In making the rounds of the Democratic Party faithful in the last few months, I've developed my working definition of Democratic activist: a person of indeterminate age who votes, volunteers and can't get party leaders to return his or her phone calls.
Where Republicans seem to seize on anyone who shows the slightest interest in advancing the party's quest for power -- no matter how tenuous their connection to core GOP beliefs, or indeed, to politics on this planet (see Arnold Schwarzenegger) -- the Democrats often seem to hold their best potential assets at arms length.
Case in point: A couple of months ago, I happened across an impressive group of twentysomethings looking to inject some youthful energy into the Democratic Party -- something that no one has accomplished since 1992, when a certain Arkansas governor all-but kicked off his presidential campaign on The Arsenio Hall Show.
The founders of 2020Democrats.com -- Josh Green, 25, and Jorge Miranda, 23 -- are exactly what the party should want to build its future on: They're smart (they went to Dartmouth together), highly motivated and brimming with ideas. Green, who works in management consulting, cut his political eyeteeth counting ballots in Florida as a Gore volunteer in 2000.
''It was pretty frustrating,'' Green told me, ``but it didn't change my belief that young people have an opportunity to make a difference if they just step up and participate.''
Miranda worked on a Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign before starting his job as a schoolteacher.
After last year's midterm elections, and the Democrats' second drubbing by the hardball GOP, Green and Miranda started putting their heads together and recruiting their friends. They were frustrated that the party missed key opportunities to speak to young people. Green's take was that the Democrats too often make the ``tactical mistake of asking for young people's votes and time as volunteers, without asking for their ideas.''
''If you take a step back and look at how weak the party's support is among young people, it's frightening,'' Green said. ``Young people want to be inspired. But to be inspired, you have to see that there's a vision for the future. Young people have energy and passion, but not a lot of information about where and how to channel those ideas.''
The 2020s aim at changing that. ''We're trying to facilitate a conversation among young Americans about the world they want to see in 2020, and then to hold that vision up in contrast to the way the world will work if things keep going the way their going,'' Green said. ``We think the contrast is important.''
So how has the party responded to this spontaneous burst of enthusiasm? Green was diplomatic. ''We've been in contact with a variety of groups, including the Democratic National Committee, to let them know what we're doing,'' he said, adding after a long pause, ``There was no strong response either way.''
The 2020s held their inaugural convention in August, after fielding more than 300 ''vision'' statements from 40 states plus Guam. Only two politicians responded to the group's invitation to submit visions: 29-year-old Tim Ryan of Ohio, the youngest member of the U.S. House, and Howard Dean. Which brings me to the other symptom of Democratic disconnect.
The surge in participation by the creative, motivated, gutsy freight train that is the Dean campaign is nothing short of a watershed for the DNC. The Dean faithful (along with the movement to draft Gen. Wesley Clark and the voter-rights push repped by Al Sharpton and the Hip Hop Summit Action Network) are the kind of grass-roots that groundswell political parties usually only dream of.
So how is the Democratic Party responding to the fresh ideas, fresh enthusiasm and fresh money coming into the process? By scorning them -- and by fearing, rather than cultivating, them.
Talk about being in the political wilderness.
Copyright 1996-2003 Knight Ridder
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