Panting After the Youth Vote
LABASH, MATT
Panting After the "Youth Vote The Democratic candidates make fools of themselves BY MATT LABASH Boston, Massachusetts French historian Jacques Bainville once said, "The old repeat themselves,...
...There are plenty of non-youth-vote-type questions, on everything from the Cuban embargo to Iraq...
...Sometimes they feel uncomfortable...
...According to pundit boilerplate, they are a study in contrasts: apathetic yet involved, optimistic yet cynical, smart yet dumb, technologically savvy but unable to lay hands on the most basic information, young but with old souls...
...Here, I grab five Rock the Vote street team members, ranging in age from 19 to 26, and ask them what issues young people want to see addressed...
...candidates seem willing to drink bong-water if it would establish their credentials...
...Sometimes, formality . . . can push people away...
...Over the last few months, candidates have attempted to make inroads into the youth vote: Howard Dean has identified himself as a metrosexual, John Kerry has gigged with Moby, and Dennis Kucinich has consorted with rappers like Noyeek the Grizzly Bear, picking up endorsements such as "Yo, I love this fool...
...Even Bill Clinton—who was better than anybody at keeping it real in a fake way—let slip to the kids that his favorite musician was Kenny G.) During the obligatory pot-smoking question, several Sharpton and Kerry then clasp hands in what is the first, and it is to be hoped last, soul-brother handshake of this election...
...But it is more evident in the candidates' dress...
...Initially established by the music industry to uphold our forefathers' highest ideals—like the right of 2 Live Crew to sing potty-mouthed lyrics—it has become synonymous with its frequent collaborator MTV, and known for constant jabbering about the need for youth to get out and vote...
...The very term "youth vote," of course, is a self-canceling proposition...
...Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, perhaps feeling overdressed, both ditch their jackets before the debate gets started...
...I hadn't yet formed my political worldview, unlike the junior-high boy who told me, "I like Al Sharpton...
...Better, Yago says, to "placate and discuss and engage in a dialogue now, than have us be a major oppositional bloc 15 years from now...
...As the National Conference of State Legislatures recently reported, of this age group, 8 in 10 knew the cartoon Simpsons resided in Springfield and 64 percent knew Ruben Stud-dard won "American Idol," while only 1 in 10 could pick Dennis Hastert's name out of a list as speaker of the House...
...He's not, like, boring...
...It occurs to me that these aren't young-people issues, they're people issues...
...He's awesome...
...Since its founding, it has run any number of high-profile campaigns...
...In 2000, 54 percent of those over 24 voted, while only 29 percent of those 24 and under did...
...And Dennis Kucinich, wearing the exact same rig, looks as if Clark's mother laid out his clothes...
...I have to admit, I'm taken aback...
...This is evident in the 30-second candidate videos (Wes Clark, never known as the class clown, is actually seen having an earnest discussion about the potential break-up of Outkast, before bumping knuckles with a young voter...
...An audience member pounces on a tempest-in-a-teapot, Dean's lazily phrased attempt at outreach to southern voters with Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks (allowing grandstanders Edwards and Sharpton to establish, once and for all, that the Democratic party is no longer pro-slavery...
...As MTV's Walter Cronkite and longtime Rock the Vote collaborator Gideon Yago, himself a twenty-something, says at the pre-debate panel discussion, there is a "need to establish a dialogue, and the importance of this voter bloc...
...One of them abstains, another says the environment, two say education, and one says defense...
...Being not boring is what it's all about...
...The boredom is mutual...
...It's why kids who are potential voters in the Democratic primary packed historic Faneuil Hall in Boston on Election Night last week for the America Rocks the Vote Democratic presidential debate...
...This also may be why groups like Rock the Vote— who implicitly embrace what they call "progressive politics," but explicitly strive to move voters by age rather than ideology—struggle...
...Outside Faneuil Hall, Rock the Vote produces Casey Affleck, Ben's much less famous brother, so that he can register to vote...
...When I ask Edwards why he stripped down during the debate, he seems to have trouble keeping it real...
...That settled, they get onto the issue young people care about most: antebellum racism...
...It's one of the hazards of trying to define a generational voting bloc, as shown by a recent Institute of Politics study that found this age group is more likely than their elders to give President Bush a positive job rating and to support him in a match-up with a generic Democrat...
...Still, that doesn't stop MTV/Rock the Vote types from incessantly scolding candidates that they need to chase youth tail...
...Faneuil Hall once saw Frederick Douglass rail against slavery and Susan B. Anthony thunder for women's suffrage...
...Clark, perhaps not wanting to be outdone by Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, and Sharpton, also ends up ditching his jacket...
...Who can forget how Rock the Vote almost stopped the war in Iraq by releasing, mid-conflict, the Lenny Kravitz song "We Want Peace...
...But on this night, a new chapter was written in its august history when—as the evening's moderator, CNN's Anderson Cooper, put it—it became the place "where America rocks the vote...
...And dare I say, rocks it pretty darn hard...
...Especially young people...
...voter registration campaign, highlighting a new online tool under the tagline, "Print it and sign it, lick it and mail it...
...Throughout the debate, it's clear that young people like to be pandered to, and politicians like to pander—the perfect marriage...
...Outside, I run into a group of middle schoolers from Newton...
