(Cross-posted at Students for a New American Politics)
There's a lot of things the Republican party does well organizationally, and one of them is pander to the base. In fact, they've been doing it so successfully over the past decade, that they've unleashed a monster that's out of control, forcing elected officials to forsake their former opinions, and turning Newt Gingrich into the liberal voice of the party over the past few days. But while Republicans are going to have to learn to talk to their voters responsibly, I highly doubt they'll talk to their voters disrespectfully.
Democrats, on the other hand, can't get this right. Today, West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller decided that of all the groups of the electorate he was going to hit out at, he would target his remarks to not only one of the foundations of the Obama coalition, but the group of voters that is absolutely essential to the future of Democratic politics: young people.
"It's my general feeling that people who are 20, 21, 22 years old really don't have any social values,"
I don't know how young Rockefeller's staffers are, or the kind of contact he had with the young people who undoubtedly helped his campaign out in 2008, but if he took a moment to talk with us, I think he'd learn quickly just how wrong he is.
According to the Harvard Institute of Politics 2011 spring survey of young adults, we have plenty of values. We view volunteerism as much more honorable than running for office, we're concerned about our economy, and we support our president. We believe in the values of progressive taxation - that's why we don't support continuing the Bush tax cuts for people who earn over $250,000 a year. We overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage and opposed the war in Iraq. And, given the subject of the hearing that Senator Rockefeller made his comments in, we understand the awesome power of social networking to connect to our friends, families, and acquaintances - and we've been innovating and implementing strategies to utilize this incredible new technology to forward the causes that matter most to us.
Yeah, Facebook is a new creation, and their are big privacy problems that groups have raised with the company. But for a generation raised and educated on the internet, the kind of information that Facebook shares is just a small slice of the overflow in data that is available about people online. It might not be comfortable, and it certainly may not be the way things always were, but it is a reality of the present.
The Millennial Generation is not short on values - we're just using new tools in ways that make the establishment uncomfortable, and that are unrecognizable to older figures in the status quo. We know that we're being handed the reigns to this country in a serious state of disarray - and it is going to be precisely because of our values that we are going to continue to innovate and advocate for the change this country needs.
-Matt Breuer