Walker Awakens a Sleeping Giant

The use of a legislative maneuver by Republicans in Wisconsin to accomplish Governor Scott Walker's efforts to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights may have caught Democrats by surprise, but the ultimate result of the actions of Walker and his GOP allies may have been to awaken a sleeping giant.

For the first time in decades, driven by the emergence of the Millennial Generation, the nation's youngest politically active generation (born 1982-2003), the public is as positive about labor unions as it is about business corporations. Pew research findings show that, in the private sector, Millennials side with unions over business in disputes by 51% to 37% and, in the public sector, favor unions over government by a 56% to 32%. These attitudes are reflected in recent surveys showing that both within Wisconsin and across the nation Americans favor the public employee unions in their dispute with the governor. In fact, largely due to defections from Republican union members, one recent survey suggested that Walker would lose a reelection vote to his 2010 Democratic opponent if a new election were to be held today.

In a recent Pew survey, nearly equal numbers of Americans were favorable toward labor (45%) and business (47%). This is in sharp contrast to the Reagan-Gingrich era of the 1980s and 1990s when the public was more positive about business than about labor by margins of around 15 percentage points. The Millennial Generation accounts for almost all of the narrowing of this gap. Millennials are positive about labor unions by a 2:1 margin (58% favorable to 29% unfavorable). The young cohort is far less positive about business corporations (49% favorable to 43% unfavorable). Although in the wake of the Great Recession, older generations are less positive toward business than they were a decade or two ago, they are still narrowly more favorable toward corporations (46% each favorable and unfavorable) than toward labor (42% favorable to 44% unfavorable).

The Millennials' endorsement of labor unions does not simply stem from a supposed tendency of young people to always support the underdog or liberal causes. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, youthful members of the individualistic and entrepreneurial Generation X (born 1965-1981), and a key Ronald Reagan support group, usually tilted toward management in its disputes with labor. Rather, the Millennial Generation has positive impressions of labor unions because it is what generational theorists have labeled a "civic generation." Civic generations, like the Millennials and the GI or Greatest Generation are characterized by their group-orientation, their tendency to build, reform, and utilize societal institutions, and their belief in cooperative approaches to accomplish their own and the nation's goals.

At around 95 million, the Millennial Generation is the largest in U.S. history, but its full force has yet to be felt. In 2008, when Millennials preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66% to 32% margin and accounted for 80% of the president's popular vote margin, they comprised less than one fifth (17%) of the electorate. In 2012, when Obama runs for reelection, Millennials will account for about a quarter (24%) of those eligible to vote. In 2020, when the youngest Millennials reach voting age the generation will comprise more than a third (36%) of American adults.

As we point out in our upcoming book, Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, with numbers like these the emerging generation is about to reshape all aspects of national life, including the relative positions of labor and management in the U.S. economy and American politics. The last time a civic generation so thoroughly dominated American society, as the Millennials are about to, was in the 1930s when the GI Generation, whose numbers were equal to those of the two preceding generations combined, spearheaded labor's drive to organize the nation's industrial workforce. They were so successful that more than a third of all American workers were union members by the mid-1950s. In the decades after it fought and defeated the Axis in World War II, the GI Generation assumed positions of power and thoroughly shaped the nation's institutions, just as Millennials will do in the years to come.

In the Millennial era that lays ahead, public opinion and governmental policy will be more sympathetic to labor than they have been at any time since the GI Generation ran things. Given the preference of many Millennials for public and governmental service, public employee unions should find fertile ground for organizing and for maintaining public support for a level playing field between workers and employers. That is why Governor Walker's battle in Wisconsin and similar efforts in other states over the ability of workers to organize are likely, in the end, to fail and why the decades ahead are likely to be better for organized labor than the previous few decades have been.

Why Most Americans Are Both Liberal and Conservative

American politics is consumed by a bitter, at times violent, debate about the overall role of government and specific governmental programs.Pundits often frame this divide in terms of geography (red states versus blue states), ethnicity (Hispanics and blacks versus whites), class (rich versus poor), or age and gender. Those factors matter, but seeing polarization only in terms of group versus group misses an important paradox about Americans: Most of us have both deep conservative instincts and liberal instincts.

This personal inner conflict need not calcify our national divide. Instead, it could form the basis for a new and unifying consensus or civic ethos. To do this, though, our political leaders must build on the quintessentially American politics of today's Millennials (those born between 1982 and 2003), who prize individual initiative at the local level to achieve national goals.

Why we look left and right at the same time

American political opinion looks in two directions – both left and right, or liberal and conservative – at the same time. Social scientists Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril were the first to use survey research to describe and analyze this paradox of public opinion that has always shaped US politics.

In their book, "The Political Beliefs of Americans" (1967), they maintained that Americans consistently demonstrate a conflict between their general attitudes toward "the proper role and sphere of government," (which drove the big GOP gains last November) and their attitudes toward specific governmental programs (which helps explain broad American support for "big government" programs like Medicare).

According to Mr. Free and Mr. Cantril, most Americans have conservative attitudes concerning the size of government, and liberal beliefs in support of programs to protect themselves economically. This leads majorities to favor smaller government, individual initiative, and local control while endorsing major governmental programs ranging from Social Security to student grants and loans.

Tensions go back to our founding

This tension has always been a part of American politics. The US Constitution was itself the product of fierce debate in the wake of the failed Articles of Confederation. The ingenious solution the Founders gave us was both a strong central government and equally powerful guarantees of individual liberty embodied in the Bill of Rights. Notably, that solution was largely the product of that era's young adults, the so-called Republican Generation.

Still, the Constitution didn't settle the question of the government's role in the economy and personal welfare. That wasn't resolved, at least temporarily, until the Great Depression, when Americans gave their strong support to FDR's New Deal programs. Again, it was that period's young adults – the "greatest generation" – that led the new consensus.


Small government, big programs

Such consensus, of course, doesn't erase our conflicting convictions. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, Gallup revealed this conflict between the public's programmatic liberalism and conservative ideology. On the one hand, large majorities believed that the government should provide free medical care to the poor (76 percent), extend long-term, low-interest loans to farmers (73 percent), and implement the newly created Social Security program (64 percent). By contrast, only a minority wanted the government to take over railroads (29 percent) and banks (42 percent), or limit private fortunes (42 percent).

In 1964, as President Johnson was announcing his Great Society initiatives, Free and Cantril, using the results of commissioned Gallup polls, determined that within the electorate, ideological conservatives outnumbered liberals by more than 3 to 1 (50 percent to 16 percent). But in those very same surveys, support for liberal government programs exceeded conservative opposition by a ratio of 4.6 to 1 (65 percent to 14 percent).

Using data from four of the Political Values and Core Attitudes surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center over the past two decades, we confirmed their research. Across four Pew surveys, from 1987 to 2009, ideological conservatives outnumbered liberals by a ratio of 3.5 to 1, but liberal supporters of specific programs outnumbered conservative opponents by a 2.2 to 1 margin.

In every Pew survey, there were always more conservatives than liberals regarding the overall role of government and a greater number of liberals than conservatives in support of programs designed to promote equality and economic well-being. In effect, the United States is neither a center-right nor a center-left nation; it is, and always has been, both at the same time.

Not surprisingly, voters who identify as Republicans have tended toward the conservative side of these two tendencies. And Democratic identifiers have leaned toward the liberal side. Although the gap between the identifiers of the two parties has widened recently, during most of the time since Free and Cantril first published their findings, the greatest number of both Democratic and Republican identifiers, as well as independents, has been ideologically conservative and programmatically liberal.

Moderates driven out

Today, driven by more liberal attitudes among the Democrats' young Millennial Generation and minority supporters, and the more conservative beliefs of the Republicans' older, white base, the leadership of the two parties is more polarized than at any time since the Great Depression.

For the first time ever, among Democrats in the House of Representatives, the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus contains more members than the moderate New Democrats and conservative Blue Dogs combined.

Across the aisle, few congressional Republicans are willing to call themselves moderates, and liberals, once a meaningful bloc in the GOP, have entirely disappeared.

Despite these divisions, the leaders of each party must find a way to work together to synthesize both strands of America's political DNA – a belief in the importance of a strong national community and equality of opportunity as well as a strong desire to limit government's encroachment on individual liberty – into a new civic ethos that is broadly acceptable to most Americans.

