Honestly, I thought the Clinton campaign would drop this charge quickly. Arguing that college students shouldn't be able to register to vote on campus is so obviously wrong. I've posted a series of diaries on this issue here and here.
Instead, Clinton has now joined in personally, charging that Iowa college students shouldn't be able to register on campus. We hear the same tired argument that has been used against students before: They don't live here, they don't pay taxes, they shouldn't be able to vote here.
From the Des Moines Register:
In a jab at Obama's efforts to encourage out-of-state students who attend college in Iowa to caucus, Clinton said the caucuses are only for people who live in this state.
"This is a process for Iowans. This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here," she told the Clear Lake crowd.
So now she's claiming that students shouldn't vote in their campus community, because they don't pay taxes?
I wonder how much sales tax the 21,000 out-of-state students statewide contribute to local communities like Ames, Iowa City, and Grinnell.
She even manages here to cast aspersions that not only are young people carpetbaggers, but they're freeloaders. Students couldn't possibly have, you know, jobs and pay state income taxes, so obviously they shouldn't have the right to vote or join in making decisions that affect their communities.
Did I mention they look like Facebook and wouldn't vote anyway? It is astoundingly hypocritical to accuse young people of not turning out and then discourage them from doing so.
As a matter of fact, Senator Clinton, according to USA Today in 2003:
About 77% of undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities have jobs, and 26% work full time while in school, according to the American Council on Education.
Mike Connery of Future Majority received this statement from the Clinton campaign:
Senator Clinton has been working hard to engage the youth vote across the country and in Iowa. She hopes that all Iowa students who have made Iowa their permanent home participate in the caucus.
Creating confusion about "permanent" residence is a classic tactic, as noted by Rock the Vote, to try to dissuade young people from participating. Students, by virtue of studying and living in Iowa, have every right to caucus. There are no two categories here. Every Iowa student can participate should they choose.
Connery writes:
The Senator from New York continues to deploy the language of those who would disenfranchise youth by insinuating that many students do not have the right to caucus in Iowa.
And if only if were true that Clinton had, in her campaign's words, been "working hard to engage the youth vote." Let me give the campaign a few pointers on engaging the youth vote, since it seems to be struggling with this one:
Using students as props at campaign rallies to ask planted questions does not count as engaging the youth vote.
Arguing that students aren't caucus-goers and so their presence doesn't count at public events does not count as engaging the youth vote.
Only setting up your campaign organization to reach out to students ten months into the election and shortly before the caucuses does not count as working hard to engage the youth vote.
And misleading students about, or discouraging students from, their fundamental right to participate in their communities does not count as engaging the youth vote.
As Mike Connery wrote back in November about the plant and the Facebook comments:
Now two disturbing events in the last week have brought the Clinton campaign's attitude towards young voters into sharp focus[...] Both these events are similar in that they reveal an utter lack of respect for the role of young people in our political process - whether that be in their ability to ask important and intelligent questions, or to be worthy of voting and participating in the process at all.
Clinton apologized in 2006 after being confronted by Chelsea about comments she made to the US Chamber of Commerce that included, according to the Associated Press, "telling an audience that young people today 'think work is a four-letter word'":
In those remarks, she said young people have a sense of entitlement after growing up in a "culture that has a premium on instant gratification."
The Clinton campaign needs to drop this.