White House. “There is no question the entitlement debate makes for an easy campaign ad.”

...While Obama would love for his party to win the House-- he has said he would do everything in his power to help Democrats take the speaker’s gavel from John Boehner-- his budget highlighted tensions with congressional Democrats. The president has said he wants to reach a grand bargain with Republicans to tame the nation’s $16 trillion debt. And getting there, Obama signaled with his budget, requires taking a whack at entitlements.

“The White House is more concerned about his legacy,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster. “It’s the classic dilemma of the second-term incumbent.”

Some Democrats say slashing Medicare and Social Security will turn off the senior voters who are traditionally among those most likely to turn out to the polls in a midterm election.

“During nonpresidential election years, the percentage of voters age 65 and older is higher, and polls consistently show that voters age 50 and older strongly oppose use of chained CPI to cut benefits,” said Chuck Loveless, director of federal government affair for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “So from our point of view, the use of chained CPI is not only bad policy, its bad politics.”

“It would suppress Democratic turnout,” he added. “It’s pretty clear people are paying attention to this.”

In the days since Obama released his budget, many of the Democrats who have been quickest to distance themselves from his blueprint are those from senior-heavy districts. California Rep. Raul Ruiz, a freshman Democrat who represents a Palm Springs-area district where seniors compose about half of all registered voters, said “putting the burden of the national deficit on the backs of our seniors is wrong.”

Democrats are even concerned that Republicans could reverse the dynamic and portray Democrats as the bad guys on entitlements.

In an interview with CNN after Obama unveiled his budget earlier this month, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon called the plan “a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said.

And it isn't only the elderly who will be staying home. Yesterday, the NY Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg explained how enthusiasm among young voters for Obama in 2008 has lead to cynicism about politics (something we predicted in 2008, having already seen exactly what kind of a politician Obama was in his few years as a senator). Obama was always two things: better than a Republican alternative and an inspiring politician. It's been mostly downhill from there. And she has a survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard to back it up-- or at least to back up the perception.

The Harvard survey, of more than 3,100 voters under 30, found that faith in most major institutions-- with the notable exception of the military-- has declined over the past several years. Today, only 39 percent of young voters trust the president to do the right thing, as opposed to 44 percent in 2010. Just 18 percent of voters under 30 trust Congress, compared with 25 percent in February 2010.

“The hyperpartisanship and gridlock that has befallen Washington, D.C., is having a traumatic effect not just on our nation’s status at home and abroad, but on the political health of tens of millions of once (and hopefully future) idealistic young people,” wrote John Della Volpe, the Harvard institute’s polling director, in the study’s conclusion.

The economy is a major reason for the disillusionment of young voters, who are saddled with student debt and worried about how to find jobs, said Kristen Soltis Anderson, who tracks young voters for the Winston Group, which advises Republican candidates. Mr. Durgin is one example; part of his upset with Washington, he said, has to do with his livelihood.

“I’m losing money,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing positive that has happened to me in the last 12 months.”

Young voters seem disappointed with both political parties, although Ms. Anderson, the Republican pollster, said her party appears to be taking the brunt of millennials’ dissatisfaction. Mr. Obama had a 52 percent approval rating in the Harvard poll-- slightly better than his approval ratings in polls of older adults nationwide-- but down from his approval rating of 58 percent in a Harvard poll of millennials in 2009.

“They are disappointed with him, yet many question the motives of Republicans even more,” Ms. Anderson said.

She added: “It’s tough to be young these days-- the economic concerns are very great, and a lot of what you hear out of Washington is not addressing those concerns. There are a lot of questions: Does either party really have my best interest at heart? And I think the answer to that is, ‘No.’”

That cynicism is coupled with a deepening partisan divide. While Mr. Obama’s job performance rating would suggest that most young voters feel he is doing well in office, a deeper look at the numbers reveals a split: 86 percent of young Democrats approve of Mr. Obama’s job performance, while only 10 percent of young Republicans do.

“At no time since President Obama was elected in 2008 have we reported less trust, more cynicism and more partisanship among young voters,” Mr. Della Volpe wrote in the study. “Young voters, like older Americans, are becoming more partisan by the day.”

...Political analysts know that voters are heavily influenced by the president and the political climate in which they come of age; young voters of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era, for instance, tended to stay Democratic throughout their lives, while those of the Ronald Reagan era still tilt strongly Republican.

And that brings us back to Keith Ellison and other progressives in Congress and running for Congress who may be backing Obama on marriage equality and immigration and gun safety but want nothing to do with him on his backing for the failed Republican Austerity agenda. Ezra Klein has always looked like a real Obamabot to me but Monday night on Maddow's show, if you read between the lines, he's almost saying, defensively, that Obama is... well, "better than a Republican." He may be, but he's sure not as good as a Keith Ellison, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Jeff Merkley.

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