Millennials can foster a new consensus

The belief of America's youngest adult generation, Millennials, in the efficacy of individual initiative at the local level to achieve national goals provides a basis for just such a solution. To once again bind the wounds of internal discord, our political leaders should adopt this approach and successfully appeal to the ideological conservatism and programmatic liberalism of the American people.

(This article appeared originally in the Christian Science Monitor)

Which Deficits Do Millennials Care About?

The nation’s capitol is abuzz with talk about deficits. The Republican co-chairman of the President’s Deficit Reduction Commission, Alan Simpson, a member of the aging Silent Generation (born 1925-1945), began the debate by lecturing his younger Baby Boomer (1946-1964) colleagues about the need for their generation, labeled by Simpson the “greediest generation,” to finally face up to their lifelong avoidance of responsibility and agree to painful reductions in their future retirement benefits and current tax preferences. The generation gap that has separated Boomers from their elders for decades appeared to be almost as wide today as it was in the 1960s.
The Commission’s confrontational conversation was all about money, devoid of any discussion about what kind of country America should become. By contrast, the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network,a think tank run by and for Millennials, released an equally important document, a Blueprint for the Millennial America.In stark contrast with the zero sum proposals being tossed around by older generations, the Blueprint’s focus was on America’s civic deficit-- the imbalance between what we need to do as a nation and the investments we are willing to make to retain our global leadership. The group launched its Think 2040 project, this past March, in order to “leverage our unique generational characteristics, transform our communities nationwide, and redefine the American dream,” in the words of its national director, Hilary Doe. Their vision, generated in a year-long discussion with over two thousand Millennials, focused on what type of country America’s youngest generation (born 1982-2003) wanted to inherit when it takes over the reins of power in 2040.
The participants envisioned an America “that continues to be a model for the world in terms of innovation, productivity, and strength… [and] a moral leader as well.” They wanted America to live by three core values: “a deeply held concern for equity, respect for the individual and society, and a belief in community empowerment and self-determination.” Together, these values, and the group’s vision, paint a picture that “uniquely represents the world Millennials aspire to create: more accessible, more equitable, more community-driven, more entrepreneurial, more inclusive, and better prepared to tackle the long-term challenges our country faces.”
Participants were appalled at the inequities of the country’s current educational system, “the foundation of our economy and democracy,” and placed its reform at the top of their list of priorities. They committed to changing the system’s unequal outcomes, but didn’t want American schools to “lose their essential creativity and civic function in an effort to meet federally mandated standards.” Rather, as part of their generation’s focus on acting locally to implement national goals, they favored “an eclectic mix of federal incentives and local power and creativity to revitalize American education.”
The Millennials who participated in Think 2040 approached America’s environmental problems with the same values that informed their broader vision. Because they believed that “environmental challenges fundamentally alter the texture of communities,” they proposed solutions that respected “the needs of America’s communities,” so that no one would be asked to “make sacrifices without fully considering the cost to communities across the United States.” To accomplish this goal, which clearly reflects the unique sensibilities of Millennials, the report prioritized the development and usage of renewable sources of energy above all other environmental solutions. The participants argued that “creating a thriving domestic market for renewable sources of energy, fostering a strong green-jobs sector, and achieving energy independence….was essential for the long-term health of the country’s environment and its economy,” as well as “maintaining national and global security and preserving biodiversity.”
Just as, after World War II, the previous civic generation, Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation, created “a system of global cooperation to promote human rights, poverty reduction, and conflict resolution,” these globally minded Millennials shared “an overwhelming belief that it is the moral duty of the United States to reduce global conflict by reinvigorating international institutions.” They pointed out that “the rise of genocide in the 20th century has led to a fundamentally different conception of America’s international responsibility,” to guide the country’s foreign policy. In their Millennial America, the United States would work “with its allies across the globe to promote sustainable development, capacity building, and community ownership, instead of invading and occupying enemy territory,” and use “defense, diplomacy, and development as equal pillars of U.S. foreign policy.”
At home, Think 2040 participants wanted “to build an American economy that supports and rewards creativity, ingenuity, and personal determination to succeed,” leading them to endorse banking reform, infrastructure investment, and turning the nation’s social safety net into a “trampoline.” Their government social safety trampoline would “lower barriers to entrepreneurship, enable workers to rebound in times of need, and combat intergenerational poverty by allowing children the opportunity to succeed regardless of their family challenges,” in order to produce an economy with greater upward mobility.
Exemplifying their generation’s penchant for combining high ideals with pragmatic solutions, the Blueprint’s action plan suggested Millennials “demand change, but act locally. Work to combat challenges, but do so from within the system. Create change, but not just through protest….What allows us, as communities, to overcome obstacles ... is collaborative action.” The report emphasized the need not only for high levels of civic engagement by the generation, but the need for reforms in the political system to reduce the role of money in elections creating “a more open, accountable, and democratic electoral system.”
Doe is confident of her generation’s ability to effect the changes the Blueprint advocates because “our shared experiences have made us socially empathetic, tolerant, informed, collaborative, engaged, innovative, entrepreneurial, effective problem solvers both capable and willing to work together to overcome the challenges that we face.” Unlike older generations that are ready to engage in pitch fork battles to protect their own perquisites and power, Millennials consistently look for win-win solutions to the challenges the country confronts. Perhaps, if more decision-makers in Washington listen to the voices of this generation so eloquently captured in the Blueprint, they will find a vision for the future that can point to a way out of the partisan gridlock that continues to poison U.S. politics as it has for decades.
Rather than judging the value of deficit reduction and other policy proposals based on the number of oxen they gore, we should judge each one by how much it contributes to building the kind of America we want our children and our children’s children to inherit. Based on that criterion, the Blueprint for the Millennial America sets a high bar for the rest of the country to jump over.

America's a Different Country

With less than two weeks to go in the unpredictable 2010 elections, many pundits have been left scratching their heads and admitting that they really have no idea how this election is going to turn out. Nate Silver, today’s most careful analyst of election statistics and forecasting, examined a variety of indicators and concluded that there were more closely contested and hard-to-predict congressional races this election than ever before. The biggest reason for this uncertainty is that America’s electorate is changing as fast as the country’s demographic and generational characteristics are, challenging old assumptions about how politics works in America.

In 1965 the nation was 89% white and 11% black, about the same as it had been during the previous century. Since then, high levels of Asian and Latin immigration have produced an America today which is 66% white and 33% “people of color,” a tripling of the minority population in only four decades. Remarkably, 10% of Americans are of Mexican descent and about 5% of the electorate speaks primarily Spanish. For the first time in US history a president of mixed race, who considers himself to be African-American, resides in the White House.

The second big demographic change is the emergence of the largest, most diverse generation in American history, one which will dominate the political and cultural life of 21st century America as much as the Boomers did in the late 20th century. The Millennial Generation, born from 1982-2003, is sometimes condescendingly referred to as the “youth vote,” but it should be more accurately recognized as the biggest and most important new voting cohort in America. There are about 95 million Millennials, about half of whom are now of voting age. One out of four eligible voters in 2012 will come from this generation and more than one out of three voters will be Millennials in 2020.

Every two years the percentage of non-whites, along with Millennials, in the American electorate is increasing. Non-whites will grow from 33% of the population today to 50% by 2042. As these populations grow, a new political reality will take hold in areas altered by their increased participation, especially in the Southwest and coastal areas of the country. The power of these population shifts to upend conventional political wisdom was demonstrated by Barack Obama’s victories over heavily favored establishment candidates in both the Democratic primary and the general election in 2008.

These demographic transformations are changing the political loyalties and beliefs of the American electorate. Democrats now have their largest lead in national party identification since the early 1960s. In a recent Pew survey, only 15% of Americans claimed to be completely unaffiliated independent voters, while about half (48%) identify with the Democratic Party and 37% with the Republican Party. By contrast, in 1994, the last time in which a newly elected Democratic president faced a midterm election against an aroused GOP, the two parties were tied in party identification at 44% each. This Democratic advantage is due in large part to Millennials and Hispanics who identify as Democrats by a 2:1 margin over Republicans.