...But all the questions that are unorthodox, and could only be asked by Rock the Vote-ish audience members, tend to remind observers how painful it is when presidential candidates try to "keep things real," as Cooper implores them to do...
...Howard Dean and John Kerry supporters are hip-checking each other and commingling signs so that at first glance it looks like an unruly mob is striving to "Elect John Dean...
...Voting...
...Practicing politics without content is like dancing without music...
...Still, in windy panel discussions like the one Rock the Vote and Harvard's Institute of Politics jointly sponsored for reporters before the Faneuil Hall debate, there is no end to the yammering about the kids...
...Back in the spin room after the debate, the candidates enter one by one...
...As an American-flag-swaddled Madonna said in one of the many Rock the Vote public service announcements that have elevated our discourse, Matt Labash is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...These no-shows might be doing democracy a favor...
...Later, Al Sharpton sheds his jacket and unbuttons his vest...
...Yet they are willing enough to talk freely about their youth-vote outfits...
...As Rock the Vote president Jehmu Greene says, "Now that we are done rocking the candidates on live television, for the next month we will keep on rolling and build on the energy and excitement . .. with a Rock the Video contest"—in which youths can select their favorite candidate video—the "perfect way to keep the party going...
...When I ask Wes Clark what was going through his mind when he showed up in the same clothes as Kucinich, he looks as startled as a possum in the high beams, but regains his composure, and answers, "I thought Dennis Kucinich had excellent taste...
...If you don't vote, you're going to get a spankie...
...Rock the Vote is the ostensibly nonpartisan organization (its president used to head women's outreach for the Democratic National Committee) "dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and empowering young people to change their world...
...It gives them, she says, "a direct way to provide feedback...
...You're the children, you're our future, get in there," I say to them, in the interest of establishing a dialogue...
...On a TV platform, Gideon Yago is complaining to Paula Zahn that the candidates failed to "really open up a dialogue...
...Sharpton takes it further, saying he'd like to party with John Kerry's wife...
...It happens every day in our lives," says one 11-year-old girl...
...A dialogue has been established...
...Kerry sheds his long-faced Easter Island mask, adopts a self-conscious smile, and says he'd wanted to party with Carol Moseley Braun, but now he'd better stick with Sharpton "so I can keep an eye on my wife...
...Wesley Clark, in jacket and black mock turtleneck, looks like he's on his way to a humanities professor party...
...While a good portion of the young audience are in coat and tie, Dean comes out with no jacket and rolled-up sleeves...
...By the first commercial break, Edwards loses his jacket and rolls up his sleeves...
...I want them to feel comfortable...
...Since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1972, the young have voted in increasingly smaller numbers than every other demographic—even after a decade of turnout efforts from Rock the Vote and countless youth-fetishizing knockoffs...
...I'd like to party with the young lady who asked that question...
...It turned 13 this year, and like most 13-year-olds, it is cocksure, convinced of its righteousness, and eager to tell its old man where to get off...
...When one woman asks which of their fellow candidates they'd most like to party with, Lieberman creeps-out the room by saying, "I hope my wife understands this...
...Rocking...
...Establishing dialogue is, like, a two-way street...
...John Edwards wears a coat, but no tie...
...But it doesn't matter...
...Panting After the "Youth Vote The Democratic candidates make fools of themselves BY MATT LABASH Boston, Massachusetts French historian Jacques Bainville once said, "The old repeat themselves, and the young have nothing to say...
...Then there were the recorded get-out-the-vote phone calls from Rah Digga, the prestigious awards bestowed on statesmen like Destiny's Child and Queen Latifah, the Internet form letters members can sign, like the anti-political-intimidation missive that reads, "Dear President Bush, I want you to call off the dogs and stand up for free expression...
...When I was 11, the only issues I cared about were football cards and Gilligan's Island reruns...
...But either nobody recognizes him or nobody cares...
...While political sages have no idea how to turn out the elusive 18-to-24-year-old vote, market research shows that young people do like to lick things...
...He adds that "politicians are not going out and aggressively trying to establish a dialogue with them," a tragedy, since the young are "profoundly engaged with politics, even if they don't know it...
...The youth issues that concern them most, they tell me, are gay rights and birth control...
...During the debate, another dialogue goes off under the stewardship of Anderson Cooper, whom TV critics frequently mistake for "edgy"—though in fairness to Cooper, it's an easy mistake to make since he shares a line-up with Aaron Brown...
...Like chocolate and peanut butter, they're two great tastes that go great together...
...Since nobody seems to know what young people want, the we-need-to-listen-to-our-youth cries reappear in every election cycle like a bad rash...
...What the youth have to say, if anything at all, is almost beside the point...
...Sharpton and Kerry then clasp hands in what is the first, and it is to be hoped last, soul-brother handshake of this election...
...But then, he died in 1936, which means he never got a chance to see the vote get rocked...
...And how could we omit the new Dixie Chicks-sponsored "Chicks Rock, Chicks Vote...
...Ten years removed from college myself, I seem to remember that the only "issues" that unanimously moved my classmates were the need to forgive all student-loan debt and to make medical marijuana available for head colds...
...They can't get into the party, they complain, because alcohol is being served...
...It can be done, but there's not much joy in it...
Vol. 9 • November 2003 • No. 10
