Kids! I Don't Know What's Wrong With These Kids Today!

I've been following with great interest this story that Sean's been on since this morning. Go over there and read it. Long story short, the Davidson County Young Democrats were going to use the Party HQ to phone-bank and encourage young voters to vote. This was to be strictly a GOTV effort, and more importantly, not biased towards either Bob Clement or Karl Dean. But one Davidson County Democratic Committee member opposed using party resources for this effort.

Why? Because she was worried that increasing youth turnout would hurt Bob Clement:

As a strong Bob Clement supporter I am concerned that getting out young voters means getting out people who read The Scene and The City Paper, both of which have been strongly biased against Bob Clement. Although you have indicated you are not taking a side in this mayor's non-partisan race, the phonebanking gives an appearance that the Young Democrats are doing just that.

Wow. Let's break this down a little bit. As DCYD Addison Pate points out, this woman is making the assumption, without cause, that young voters are stupid and uninformed, and are uniformly biased. There's also a great implication here--Ms. Sanford is a Clement volunteer (although Clement's campaign has completely distanced itself from these comments), and she seems to think that increased youth turnout will definitely hurt Clement. Do they have an internal on that?

But this touches on a larger issue in my humble opinion, and that is the disconnect between young Democrats and the larger Party. Look at the College Republicans and Young Republicans--yes, they're the incredibly annoying people on campus who go around doing reprehensible things (anyone want to play "Catch the Illegal"?) and then whine about how they're being "censored" when the university tries to step in. And of course, they're all in favor of sending other people to die in Iraq but can come up with the most amazing excuses for why they personally won't enlist.

But look at how well-organized they are. And look at how well-integrated they are within the larger Republican Party apparatus. One thing the Republicans do right is that they recognize talent early on, and they nurture it. How many current Republican party leaders got their start in college? A lot, I'd be willing to bet.

I've never been involved with the College Dems. Here at Cornell, it's far more about internal politics than actual politics. I get the sense it's that way at a lot of other schools too. But beyond that, sometimes it almost feels like you have to have some sort of family connection to get anywhere within state parties like ours. Otherwise, as a young Democrat, you're only an afterthought.