Survey data also shows that most Americans continue to favor using government to address their economic concerns and societal challenges. This summer, in a survey conducted for the progressive think tank, NDN, a clear majority (54% vs. 31%) of Americans favored a government that actively tries to solve societal and economic problems rather than one that takes a hands-off approach--numbers virtually unchanged since Barack Obama’s inauguration. More recently, only 29% of those surveyed this fall told Pew they wanted all of the Bush-era tax cuts to remain in place, while a majority (57%) preferred either that those on the wealthy should be allowed to expire or that all of the Bush tax cuts should end. Forty percent of adults told an Associated Press survey they didn’t think the new health care law went far enough, while only 20% felt the federal government shouldn’t be involved in healthcare at all. These pro-government attitudes are likely to grow as more and more Millennials enter the electorate. By a 60% to 36% margin the generation favors a bigger government providing more services over a smaller government providing fewer services.

Rather than being surprised every two years by the changing politics of a nation altered by a rapidly changing demography, pundits would be wiser to anticipate that American politics is going to keep changing and evolving every two years, and will never again look like the politics of the 20th century. In the shorter run, the operative question in this year’s midterm elections is the extent to which the major components of the 21st century American electorate make their presence felt at the polls in November. President Obama, who is concentrating his final campaigning efforts on college campuses and minority neighborhoods, clearly recognizes the challenge—but also the rare opportunity—presented by the 21st century electorate. His success in energizing these newest members of the Democratic Party’s base will determine the still uncertain outcome of the midterm elections. But the longer term direction of American politics will clearly continue to be driven by the demographic and generational changes now sweeping the country.

Make Kalamazoo's Promise America's Promise

A recent NDN survey found that 37 percent of Millennials rated the cost of a college education as a critical issue facing America. It ranked behind only the economy and education, in a virtual tie with the national debt and federal spending, on the list of issues about which Millennials are concerned. While the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" initiative has ignited a firestorm of K-12 educational reforms in states across the country, no comparable program exists to deal with the increasing costs and stagnant graduation rates of the nation's colleges and universities. To his credit, President Barack Obama led this year's successful efforts by Democrats to federalize the student loan program and expand the size and availability of Pell Grants in order to lower the burden of paying for college. But, that is only a short-term fix to the challenge of doubling the number of students who graduate from college by 2020--a pledge leaders of community colleges made at the administration's urging. To achieve that goal, America needs to develop a new, Millennial Era consensus that every young American should complete his or her postsecondary education and graduate debt free. One community, Kalamazoo, Michigan has already made that promise a reality.

Kalamazoo recognized that, along with inadequate preparation in high school for the academic requirements of college, the burden of paying for college through the current patchwork system of student loans, grants and scholarships, and state and federal government subsidies is a major reason why U.S. college graduation rates have been stagnant for the last thirty years. Currently, more than a quarter of the freshmen in America's four year colleges fail to return for their second year and the percentage is twice that for those enrolled in two-year colleges. For every ten students who start high school, only five enroll in a postsecondary educational institution, and fewer than three earn a bachelor's degree, even after ten years. Less than one-quarter of Hispanics who start college leave with a bachelor's degree and almost two-thirds receive no credential at all. Even though a record 70 percent of all Millennials who graduated from high school enrolled in college in 2009, the need for postsecondary education reforms to ensure that more of them graduate is clear.

College tuition rates have grown at 3.3 times the consumer price index since 1980.The increased cost is having a direct impact on which colleges students are able to attend. Forty-three percent of incoming freshmen in the first year of the Great Recession cited the ability to get financial aid as very important or essential in their choice of a college, the highest level ever recorded. In 2009, 70 percent of high schools reported an increase in the number of students who abandoned their "dream school" in favor of a college they could afford. Eighty-five percent of those who applied for aid said they wouldn't be able to pay for college without receiving it. As a result, for the 2008-09 school year, the federal government guaranteed or made $65.2 billion in student loans, an increase of 18.6 percent from the year before.

The unwillingness of today's older generations to subsidize the higher education of younger generations has had a particularly pernicious impact on young Americans who see college education as a way of improving their future economic circumstances. In 2007-08, just about every student from a low income family attending a community college was in debt, with an average of $7,147 in unmet expenses, even after taking into account any grants or scholarships they received. As a result, three-fourths of those seeking an associate degree or certificate were forced to work, leaving less time for study. In 2009, only 38 percent of community college students earned a degree within six years of enrolling. The country and its economy cannot afford to let this situation continue.One experiment in how to address the problem started in 2005, in Kalamazoo. There, a small group of donors (who remain anonymous to this day) created the Kalamazoo Promise, which offered any graduate of the city's public schools a four year scholarship covering 100 percent of tuition and mandatory fees at any of Michigan's public colleges or universities, provided those students maintained a 2.0 grade point average in their college courses and made regular progress toward a degree. Scholarship levels varied based only on the number of grades or years in Kalamazoo schools the student had attended, not on a determination of need or merit.

The idea began as an economic development strategy. The city manager suggested the imposition of an income tax on those who worked within the city to balance Kalamazoo's books. In an attempt to increase the city's tax base without raising its taxes, community leaders, asked residents of the area surrounding the city what would persuade them to move back inside the city's boundaries. Not surprisingly, the parents of Millennials expressed the greatest interest in living in a place that would provide a good public education for their children--all the way through college. Local philanthropists translated that desire into a simple program that offered full, four-year college scholarships to the city's high school graduates, with no requirement to repay the money or reside in Kalamazoo after graduating from college. They bet the bargain would be enough to attract families back to the city and halt the annual ten-percent decline in the schools' population. Five years and $12 million later, the bet has paid off handsomely.

Since the program was announced in November 2005, Kalamazoo has experienced a 17.6 percent increase in student enrollment and the construction of three new schools for the first time in 37 years. Dropout rates have been cut in half. Ninety percent of female African-American high school graduates have gone onto college. The school district's success was noticed by President Obama, who chose to deliver the first high school commencement speech of his presidency at Kalamazoo Central High. Calling the school a model for success in the 21st century, Obama told the senior class he was there "because I think America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes a successful school in this new century." He's right.

Money to pay for four years of college is available to each recipient for up to ten years after graduation, so it will take more time before the full effect of the Kalamazoo Promise on college graduation rates can be determined, but the program's initial success has led communities across the country to search for sources of philanthropic revenue in order to make their own educational bargain with their residents. The Kalamazoo Promise created an expectation that every public school student in the city would have an opportunity to receive a postsecondary education. More than 80 percent of those who chose to enroll in a university are still attending college. The cultural shift created by the community's commitment to the Kalamazoo Promise has also created a mini-Race to the Top with surrounding school districts, which are passing bond issues and improving their schools to compete more effectively with Kalamazoo's schools.

Now it is time for the nation as a whole to make the same promise that Kalamazoo did to all young Americans. The country should completely reform the current system of federal and state subsidies of higher education with one goal in mind. In the 21st century, every Millennial-and their children--should complete their postsecondary education and graduate debt free. Kalamazoo's promise needs to become America's promise.

honoring millennial's service

One year ago today President Obama signed the Kennedy Serve America Act fulfilling one of his most important campaign promises to the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003). The legislation represented the biggest expansion of national service since FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

Among other provisions, the bill
• established programs to involve middle and high school students in community service, including its innovative Summer of Service programs;
• expanded AmeriCorps openings over 8 years, allowing for up to 250,000 AmeriCorps volunteers by fiscal year 2017;
• expanded the National Civilian Community Corps’ mission to include projects on energy conservation, environmental stewardship or conservation, infrastructure improvement, urban and rural development, or disaster preparedness needs; and
• established new volunteer Corps to engage Millennial’s enthusiasm for such efforts including the Education Corps to improve schools, the Healthy Futures Corps to serve unmet health needs within communities, the Clean Energy Corps to work on energy projects, the Opportunity Corps to work with the economically disadvantaged, and the Veterans Corps to work with veterans and their families.

In return for participating in these service initiatives, the legislation raised the value of the full-time national service educational award that goes to participants in the Corporation for National Community Service’s programs to the maximum amount of a Federal Pell Grant. This will enable those who volunteer, to return to school after serving their country, just as members of the GI generation did after WWII.

In just one year the spirit of the legislation has inspired countless new initiatives among Millennials, America’s most civic-minded generation. Now Millennial led initiatives, such as myImpact.org and jumo.com are building social network sites to link their generational cohort's desire to improve the world with opportunities for doing so.
One effort that deserves special mention is the recently concluded “Beyond the Welcome Home” Veteran’s Summit hosted by one of the leading Millennial service organizations, Mobilize.org, in Carson, California. More than five dozen veterans of the Iraqi or Afghanistan wars, representing Millennial veterans from all branches of the armed services gathered for three days to identify the major problems facing returning veterans and develop service solutions to address their issues. Joined by civilian Millennials and interested non-profits, the group used the latest in interactive technologies to prioritize the issues they wanted to address.

