Let me explain. On Tuesday I met a young man at Webb hdqtrs who was busy making phone calls. I encountered him again at the party, along with a friend of his, and we chatted a bit. Yesterday I received a very thoughtful email from him asking me a couple of things. I made a quick reply, which I will not here revisit. This morning I sent a more detailed message in response to two questions he asked me. As I was finishing it I thought it might be useful to share it more widely. He knows I am doing it.
I make no claims to any great perception in the words I offered this young man. I would be interested in the responses of this community, especially those among you who are youselves young (under 25), even if not yet old enough to vote. The contents of the message are below the fold.
okay, this is my followup, and all for which I will have time.
<And so my first question, what makes a successful blog?>
There is no fixed formula. There are those that do not allow comments, and those that do. There are those that allow mutliple diarists and those that do not. If there is something in common among successful blogs, usually they either have some kind of focus (eg -- Virginia politics) or they have the draw of an author or group of authors who have aloready got or built a following (samefacts, Andrew Sullivan, Talkingpointsmemo, Juan Cole).
Decide what you want to write about. Put some effort into knowing some details, and what others write about it. As I said in last email, consider crossposting between something like dailykos or raisingkaine and your own blog. Then see what happens.
Warning -- if your blog is successful, if your postings draw comments or emails, you incur a responsibility to respond. This can be time-consuming. Some of my diaries on dailykos have provoked so much traffic that I spend hours in dialog or in responding to direct emails. It is one reason that I am not now posting every day. For some reason the nature of the diaries I post seem to evoke a response from readers that requires me to respond back
<Secondly, I am interested to hear your opinions on political apathy among young voters. Is it over or understated? Is it because young voters do not care one way or the other or because they do not feel inspired by any of the candidates?>
Since I am 60 years old, I am not sure I am the person to respond to this question. But since I do teach adolescents, I think can remark about some of their responses to the political processes they encounter.
It is not that they don't care, and they can be inspired, but they fail to see that the candidates are really interested in issues that matter to them personally, or that they do not see how their lives are directly affected by the political process, or they don't think their efforts - in activity or voting - will make any difference. In 1992 there was an upsurge in voting by young people bedcause the Bill Clinton who went on Arsenio Hall and talked with Tabitha Soren seemed to "get it." I have not seen a national candidatge since who has been able to make the same candidate, and I include in not making the connection Clinton in '96.
The Republicans have tried to scare younger voters about the future in order to achieve goals such as privatization of social securitgy. One reason it may not have worked is the same reason battles over health care do not seem to connect with most younger voters -- it does not seem like real issue to most of them -- retirement is so far away and most are pretty healthy so that health care issues are not on their radar -- unless they, a family member or a close friend has encountered a serious problem.
I happen to believe that to appeal to younger voters requires an apparently contradictory combination of libertariansim and communitarianism. Let's take the first. Younger people really want older people to but out of their business. They don't like being told what movies they can watch, to what music they can listen, who they can date and sleep with, what they read ... in this sense there is a strong libertarian streak among younger people. At the same time most younger people are far more concerned about communal issues than are mosty of their seniors, perhaps because you tend to run in groups that express concern for one another, perhaps also because since some of your basic survival issues (housing, food, clothing) and time issues (school) are already defined for you, so you have the luxury of thinking somewhat more broadly. You also tend to have a very strong sense of justice in the sense that you do not like it when someone you know and care for seems to be being treated unfairly. Perhaps this is why most younger people are less likely to respond positively to messages they see as suppressing the rights of their gay acquaintacnes, even if they themselves are religiously or politically conservative.
There is one other aspect on political participation by young people. Many of you do not like the top down structure of much of some politics. While I congratulate you and your friend in being willing to do the grunt work of phoning on Tuesday, some young people don't respond positively to the idea that their participation is supposed to be limited to what adults tell them to do. First, it is too remisicent of the parts of their lives they don't like (such as far too much of school). Second, they can get frustrated when they have ideas or insights that they have no way of passing on to the decision makers. They want to be taken more seriously.
As you know, I just returned from the Yearlykos convention in Las Vegas. I wanted it to be several weeks later. For one thing, many educators could not come because they were still teaching, which limited participation in my education panel. For another, high school students in many cases could not come. We had one 15 year old girl who was there and participated in a major way, but she is a homeschooled student and hence had flexibility of schedule.
This leads me to my final point, all for which I will have time. And it connects with the first part of this message. Perhaps one thing you could explore in your blogging is how young people want to be involved, how they can be involved. Dailykos and now Yearlykos have demonstrated the ability of people at the grass (net) roots to take initiative on things political. As you well know, Jim Webb would not have entered the race without the efforts of people at the grass roots level like Lowell and Lee to persuade him to get in, and as late as he was in entering and as little money as he had, he could not have won without the enthusiastic support of the thousands of volunteers, which included young people like yourself. Perhaps what you can do is begin a discussion of how young people want to participate, what issues concern them. When young people feel they have something that is THEIRS it is amazing how much time and energy they will devote to it.
So, instead of asking an old fogey like me why the lack of participation, perhaps you young people can take the initiative to tell us. After all, politics is about your futures far more than it is about ours. We have a responsibility to be sure, but we should not presume to decide without your active participation. I encourage you to take the initiative and join the discussion.
Peace
teacherken
I found many points here interesting, but for me, the biggest challenge is political apathy. Many young people like to call themselves "independents" or "libertarians" or "green party members." Well, that's nice, but frankly, most of these so called activists are only labeling themselves as such bc it is the college thing to do. I went to a music festival in Tennessee after Kerry had been named the nom in 04, and tons of "hippies" were handing out draft Kucinich fliers; these were the same people yelling "anybody but Bush!" No one seemed to care that they were not helping the cause. Most cannot define what those particular parties stand for. Many just want to smoke weed and stay away from party line politics, bc hey...politics isn't easy, pholks. Many young republicans think that if they vote R, they will get a good job and meet all the right people and have their school loans paid off by 24. Many vote R bc their parents do, and extra thinking requires time.
I don't have an answer, but I love the discussion.
Seriously though - the post and phriendly's response do ask important questions. I think part of it is related to the "youth feeling" and not paying attention. I know I got the "political rage" early on, but many of friends couldn't have cared less about our environment, taxes, the poor, boycotting Exxon, etc. Hopefully they do now!