This article in tomorrow's edition of the New York Times illustrates one of the major failing of the Democratic party and their allies in Washington over the last thirty years - the failure to nurture their young.
Next Generation of Conservatives (By the Dormful)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/politics/14heritage.html
It describes the Heritage Foundation's summer internship program, and contrasts it with its liberal counterparts:
"It is an alternative with few rivals. The Brookings Institution, a centrist group more than 50 years older than Heritage, has no paid interns. Neither does the Progressive Policy Institute, which promotes a centrist version of liberalism. The Center on Budget and Policy Priority, a premier antipoverty group, has 10 paid interns. People for the American Way, a bulwark of Beltway liberalism, has 40 - but no dorm.
"There's no question that the right wing over the last 25 years did a much better job of creating a farm system," said Ralph G. Neas, the president of People for the American Way.
This story rings very true with my personal experience and those of many friends and colleagues over the past decade. Moderate and left-wing groups too often take interns for granted as free labor, and don't invest appropriately in them as part of a long-term political strategy.
Because liberal groups usually don't pay interns, they're too often treated like accessories...fun to have around, but not critical to the enterprise. And worse, the lack of pay means that only those students whose parents can afford to bankroll them for the summer are able to intern at such groups...which means that these institutions' intern corps are often full of dilettantes, more interested in partying on the Georgetown Waterfront than public policy.
On the other hand, conservatives do invest in their young...and have basically created a welfare state (in the best sense of the term) for younger conservatives in DC between jobs in the Administration, on the Hill, in think tanks, in trade associations, and in lobbying groups.
The result of Democratic and liberal groups' failure to invest in people over the last 20+ years is one reason why many of the key liberal and Democratic institutions are ineffective at best today...too near-term focused and failing to effectively cross-pollinate talent across organizations.
This is one - among many - of the core organizational challenges facing Democrats as they try to build a sustainable liberal movement, broader than the current collection of divergent factions of convenience.