The four most important issues facing returning veterans that the group identified did not sound very different than those facing veterans returning from earlier wars:

1. Reintegrating veterans into civilian life so they can productively interact with civilians and society again.
2. A lack of knowledge about programs and benefits post-separation for the armed forces that could help veterans with their return to civilian life.
3. Suicide prevention to deal with feelings of lack of self-worth post-deployment and post-military that many veterans experience.
4. Delays in receiving the health care and other benefits that they are entitled to due to poor communication between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

But the solutions that received the most support from the participants had a distinctly Millennial flavor. Many emphasized the group solidarity that Millennials feel so intensely. As one participant put it, “The way to deal with these issues is with veterans taking care of each other, just as we did in Iraq.” Or as another participant said, “We need to do things ourselves, not have DoD do it. We always do better ourselves.”

Millennial’s determination to overhaul the institutions their elders built or, failing that, to start new ones was also evident in the suggestions offered at the conference. “We should use the established Veteran Service Organizations, but if they don’t work, we should create new ones.” One popular way to start new institutions was to create a “Facebook for Vets” site that could link all the sites Millennial vets are using into a single place to get all the information they need.

Nor were the participants daunted by the challenge of taking on two of the federal government’s biggest bureaucracies—DoD and the VA—through their generation’s penchant for political engagement. Two comments capture the larger sentiment of the group. “We need to become active and aware of political issues that involve veterans and encourage our fellow Millennials to vote for legislators who support veterans’ issues.” “By sharing information and becoming advocates we can get DoD and VA to respond.”

Of the approximately 2 million service men and women who have served our country so far in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 60%, almost 1.26 million, are members of the Millennial Generation, so these sentiments are certain to find their way into this year’s political campaigns. Unlike the shunned and often reviled veterans of the Vietnam War, Millennials are returning to a society that respects their service. According to NDN’s latest survey on America’s 21st Century electorate, 64% of Millennials, as well as 78% of older generations, have a positive view of the nation’s military. But more than one in five veterans between the ages of 18 and 24 can’t find work when they return home.

The country’s appreciation needs to be translated into programs for veterans that are worthy of the honor this generation has brought to our country. Three years ago, Mobilize.org established its Democracy 2.0 declaration
which states that it is time “to act. . . to upgrade America’s unfinished project of democracy.” The organization has taken an important step along that path by hosting the summit and providing $25,000 to support the best ideas that flowed from the conference. But as the nation observes National Volunteer Week, each of us should take a moment to commit to doing whatever is needed to honor the most important volunteers this country has—the members of the United States Armed Forces.

One way to do so would be to connect to any of the groups that earned support from Mobilize.org for the work they were doing with Millennial veterans at the Summit, or to some of the other groups dedicated to helping America’s next great generation contribute as much in their civilian life as they have already done in the military. This list is a great place to start honoring our Millennial veteran’s service:

Athena Bridge

The Mission Continues

Veteran’s Green Jobs

Team Rubicon

MTV

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

The Millennial Metropolis

Back in the 1950s and 60s when Baby Boomers were young, places like Los Angeles led the nation’s explosive growth in suburban living that has defined the American Dream ever since. As Kevin Roderick observed, the San Fernando Valley became, by extension, “America’s suburb” – a model which would be repeated in virtually every community across the country.

These suburbs – perfectly suited to the sun-washed car culture of Southern California – have remained the ideal for most Americans. And they remain so for the children of Boomer and Generation X parents, Millennials,(born 1982-2003), who express the same strong interest in raising their families in suburban settings.

According to the most recent generational survey research, done for Washington-based think tank, NDN, by Frank N. Magid Associates, 43 percent of Millennials describe suburbs as their “ideal place to live,” compared to just 31 percent of older generations. In the same survey, a majority of older generations (56%) expressed a preference for either small town or rural living. This may reflect the roots of many older Americans, who are more likely to have grown up outside of a major metropolis, or it may indicate a desire of older people for a presumably simpler lifestyle.

By contrast, these locations were cited by only 34 percent of Millennials as their
preferred place to live. A majority (54%) of Millennials live in suburban America and most of those who do express a preference for raising their own families in similar settings. Even though big cities are often thought of as the place where young people prefer to live and work, only 17 percent of Millennials say they want to live in one, less than a third of those expressing a preference for suburban living. Nor are they particularly anxious to spend their lives as renters in dense, urban locations. A full 64 percent of Millennials surveyed, said it was “very important” to have an opportunity to own their own home. Twenty percent of adult Millennials named owning a home as one of their most important priorities in life, right behind being a good parent and having a successful marriage.

This suggests that some of the greatest opportunities in housing will be in those metropolitan areas that can provide the same amenities of suburban life that Los Angeles did sixty years ago. In this Millennials are just like their parents who moved to the suburbs in order to buy their own home, with a front and back yard, however small, in a safe neighborhood with good schools.

Given the fact that nearly four in five Millennials express a desire to have children, cities that wish to attract Millennials for the long-term will have to offer these same benefits. These Millennial metropolises also will need to be built with the active participation of their citizens, using the most modern communication technologies, to create a community that reflects this generation’s community-oriented values and beliefs. Metropolises that wish to attract Millennials, will also need to include them in their governing institutions. Such cities will have a leg up on those run by closed, good old boy networks that don’t reflect the tolerance and transparency Millennials believe in.

The passion of Millennials for social networking and smart phones reflects their need to stay in touch with their wide circle of friends every moment of the day and night. In fact, 83 percent of this generation say that they go to sleep with their cell phone. This group-oriented behavior is reflected in the efforts of Millennials to find win-win solutions to any problem and their strong desire to strengthen civic institutions. Seventy percent of college age Millennials have performed some sort of community service and virtually every member of the generation (94%) considers volunteer service as an effective way to deal with challenges in their local community.

The other key characteristic of the Millenial metropolis will be how it carves out a safe place for children. The Boomer parents of Millennials took intense interest in every aspect of their children’s lives, earning them the sobriquet “helicopter parents” because of their constant hovering. Now the Generation X “stealth fighter parents” of younger Millennials are turning the Boomer desire to hover and talk into a push for action and better bottom line results.

This can already be seen in cities like Los Angeles where a parent revolution is successfully challenging the entrenched interests in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

The idea began with a website, www.parentrevolution.org, that offered a bargain to parents willing to participate in a grass roots effort to improve individual schools. The organizers, led by Ben Austin, a long time advocate on behalf of Los Angeles’s kids, promised that if half of the parents in a school attendance district signed an online petition indicating their willingness to participate in improving their local school, they would “give you a great school for your child to attend.”

This process has worked both in working class areas like East Los Angeles’ Garfield High School and the Mark Twain Middle School in affluent West LA. With the backing of the parents, Austin went to the Los Angeles school district and demanded that they either put the management of the school “out to bid,” or his organization would be forced to respond to the parent’s demands by starting a charter school in competition with the LAUSD school. Since each child has seven thousand dollars of potential state funding in their back pack, a newly enlightened LAUSD agreed to these demands. When 3000 parents showed up to demonstrate their support of the concept, the school district voted 6-1 to adopt a policy mandating competitive bids eventually be issued for the management of all 250 “demonstrably failing schools” as defined by federal education law.

The key to building the Millenial metropolis will be to accommodate such changes. Places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, or Raleigh-Durham that have survived the Great Recession reasonably well now are focusing on producing open, accessible communities with good schools and safe streets. These communities appear best positioned to take advantage of the next bloom of urban growth. Of course the ability to provide America’s next great generation with good jobs and a growing economy will also be required if any metropolis wants to attract Millennials. But with the right leadership and a sustained effort to focus on the basics of family living, almost any city has the opportunity to become a leader in the rebirth of America’s Millennial Era metropolises.

Democrats Rock, the Vote on Campus

More than twice as many 18-29 year olds voted for President Barack Obama as for John McCain in 2008, and one year later the party preferences of college students remain similarly lopsided in favor of the Democratic Party and its political point of view.

