We're Losin' 'Em

Crossposted from Left of Center.

Imagine you're touring the campus at UCLA when you come across a bake sale. You've been walking around all day, and the sandwich you have in your napsack is starting to smell kind of ripe, so you ask how much for a cookie. A fresh and energetic college student smiles and tells you it's a dollar. As you rifle through your wallet, another customer comes up, asks the price for a cookie, and gets told that they are only a quarter.

What the?

What you just experienced is actually a protest that they ran at UCLA against affirmative action. In the little scenario above, you are white, and the person that comes up next to you is black. What they were doing was adjusting the prices of their baked goods to reflect the standards set by affirmative action in college admissions.

Now, I'm not a big fan of affirmative action myself. I think the intent is good, but on top of being an inherently flawed program, it's biggest problem is that the results that it achieves can never be validated. Anyone who is accepted to a school or hired to a job under affirmative action will always be subject to criticisms of being a quota requirement.

The issue is that this is the opener to a story that ran in the local newspaper that shows that College students are moving to the right. In six years, the Virginia Pilot reports, the number of College Republicans chapters has virtually tripled from 400 to 1,148.A 2003 Harvard study shows that 31% of college students were Repubs, while only 27 were Dems.This can't be right, right? I mean the youth vote is for the left. The younger generation is progressive, looking to move forward. Our children are our future.

Yeah, that was wrong. I dug up the exit polls from 2000 and 2004, and found that Bush upped his vote from everyone with a high school degree up to, but not including, college grads.The paper attributes some of this to typical student rebellion. Since a bulk of acedemia's staff leans left, it's only natural for students to rebel by steering right. Another problem stems from those students who get put off by activism.

Whatever the case, this isn't good. Over the last election, Bush was able to put a dent in the democratic black vote, partly due to his evangelical roots. Now, ironically, Bush is taking the youth vote too because the Republicans are the anti-extremist party.

This news comes at an extremely bad time for those of us on the left. With all of the other political developments that have come to pass recently; Iraq's successful elections (initially), Democratic criticism of said elections(idiots), all of Bush's cabinet members so far making it through congress, a moderately successful state of the union, etc., it's beginning to look as if the Dems are ready to implode.

Right about now Howard Dean is starting to look like either a savior, or the anti-christ. Dean, and his at least cosmetic secular appearance, will not help much with reconcilliation with the lost black vote, but there is great hope that he may begin to win back the youth. His internet campaign, overdrive GOTV Deaniacs, and general enthusiasm makes him ripe for energizing the youth.

But the road ahead is a rocky one. With all of the competition out of the way, Howard Dean is about to make me right as far as being elected to the DNC chair. The upshot to this is that, as one pundit whom I can't recall put it, in order to keep some semblence of unity among the Democrats, he needs to win and win with a majority on the first go around. The downshot is that without any serious competition against him, it'll be hard to tell the difference between those who voted for him because they believed in him, and those who voted for him because they had to.

Whatever the case, this problem that we see with the students is only a microcosm of the perils he will have to steer through. We are now looking at a time when sure things turn out to be pitfalls, countable votes are going to the other guy. And he's already walking into a house divided.

Before Dean looks at campaign finances, strategy, etc., the good doctor had better figure out a way to reunite the party of the people, or we're through.

Mr. M