How Dean Begat Obama

Seeing the crowds of young supporters at Barack Obama rallies, commentators have been trying to locate the precise source of the apparently sudden swell of the "youth vote." It's Facebook! It's a greater focus on students by campaign field operatives! Or maybe the relatively young candidate himself is the cause. But as I watched Super Tuesday returns alongside members of Manhattan Young Democrats and the liberal ACT NOW organization at a packed Irish pub in midtown Manhattan, I got a different answer over and over again: we were engaged years before Obama hit the scene, and we'll be engaged even if he doesn't wind up with the nomination.

To be sure, in the lapel button primary, it looked like a strong majority of those present supported the senator from Illinois. One of the biggest cheers of the night went up as Blitzer and Co. called Delaware for Obama. But in The Irish Rogue's other, perhaps more significant contest -- the big-screen war -- politics beat the stuffing out of sports. The election party had been ghettoized upstairs, though by 9pm, one could hardly navigate the floor without jostling others' drinks. Downstairs, the Mardi Gras hockey-watch party looked positively depressing.

So when were all these young hardcores formed? Another answer was consistent: many had been "Deaniacs," or supporters of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid. Tantalized by the taste of that campaign's grass-roots energy yet disappointed by its failures, several of those assembled last night had also supported Gen. Wesley Clark's campaign in 2004, due to its tactical advantage of putting a four-star Democrat front and center.

This increasing crossover between passion and practicality among young voters doesn't surprise Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's tech-savvy campaign manager in the 2004 primaries. Debunking the conventional wisdom that the youth vote always fails to deliver, he points out that even Sen. John Kerry received three million more votes from young people than Al Gore did in 2000. (President George W. Bush's youth-vote tally remained essentially stable.) Trippi still remembers his frustration upon hearing NBC News's Brian Williams declare on election night in 2004 that the youth vote had once again failed to show up. "It did materialize," he says. "It just couldn't make up for the whomping Kerry took in every other age group."

Though the young "Deaniacs" who helped fuel the former Vermont governor's presidential bid did not wind up deciding the 2004 Democratic primary or the general election, Trippi (until recently an adviser to John Edwards) says it was the first presidential cycle since the 60's in which Democrats gave youth participants a sense of ownership. "I think what [youth activists] weren't used to was a campaign saying, 'Here, this is yours, too.' They were used to protesting totally outside any political institution -- whether it was the World Trade Organization protests or anything else -- because no one was giving them something to mold and help shape. And here they had a shot at impacting something, winning and changing things. The Dean campaign was one of those things. The [Gen. Wesley] Clark campaign had some of that, too."

Indeed, youth activism in the 1990's -- from WTO protests to campaigns for "fair trade" coffee and non-sweatshop clothing -- all took place outside the auspices of the Democratic Party. The current rapprochement represents a dramatic reversal from the intra-liberal divisions of the 2000 campaign, when many youth activists swooned over Ralph Nader's Green Party candidacy. While the stalwart activist has announced he is once again exploring his options for 2008, his stock among young liberals has plummeted. The 25,000-strong rallies with celebrity endorsers and Eddie Vedder solo sets from the 2000 campaign will never be repeated. (A few of the young Manhattan Democrats hinted, in whispered tones last night, that they may have once harbored a fascination with Nader.)

Even California Green Party activist (and former Senate candidate) Medea Benjamin admits that the younger cohort of her state's 165,000 registered Green party members is torn between supporting the party and jumping to Obama this year. Prepped by Dean's trailblazing use of the web and now powered by the freshness of Obama's appeal, establishment Democrats who resisted Dean and never understood Nader's appeal may have lucked into a rare synergy between older and first-time activists this time around.

Yet if the party appreciates the glow of youth endowed by the current media halo, it ought to reflect on how, by failing to provide young voters with a level of ownership during past campaigns, it lost them in the first place. Young voters are not a mystic sect, waiting to descend from their mountain redoubt at biblical intervals. Nor are young voters monolithic. (Despite Obama's much discussed youth energy, exit polls show Hillary Clinton won the 18-24's in Massachusetts and California -- her two big firewalls last night.) It turns out, just like any other demographic, young voters simply appreciate an invitation to engagement. And perhaps a good election night party, too.