The most recent data from communication research company Frank N. Magid Associates' show an equal percentage of students, 18 and older, call themselves liberals or progressives (31%) as describe their political philosophy as moderate (30%). By contrast, only 20% describe themselves as conservative, while another 20% haven't learned enough in college yet to say just what their ideological orientation is. Survey research data from 2008 and 2009 actually showed self-described moderates as the most common philosophical designation by Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, with liberalism in second place. But those studies included Millennials who were not on campus, which suggests either that college students are a more liberal bunch than non-students by nature or there has been further movement toward liberalism among Millennials during the first year of Obama's presidency.

Almost all students on campus today are members of the Millennial Generation and bring that generation's commitment to civic engagement and consensus decision making to the political process. Unlike many members of Generation X or Baby Boomers who preceded them, a majority of Millennials believes in using government to help address societal problems and economic inequality. These philosophic touchstones form the basis of their political identification and belief system.

Millennials were inclined to be Democrats before Obama ran for presidency and both his campaign and his presidency have solidified that tendency. Beginning in 2006 as Millennials made their presence known among 18-29 year old voters, partisan identification among this age group moved from a roughly 50/50 split to a clear preference for the Democratic Party. In 2008, Millennials voted more than 2:1 for Obama over McCain (66% vs. 32%) and by roughly the same percentage (63% vs. 34%) for Democratic congressional candidates. Magid's 2010 data shows this same level of Democratic identification persisting among Millennials who are attending college. Twice as many college students call themselves Democrats as Republicans (47% vs. 24%). Only 15% are independents, with a similar percentage unwilling to identify with any of those three choices.

These numbers suggest the Young Republicans have a lot of work to do just to break even, while Young Democrats should have a rockin' good time of it on college campuses across America.

Millennials Need to Stand Up and be Counted

As the campaign to ensure a complete and accurate count of every American in this year's census gets off the ground, a new survey of American attitudes toward participating in the census shows that young Americans, members of the Millennial Generation, born 1982-2003, may prove least likely to stand up and be counted. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that roughly one-third of 18-29 year olds hadn't heard of the census, and even after having the process described to them, 17 percent were still unaware of just what the census involved. This lack of knowledge translated directly into this key demographic segment’s unwillingness to participate, with only 36 percent of 18-29 year olds indicating that they “definitely” would respond to the form when it arrives, compared to large majorities in all other age segments who said they would do so.

The Census Bureau has a plan to address this lack of knowledge, but it's not clear yet if its approach will successfully reach, let alone motivate, this generation. This month the Bureau launched the first ad about the census as part of an overall $340 million public awareness campaign, $133 million of which will be spent on television advertising.

The new ad features one of Hollywood's best-known environmentalists, Ed Begley, Jr. in another of his satirical roles portraying a clueless corporate executive. In the Census Bureau ads he plays a Hollywood director pitching the idea of taking a literal snapshot of everyone in American all at once, even as others in the spot point out that the Census Bureau already has a plan to "get the shot." All the actors in this humorous spot are white Baby Boomers, two generations older than Millennials and not exactly the demographic most needing to be educated about the census. Maybe even more serious, broadcast television is not the Millennials' favorite way to absorb information.

More promising is the allocation of much of the rest of the awareness campaign's budget for social networking and appearances at major crowd events like the Super Bowl and Daytona 500. In addition, information on the need to respond to the census will be translated into 27 different languages, which will help with the very multi-ethnic Millennial generation as well as Latinos and Asian of all ages. You can help the Census spread the word by linking to their Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites or adding a Census Countdown widget to your own page. Still, the campaign needs to go beyond awareness if it wants to convince Millennials to participate.

Those who know what the census is used for, and that participation is required by law, are much more likely to say they will definitely participate. But the survey found that only 15 percent of Millennials knew that the law requires their participation. Only about half knew that the final count will be used to allocate government money to their community and determine its level of representation in Congress. They also represented the smallest group to know that the census will not be used to locate illegal immigrants. Millennials are more than willing to participate in civic activities and follow social rules, but right now they are dangerously uninformed about why they need to be a part of the nation’s most important decennial civic undertaking.

Millennials continually share information with each other to reach a group consensus on what they should do next. Someone other than those with strictly Boomer sensibilities needs to engage the generation in a conversation about the census. If that happens, America will have gone a long way toward ensuring a complete and accurate snapshot of its increasingly diverse, and youthful, population.

A Millennial State of the Union

President Obama's focus on the economy is exactly what Millennials (Americans born between 1982-2003) want to hear. Their generation is experiencing Depression levels of unemployment, higher than any other generation. They deeply believe that the path to a better job leads through a better education. That’s why any Millennial jobs program must begin with the steps outlined in the President’s speech—a revitalization of community colleges, increased Pell Grants and a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college. Those who have graduated from college with unprecedented debt will particularly welcome the President's call to limit the amount they have to repay in any given year based on their income with complete forgiveness after twenty years or only half that time if the engage in public service. And the President's call for a small business hiring tax credit should help give Millennials a chance to earn some money as they enter the toughest job market any generation has faced in twenty-five years. Equally important are his administration’s K-12 education reforms that have attracted bi-partisan support from the parents of Millennials all across the country.

Now the Congress needs to step up to the plate and deliver on Obama's proposals. If Republicans continue to follow their "just say no" approach, they risk losing an entire generation of voters. But Democrats must prove they can govern, and deal with Millennial concerns when they do, if they hope to generate enough enthusiasm from young voters in 2010 to provide Democrats the type of victory Barack Obama enjoyed in 2008. Like First Lady Michelle Obama did during the State of the Union speech, they should put Millennials in the best seats in the House and keep their future uppermost in their minds as they fashion a new economy for these young Americans. It’s time to answer President Obama’s call to do “what’s best for the next generation.”

Happy New Year, Democrats

As the first year of the Obama administration draws to a close, Democrats would do well to celebrate their successes this year and look to the future, rather than dwell on the funk that seems to embrace many of its supporters these days.

While the numbers have fluctuated within normal statistical margins, throughout 2009 Pew research has indicated that the Democrats have held around a 1.5:1 party identification lead over the Republicans. During the course of the year between 48% and 53% of Americans identified with or leaned to the Democrats while between 35% and 40% identified with or leaned to the GOP. This Democratic advantage is significantly higher than it was in the Clinton years of the 1990s, when the Democrats' lead averaged about five percentage points. It is particularly large compared with 1994, the year the Democrats lost their congressional majority to the Gingrich revolution, when the two parties were tied in party ID at 44% each.

In fact, the competitive position of the Democratic Party now approaches what it was in the mid-1960s, when it was the unquestioned dominant force in U.S. politics. In a 1964 Gallup survey, conducted just prior to Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the Democrats' party identification lead over the GOP was 49% to 24%.

Underpinning this rebound in the Democratic Party's competitive position is a major generational and ethnic transformation of America. It is a very different looking America now than it was in 1964, but the Democratic Party is once again far better positioned to benefit in the future from the opportunities presented by our changing nation.

--In 1964, about ninety percent of Americans were white as were more than eight in ten (82%) of those who identified as Democrats. Today the "minority" contribution to America's population has nearly tripled and non-Caucasians comprise about four in ten Democratic identifiers. By mid-century the United States will become a "majority-minority" country, however, as in the mid-1960s, more than 95% of Republicans are white.

--In 1964, only a minority of women worked outside the home and almost all women married by the time they were 25. Now women, many of whom are unmarried or minority, comprise more than six in ten Democratic identifiers. Virtually all of the women who do call themselves Republican are white and most are married.

--In 1964, nearly half of the electorate had only a high school education. An additional third had gone no further than grade school. Just one in five were college graduates. Now, a majority of Americans have at least some college exposure and nearly three in ten are college graduates. While, as in 1964, about 30% of Republican identifiers are college graduates, the percentage of college graduates among Democrats has doubled from 14% to 28%.

--the 1964 electorate was dominated by the GI Generation (born 1901-1924), the generation of the New Deal and World War II, and the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900), that primarily came of age around World War I and in the 1920s. About half of the 1964 Democrats were members of the GI Generation, who identified with that party by a 2:1 margin. Half of 1964 Republican identifiers were from the Lost Generation which by then was a generation of senior citizens. Today, with a completely different generational configuration than in 1964, the GOP still skews relatively old and the Democrats young. Like the GI Generation before them, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, overwhelmingly identify as Democrats over Republicans (58% vs. 19% in a November 2009 Pew survey).

