I registered for the Democracy Next forum, ???Engaging Millennials: Changes to How We Vote and How We Organize,??? as a spy, not knowing what I was getting myself into.
Howard Dean was there. He was very smug. Dean and his fellow panelists revealed to me (and my fellow millennials, of whom I think I was the only non ???progressive???) what the liberal mindset is. It is quite disturbing. Here's what I got out of it:
Millennials, Dean said, are going to ???undo corporate power.??? ???Your opinion matters,??? he said, though the notion is ???chided by conservatives???with nothing better to do.???
Dean said young people realize institutions don???t work because they???re too big and ???too stodgy.??? Then someone asked him why youth voters are sporadic and unwilling to run for government. I didn???t have the heart to tell him that government is an institution???
The protesters of Tahrir Square, in Dean???s eyes, are the same people who got Obama elected twice.
Hillary, the liberals say, "inspires" young women. She could teach us all a thing or two about standing by your man despite multiple affairs and plain perversion.
Texas will go blue soon.
For being the minority, gays got most of the attention and were the subject of about every other talking point. Gay marriage will definitely be a focus point of coming elections, although it was claimed that ???marriage equality??? is ???not even an issue with our generation anymore.???
???Millennials don???t identify with a party, they identify as ???progressive.??????
The strategy for gaining more young voters involves a three-step program of: Ideas, Action, and Voice. (It wasn???t any less vague at the forum.)
Al Gore would have been president in 2000 and we wouldn???t have gone to Iraq if we had used a rank choice system.
Howard Dean had two black roommates in college.
Romney "did himself in with the way he talked about Latinos in the debates."
Dean expressed reluctant praise for holding teachers accountable for terrible test scores, and for paying teachers who did better at their jobs higher wages. He then went on and on about income inequality.
Dean: The GOP can???t continue to talk they way they do about Muslims, gays, (pause), someone shouts out, ???WOMEN!,??? Dean repeats, ???women,??? and the crowd laughs uproariously. ???You???re forcing that,??? said Dean. ???They have no choice.???
Democrats want to institute online voting and fingerprint I.D.s to overcome ???challenges Republicans keep bringing up??? for people to vote.
The shocking thing is not really what they said (we???ve heard it all before), but the fact that they seem actually to believe it. I always assumed their rhetoric was a carefully contrived scheme that they all memorized for their own purposes. It appears they???ve actually brainwashed themselves.