In 2008, only 40% of Millennials were eligible to vote and they comprised about 17% of the American electorate. When Barack Obama runs for reelection in 2012, about 60% of Millennials will be of voting age and one in four voters will be a Millennial. By 2020, when virtually all of them will be able to vote, more than a third of the electorate (36%) will come from the Millennial Generation. As the largest (95 million) and most ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history (40% of Millennials are non-white) the Democratic Party should benefit from their loyalty at least as much over the next three or four decades as did the attachment of the GI Generation to the Democrats in the middle-third of the 20th Century.

The United States is a changed and continually changing nation. Taken together, these changes have made America a more diverse and more open nation. This should let the Democratic Party face the future with confidence and courage. But, the Democratic Party's opportunities cannot be taken for granted. The first step in taking advantage of these opportunities for Democrats would be to start building a future for America built on this reality and letting go of the timidity and tentativeness that seems to have been their governing motif in 2009.

A Generation's Loyalty is at Stake

As Congress returns from its holiday vacation, it and President Barack Obama need to address a number of challenges facing the country from health care reform to jobs and what strategy to pursue in Afghanistan. How the Democratic leadership deals with these issues may well determine the future loyalty of an entire generation of new voters, and with it the future of the Democratic Party.

A recent study by two economists, Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilembergo, entitled “Growing Up in a Recession,” suggests that experiencing an economic recession during the impressionable ages of 18-25 can have lifelong effects on a person’s attitude toward government and its role in the economy.The Democratic Party’s most enthusiastic and loyal new constituency, Millennials (born 1982- 2003), have had their young lives thoroughly disrupted by the current economic downturn. With their level of unemployment exceeding 25%, what is for other generations a Great Recession is for Millennials their very own Great Depression. Such an experience is likely, according to the new study, to increase Millennial support for policies that favor government redistribution of income and other liberal economic ideas.

However, Giuliano and Spilembergo also demonstrate that this same experience often makes young people less trusting of government institutions. Conservative columnist, Ross Douthat suggested recently that the difference between the Democratic New Deal loyalties of the GI Generation that came of age during the Great Depression and the greater Republican orientation of Generation X that experienced Jimmy Carter’s stagflation economy in the 1970s is the degree to which government dealt effectively with the economic crisis of their youth. “When liberal interventions seem to be effective, a downturn can help midwife an enduring Democratic majority. But if they don’t seem to be working — or worse, if they seem to be working for insiders and favored constituencies, rather than for the common man — then suspicion of state power can trump disillusionment with free markets.”

This raises the stakes for what Congress does in the next six months to new heights. Millennials, more than one-third of whom lack health insurance, will be watching closely to see if their needs are addressed in the final version of health care reform, something Millennials support to a far greater extent than any other generation. Of course, failure to pass meaningful reform may well deal a death knell to the emerging Democratic majority that the Obama campaign created last year.

But Millennials care even more about jobs and the health of the economy. A recent poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that the economy is unquestionably young people's leading concern, with 48 percent of respondents saying it was their top national priority. (That was more than twice the number of those who rated health care their top priority, 21 percent,with the war garnering mention by 10 percent of respondents.)With record unemployment among members of this generation, any jobs package the Congress puts forward must specifically meet the concerns and needs of Millennials. In particular, Congress must deal with the high cost of education,something Millennials still see as the ticket to future economic success; the lack of job opportunities even at the intern level for those just entering the work force; and the lack of access to fundamental job skills training that community colleges can provide to those ready to go to work soon.
While the Democratic leadership often believes that s today’s youth thinks about issues of war and peace in the same reflexive way that young Baby Boomers did four decades ago, Millennials are more likely to want to understand the mission and strategy for success in Afghanistan before making up their mind on whether or not to support a deepening American involvement in that conflict. With Millennials providing the overwhelming majority of front line troops, however Congress chooses to pay for that campaign, it must ensure that those who do go to fight are better equipped than the military force George W. Bush initially sent to Iraq.

The effectiveness of any legislation Congress adopts over the next six months will not be known for years but the way Congressional Democrats approach their policy decisions will be clear enough to Millennials. The stakes are large and will have long-reaching impact. If the decisions are made by cutting deals with special interest groups, none of which represent this generation and its financial concerns, or by compromising Millennial principles of equity and social justice, members of the generation are likely to sit out the 2010 midterm elections and wait for their favorite messenger, Barack Obama, to return to the ballot in 2012 before making their future preferences known. If that happens, the results in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey last month will only be a prelude for a much bigger Democratic disaster next November. ) If, instead, Democratic leaders take off their generational blinders and recognize that the base of their party is now made up of an overlapping core of Millennials, minorities, and women and respond accordingly, they will help to solidify the Democratic loyalties of America’s largest generation for decades to come.

For Millennials, Its Still the Economy Stupid

This month’s off year elections sent one message to Washington that has been heard loud and clear. Voters expect Congress to focus on the economy, especially employment, and take decisive and affirmative steps to deal with both the causes and ravages of the greatest economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression. As the Obama administration considers a variety of new proposals to help bring down the unemployment rate, one key constituency is raising its voice and asking for a return on the investment it made in his presidency.

Members of the Millennial generation, born between 1982-2003, who were eligible to vote in 2008 went for Barack Obama over John McCain by a 2:1 margin and made up over 80% of the President’s winning margin. They continue to support his presidency and identify as Democrats by similar margins. A late October Pew survey indicates that Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by almost 20 percentage points (52% vs. 34%), well above the 8-point Democratic advantage among older generations. In the latest Daily Kos tracking survey, 80% of Millennials had a favorable opinion of the president; only 14% of everyone in this generation viewed him unfavorably. This compares with a 55% vs. 39% favorable/unfavorable ratio among the entire electorate in a series of November surveys conducted by organizations ranging from ABC News and the Washington Post to Fox.

But despite the clearly stronger support the President has among their generation, Millennials are increasingly restive about the lack of action in Congress to address the economic problems they face – both now and in the future.

Recent Pew research studies underline the major impact that the recession has had on individual Americans and their families. Thirteen percent of parents with grown children told Pew researchers that one of their adult sons or daughters had moved back home in the past year. Pew found that of all grown children living with their parents, 2 in 10 were full-time students, one-quarter were unemployed and about one-third had lived on their own before returning home. According to the census, 56 percent of men 18 to 24 years old and 48 percent of women were either still under the same roof as their parents or had moved back home.

The lack of jobs was particularly acute among adult members of the Millennial Generation (18-27 year olds), 61% of whom said that they or someone close to them was jobless recently. A clear plurality (46%) says that the “job situation” rather than rising prices (27%), problems in the financial markets (14%) and declining real estate values (7%) is their major economic worry.

As a result, the number one concern among Millennials is the state of the economy and the need for jobs, but they have a unique perspective on how to deal with this issue.

Millennials believe there is a clear link between education and employment and are increasingly concerned that the pathway through the educational system into the world of work is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to navigate. Recently, about one hundred of the nation’s top private sector and government leaders gathered for the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council also identified education as the nation’s top economic priority.

For Millennials, the problem is personal. A smaller share of 16-to-24-year-olds – 46 percent – is currently employed than at any time since the government began collecting that data in 1948. A job market with Depression-level youth unemployment (18.5%) and a wrenching transformation in the types of jobs America needs and produces makes the implicit bargain of education in return for future economic success harder for Millennials to believe in every day.

Recently Matt Segal, Executive Director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and Founder and National Co-Chair of the “80 Million Strong for Young Americans Job Coalition” presented some ideas to the House Education and Labor Committee on what Congress could do to address this challenge. He advocated increased entrepreneurial resources be made available to youth; more access to public service careers through internships and loan forgiveness programs; and the creation of “mission critical” jobs in such fields as health care, cyber-security and the environment that would tap the unique talents of this generation. Since two-thirds of Millennials who graduate from a four-year college do so with over $20,000 in debt, debt, his testimony also urged immediate Senate approval of the student debt reform bill recently passed by the House.

There is more that can be done beyond these excellent recommendations. This summer, the President's Council of Economic Advisors released a report outlining the importance of community colleges in making America's workforce more competitive in the global economy. "We believe it's time to reform our community colleges so that they provide Americans of all ages a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future." The report urged Congress to pass House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larsen’s bill, The Community College Technology Access Act of 2009, in order to help meet President Obama’s goal of graduating five million more Americans from community colleges by 2020.

Millennials, like their GI Generation great grandparents in the 1930s, are facing economic challenges that caught them by surprise and for which no one prepared them. But Millennials aren’t looking for a handout or sympathy. Instead, in the “can do” spirit of their generation, they are organizing to overcome the challenges created for them by their elders. It’s time for the Democrats who control Congress to recognize these concerns and to act decisively on their behalf.

Who Needs Critical Thinking when I have Facebook?

One of the most often expressed criticisms of the Millennial Generation (born 1982 –2003), is that it seems to have lost all ability to analyze data, examine the logic and wisdom of a proposition, or read a blog and sort out the good and the bad in the argument being advanced.
Usually described as “critical thinking,” this type of skill seems to be absent from a generation focused on sharing, communicating and finding group consensus.
Often, the lack of critical thinking skills is attributed to the generation’s constant use of social media. Indeed, one of the traits older generations find most annoying about Millennials is their constant “pinging” of their friends to find out what the group thinks rather than making a prompt and decisive choice on their own.
As Millennials begin to assume positions of authority within society, many people, particularly those in the Baby Boomer generation, are increasingly concerned about this missing skill and determined to find ways to teach it to a generation raised on the Net.

But the very same Boomers who deride Net-based group decision-making would quickly agree that the most effective way to learn is through trial and error.

Nature and society evolve using this simple technique and Chaos theory suggests the perfection of the most incredibly complex systems occurs through this simple process of continuing what works and discarding what doesn’t.
Yet, to a large extent, the use of critical thinking as a means to solve problems contradicts this truth about natural selection and evolution. Rather than having expert thinkers come up with the right solution to a problem, the process of trial and error creates multiple experiments that attempt to solve the problem and uses objective empirical results to determine the best solution.
With this approach, more trials – and errors – produce better results. This concept is used every day on a range of problems, from the creation and maintenance of complex operating systems to a simple search on Google.
Since individual effort is normally contributed cost free to the process, this method provides an incredibly inexpensive way to conduct trials and sort out errors from valid solutions.
That is the type of problem solving approach Millennials have used almost since birth.
They use it every day on social networks such as Facebook or YouTube to decide what movie to go to, at which restaurant to eat, and even for which candidates to vote. Rather than insisting on solving society’s challenges using the inherited, but inevitably limited wisdom of experts, Millennials would prefer to share their ideas and let the group find the right answer through their combined experiences.
Given how far astray critical thinking has often taken us, maybe it’s time to embrace the Millennial Generation’s approach and see if it leads to even better results than the preferred methods of older generations have given us. In so doing, we may find another proof of the old Biblical adage that out of the mouths, or in this case the text messages, of babes comes wisdom.

Four Ms of Millennial Politics

Pundits were quick to point out that the percentage of Millennial voters (those 29 and younger ) in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections last week were roughly half of what they were in 2008. This led the voice of what passes for wisdom inside the Beltway, Charlie Cook, to proclaim, “we knew that young and minority voters who had never cast a ballot before they did for Barack Obama last year were very unlikely to show up at the polls this year or next.”

His extrapolation of two state’s unique odd year election results into a guaranteed outcome in the 2010 general election is breathtaking for what it reveals about Cook’s own biases and those of his peers. It’s reminiscent of James Carville’s comments prior to Barack Obama’s 2008 primary triumph that “we have a word in politics for those who are counting on the youth vote to win. We call them losers.” But at least Carville saw the light after looking at the surge in young voters for Democrats in 2008 and recognizing that a new generation, with different attitudes toward political participation than the preceding generation, Generation X, had arrived in the American electorate.

Unfortunately, too many of those operating as if the world didn’t change in 2008 are Democrats, whose misreading of last week’s results could cost the party dearly in 2010. The two gubernatorial losses cannot simply be dismissed, as the White House tried to do, as merely a reflection of circumstances unique to New Jersey and Virginia, unrelated to national campaign strategy. In reality, the 2009 election returns once again demonstrated the importance of aligning all four Ms of political campaigns--Messenger, Message, Media and Money—with Millennial Generation attitudes and behavior if any campaign, Democrat or Republican, hopes to be as successful in winning the votes of young people as Barack Obama was in 2008.

A year ago Obama won 60% of the vote in Virginia among 18-29 year olds. In New Jersey his margin was even greater, 67%. Even after taking into account Obama’s overwhelming support among minorities and considering only white Millennials, the appeal of this particular messenger to this cohort is clear. Nationally, Obama won 54% of all white Millennial Generation voters. He won 42% of white Millennials in Virginia, reflecting that Southern state’s relatively conservative views. But even this was well above the support Obama received from older white voters. He also carried 58% of New Jersey white Millennials, reflecting the overall partisan and ideological orientation of that state.

Neither Democratic gubernatorial candidate in last week’s election had a biography that matched the bi-racial, community organizer, outsider image of the President. Jon Corzine’s Wall Street riches and political insider image hardly matches the selfless, socially concerned profile of Obama. Corzine’s lesser appeal to Millennials is partially a reflection of that difference. While Millennials were the only generational cohort to prefer Corzine over the Republican winner, Chris Christie, Corzine’s support fell to 57% among all Millennials and 42% among white Millennials. Coupled with the decline in the Millennial Generation’s contribution to the electorate, from 17% to 9%, even this level of support wasn’t enough to re-elect Corzine.

Creigh Deeds’ bio was even less like Obama’s, with a political career focused on playing the inside game in the State Capitol and appealing to the good old boys in rural Virginia. This was one reason he became one of the first Democrats to actually lose the Millennial vote to a Republican, 44% for Deeds vs. 54% for McDonnell. And despite his focus on attempting to win over more conservative Democrats, Deeds actually lost white Millennials to McDonnell by 2:1 margin.

But the President’s appeal to Millennials went beyond his unique personal qualities. He also had a message that helped engage and motivate young people from its overall theme of change to his specific call to help young people pay for college by expanding opportunities to serve their community. By contrast, Corzine’s record contained nothing that was particularly appealing to Millennials. And Deeds’ attempt to run a campaign based on social issues ran directly counter to the Millennial Generation’s greater interest in pressing economic issues like jobs. McDonnell’s campaign, by contrast was focused like a laser, as President Bill Clinton used to say, on the state’s need to improve economic opportunity for all of its citizens.

Still, having the right messenger and message will not win over Millennials unless a campaign reaches out to them by using the media to which they pay attention, expending sufficient resources to break through the daily chatter that is also a part of the generation’s unique behavior. Corzine certainly spent plenty of his personal money on his campaign, but most of that money was devoted to television commercials, the least effective way to reach Millennials. By contrast, in Virginia, McDonnell used the Internet extensively, including a major Google ad buy late in the campaign, to make sure his message of social issue moderation and economic opportunity was heard by Millennials.

There are many things that are different about this newest generation of Americans. At this point, Millennials identify as Democrats by nearly 2:1 and are the first generation in forty years to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives. Millennials are positioned to make the Democrats the majority party for decades. But Democrats cannot take them for granted because in one very fundamental way Millennials are no different than any older generation.

Like all voters, Millennials are more likely to participate in elections and vote for candidates who appeal to their concerns with a convincing and credible message that is heard often enough to make an impact. Democrats should take a lesson from their President’s successful campaign in 2008 that used that formula to win two out of three Millennial votes. Or, they could spend some more time analyzing and explaining away last week’s two gubernatorial defeats only to discover that Republicans have already completed their analysis and are ready to launch a campaign with just the right four Ms to appeal to Millennials and give the GOP victory in 2010.

Engergizing Millennials: Key to Dem Victory in 2010

The latest unemployment numbers and poll results have led most observers to predict a major setback for Democrats in the 2010 Congressional elections. But a year is a lifetime in politics and much can change between now and then to influence next year’s vote. As Ron Brownstein recently pointed out, the demographic makeup of the electorate is likely to be a key factor in whether or not the Democrats can maintain their current majority margins in 2010. While traditionally Democrats have focused on turning out African-American and Hispanic voters to offset Republican strength among white male voters that equation is no longer the only calculation Democratic strategists need to make.
Today the level and intensity of interest among Millennials young voters 18-28, is equally important in ensuring Democratic victories. But for that group of voters to turn out in large numbers, Congressional Democrats will have to make a much more concerted effort than they have to date to deliver on a series of policy issues of major concern to Millennials, the generation that provided Barack Obama 80% of his popular vote margin over John McCain in 2008.
As with most other Americans, the number one concern among Millennials is the state of the economy and the need for jobs. But Millennials have a unique perspective on this issue, one that Congress must understand and address. Millennials believe there is a clear link between education and employment and are increasingly concerned that the pathway through the educational system into the world of work is becoming increasingly more difficult and expensive to navigate. Two-thirds of Millennials who graduate from a four-year college do so with over $20,000 in debt. A job market with Depression-level youth unemployment (18.5%) and a wrenching transformation of the types of jobs America needs and produces makes the implicit bargain of education in return for future economic success harder for Millennials to believe in every day.
Recently Matt Segal, Executive Director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and Founder and National Co-Chair of the “80 Million Strong for Young Americans Job Coalition” presented some ideas to the House Education and Labor Committee on what Congress could do to address this challenge.

He advocated increased entrepreneurial resources be made available to youth; Senate action on the student debt reform bill recently passed by the House; more access to public service careers through internships and loan forgiveness programs; and the creation of “mission critical” jobs in such fields as health care, cyber-security and the environment that would tap the unique talents of this generation. Coupled with the recent passage of the Kennedy Serve America Act, enacting these initiatives would demonstrate that Democrats are serious about improving the economic situation of Millennials and, at the same time, provide organizing ammunition in the 2010 campaign.
Of course no economic program can ignore the impact of health care on this generation’s—and America’s—economic well being. Many of the entry-level jobs young people seek and obtain come from employers who simply can’t afford to provide health care coverage under today’s system. Young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 represent nearly a third of all uninsured Americans, and two-thirds of those uninsured young people reported going without necessary medical care in 2007 because they could not afford to pay for it. As a result, polling has consistently indicated that a majority of young people support President Obama’s health care proposal, especially if it contains a public option to control costs. One of the more compelling components of the president’s plan for Millennials is that it would allow parents to cover their children through the family’s health insurance up to the age of 26 instead of the current limit of 19. And Millennials expect Congress to act. Only a third of Millennials, as compared with half of older generations, are concerned that the government will become too involved in health care.
Yet many pundits continue to perceive health care reform as an “old people’s issue,” likely to increase the turnout of seniors, but not Millennials, in the 2010 elections. Some have even suggested that Millennials will object to a health care system that limits the differential in premiums insurance companies can charge relatively healthy young people vs. older, less well adults. But this theoretical inter-generational transfer of wealth is not likely to stir up much opposition among Millennials. Unlike the Baby Boomers of four decades ago, Millennials do not speak to their elders across a generation gap, but have actually formed strong and enduring bonds with their parents and come to the public arena determined to find solutions that work for people of all ages. Already, Young Americans for Health Care Reform has accumulated 1200 fans on Facebook since the group was formed less than a month ago.
If Congressional Democrats can successfully negotiate passage of a health care reform bill that provides cost-effective coverage for the 30% of Millennials who currently are not insured, Democrats will have another major arrow in their quiver going into the 2010 election.
Millennials, like their GI Generation great grandparents in the 1930s, are facing economic challenges that caught them by surprise and for which no one prepared them. But Millennials aren’t looking for a handout or sympathy. Instead, in the “can do” spirit of their generation, they are organizing to overcome the challenges created for them by their elders. It’s time for Democrats in Congress to recognize these concerns and the loyalty of a generation that identifies as Democrats over Republicans by a 2:1 margin. One way to accomplish this is by passing meaningful health care reform while helping to create new pathways to economic opportunity, especially for young people who are just entering the work force. Doing so now, as the battle for 2010 shapes up, will help energize the newest and most loyal element of the Democratic Party’s 21st Century coalition, the Millennial Generation.

Millennials Think Globally and Act Locally

The phrase, “Think Globally, Act Locally” has often been used by environmentalists to sum up a strategy devoted to conserving the earth's scarce natural resources at the local level. More recently, business executives borrowed the idea to emphasize the need for building capabilities at the country or regional level even as they pursue global growth. But now the Millennial Generation, Americans born between 1982 and 2003, are giving the phrase an entirely new meaning as they pursue their efforts to change the world – one local community at a time.

In contrast to the generational stereotypes many people hold of them, Millennials are very much concerned about and connected to the world around them – more so, in fact, than many older Americans. Responding to questions on foreign policy in a recent Pew Research Center survey, only 9% of Millennials were unable to express an opinion on how President Obama is doing in working with our allies, while almost a quarter of senior citizens had no opinion on the same subject. On the knotty question of Israeli/Palestinian relations, all but 7% of Millennials could tell survey researchers what they thought of American foreign policy in this area. On the other hand, 26% of senior citizens could not (see table below).

In addition to its high level of concern with international matters, the Millennial Generation's ability to make virtual friends instantaneously on Facebook or Twitter with Iranian protesters provides a unique perspective on how to deal with America’s foreign policy challenges.

Perhaps most notable is how the Millennial Generation deals with the concept of "threats". A majority of Millennials do see Al Qaeda, and the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran as "major threats" to the United States, but by rates 15 to 20 points less than other generations. Other more intractable but less direct security concerns, such as the drug trade in Mexico, China’s emergence as a world power, or conflicts in the Mideast ranging from Pakistan to Palestine, are not considered a major threat among a majority of Millennials. To be sure, some of these attitudes may reflect the inevitable naiveté of young people, but we believe the underlying beliefs of Millennials suggest an alternative explanation.

Millennials have been taught since at least high school that the best way to solve a societal problem is act upon it locally and directly. Tired of exalted rhetoric from Boomer leaders that rarely produced results and frustrated by their older Gen-X siblings lack of interest in pursuing any collective action to address broad social problems, Millennials have embraced individual initiative linked to community action. Eighty-five percent of college age Millennials consider voluntary community service an effective way to solve the nation’s problems. Virtually everyone in the generation (94%) believes it’s an effective way to deal with challenges in their local community. No wonder one of Barack Obama’s first legislative initiatives, the Kennedy National Service Act, was in response to the desire to serve of his most loyal constituency, the Millennial Generation.

And when it comes to public service, Millennials are putting their money where their mouth is, although lack of opportunity in the private sector also could be accelerating this public service trend. Teach for America, which places new graduates in low-income schools, saw a 42% increase in applications over 2008. Around 35,000 students are now competing for about 4,000 slots. U.S. undergraduates ranked Teach for America and the Peace Corps among their top 10 "ideal employers," ahead of the likes of Nike or General Electric.

Scotty Fay, a recent University of Massachusetts graduate, typifies the continuing belief of her generation in the importance of collective action to cope with a challenging world. “If we excel and we’re able to keep ourselves working, we’ll be OK, we hope, because we haven’t experienced anything different than that,” says Fay, who worked two jobs on top of her full-time course load, and is now getting ready for her Peace Corps assignment in Guinea.

First Lady Michelle Obama, in kicking off the administration’s “summer of service” initiative, made it clear that the administration sees this belief as key to America’s future. “This new Administration doesn’t view service as separate from our national priorities, or in addition to our national priorities – we see it as the key to achieving our national priorities.” Given the likelihood of continuing employment challenges for America’s newest workers, more and more Millennials are likely to gain their first work experiences performing some type of voluntary service.

This penchant for public service shapes the beliefs of Millennials on how the United States should deal with the problems it faces around the world. In last year's contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, Millennials believed Barack Obama was right and Hillary Clinton was wrong over whether to conduct direct talks with our enemies. And they thought Sarah Palin was completely off base when she declared in her acceptance speech at the convention that “the world is not a community and it doesn’t need an organizer.” In fact, Millennials believe that what the world needs most is thousands of community organizers, working on the ground to solve their own country’s problems, linked electronically, of course, to friends around the world.

This is a trend that, appropriately, resonates outside our borders as well. Grassroots activism, led largely by young Iranians, produced protests that may yet topple one of the most autocratic regimes in the world. Activism of this type across the Mideast could result in regime changes of far greater consequence than the military conquest strategy the United States employed in Iraq. Given the distinctions Millennials make between the seriousness of direct military threats, such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation, as opposed to squabbles over power or territory, America’s foreign policy is likely to shift towards a more multi-lateral, institution-building focus as this generation assumes our country’s leadership. This will occur even as Millennials continue to express support for our military by word and deed – when that becomes the only available option.

It may take a decade or two before we know how the Millennial Generation's belief in the need to “think globally, act locally” will impact our overall foreign policy. But in the interim, the United States will surely benefit from the generation's focus on rebuilding our country, as well as the world, one community at a time.