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Richard Doak’s column in the Des Moines Register today is about the excitement of young people and their great possibility to influence change throughout the world.

The most fascinating possibility of 2008 is that the next Greatest Generation might be about ready to make its debut.

Hang around a college campus and it becomes easy to believe in the possibility. There’s something about today’s young people that inspires confidence.

Nationally, young adults are defying past patterns by turning out in record numbers to vote in the caucuses and primaries. They tend to vote differently from their elders, and there is an almost palpable sense among them that a new day is dawning.

These young adults are the leading edge of what has been labeled the Millennial Generation, people born between 1982 and 2003.

Some pop historians see history as being driven by generational change. If they’re right, America is approaching a turning point, and it will be the Millennials who determine the new direction.

John Mayer had the hit song Waiting for the World to Change where he talks about how the Millennial Generation is fully aware of the problems the world faces. How can they not be with 9/11, Global Climate Change, Hurricane Katrina, and a misguided war in Iraq weighing so heavily during the time their worldview was being formed?

However before this election, they haven’t been compelled to enter the political arena that they viewed as being stale, full of partisan bickering, and influenced by big money. Instead, they have chose to focus their energy on community action, through community involvement, church activities, environmental action, and building communities online.

This diary from Daily Kos that I posted about back in October further explains this…

…we look upon our broken system and choose not to scream at the rubble, but to take it upon ourselves to promote social change in our own way. So we volunteer. We join groups. We organize at the community level. We splinter off into thousands of glittering pockets of political change. We don’t mobilize nationalize because there is no call, no sense of need to so.

The 2008 election has called this generation to become involved politically. With no incumbent running for their party’s nomination, this election is truly a changing of the guard.

The candidates have called the Millennial Generation to become active in politics. Barack Obama has turned out huge numbers of young adults to support him, as has Hillary Clinton. Ron Paul has had tremendous success fundraising and organizing online. Chris Dodd called for people to get involved in national service. John Edwards started his campaign with the theme Tomorrow Begins Today and held his first event helping rebuild New Orleans.

John Mayer ended his song, saying that one day the Millennial Generation will have the power to change the world.

We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

That day is coming sooner than later.

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At the Republican debate on Thursday, Tim Russert asked the Republican candidates for President if they plan on staying in Iraq even though over 60% of the American people think the war was the wrong idea. There answers are exactly why Republicans will have a very difficult time winning in November (especially Huckabee comparing Iraq to an Easter egg hunt). Each candidate has their head in the sand, except for Ron Paul, who was the only candidate to get applause.

Keith Olbermann and Sam Seder do a great job analyzing these answers.

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I posted my predictions for the Iowa caucuses right before I left work. On the home I started thinking about how ridiculous it would be for Obama to beat Edwards by 8%, so I decided to change them to make it closer. However, when I got home my internet wasn’t working and I couldn’t.

As it turns out, my predictions were darn close, getting the top 2 exactly right (though I had Richardson and Biden way too high and Clinton too low). My Republican predictions weren’t bad either, except I gave McCain too much support and not enough to Fred Thompson.

So here are my predictions for New Hampshire…

Democrats
1. Barack Obama 42%
2. Hillary Clinton 27%
3. John Edwards 24%
4. Bill Richardson 9%

Republicans

1. John McCain 32%
2. Mitt Romney 29%
3. Mike Huckabee 16%
4. Ron Paul 11%
5. Rudy Giuliani 9%
6. Fred Thompson 3%

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The Cornbelt Blather Boys have a pretty nifty caucus guide that outlines the pros and cons of the Republican candidates.

Good luck finding a good candidate in that bunch.

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At Sunday’s Republican debate in Florida, Ron Paul was asked about a constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage.

Here is his answer…

Well, if you believe in federalism, it’s better that we allow these things to be left to the state. My personal belief is that marriage is a religious ceremony. And it should be dealt with religiously. The state really shouldn’t be involved. The state, both federal and state-wise, got involved mostly for health reasons 100 years or so ago.

But this should be a religious matter. All voluntary associations, whether they’re economic or social, should be protected by the law. But to amend the Constitution is totally unnecessary to define something that’s already in the dictionary.

We do know what marriage is about. We don’t need a new definition or argue over a definition and have an amendment to the Constitution. To me, it just seems so unnecessary to do that. It’s very simply that the states should be out of that business, and the states — I mean, the states should be able to handle this. The federal government should be out of it.

I pretty much agree with Rep. Paul’s answer. Marriage is a church issue and the government should be left out of it. All the rights should be equal under the law and church’s should then decide based on their own doctrine who should and shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

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My addiction to Facebook has cooled down a bit after peaking over the summer. However, I still found this Republican Facebook parody site pretty hilarious.

Here’s a taste of what’s on the site….

Fred Thompson added “Convincing everyone my presidential run isn’t really Method-style research for a movie role” to his Interests.

John McCain is appealing to Ron Paul for fundraising tips.

Rudy Giuliani is wondering how he can fit 9/11 into a speech about agriculture policy.

Mitt Romney is shredding some old speeches.

Mitt Romney joined the group “Pro-Lifers.”

Mitt Romney left the group “Pro-Choicers.”

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Andrew Sullivan takes a look at an interview Grist Magazine did with Ron Paul…

Grist’s Amanda Griscom Little asks the question with a certain amount of trepidation. I loved this preamble:

Some of [Paul’s] ideas arguably have environmental merit. Paul is known for his zealous opposition to the Iraq war, which he duly notes causes pollution and the “burning of fuel for no good purpose.” He wants to yank all subsidies and R&D funding from the energy sector, which many believe would benefit the growth of renewables. A cyclist himself, he has cosponsored bills that would offer tax breaks to Americans who commute by bicycle and use public transportation. Still, his libertarian presidency would, among other things, allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, boost the use of coal, and embrace nuclear power. Moreover, it wouldn’t do diddly about global warming because, Paul reasons, “we’re not going to be very good at regulating the weather.”

Then onto the interview on energy, where my favorite passage is his goal of removing subsidies from energy companies (take that, Cheney!):

If we’re running out of hydrocarbon, the price will go up. If we had a crisis tomorrow [that cut our oil supply in half], people would drive half as much — something would happen immediately. Somebody would come up with alternative fuels rather quickly.

Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends in the corn industry or the food industry. Think how many taxpayer dollars have been spent on corn [for ethanol], and there’s nobody now really defending that as an efficient way to create diesel fuel or ethanol. The money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons. It’s the worst way in the world to try to develop an alternative fuel.

I can see merits in what Paul is saying about providing incentives to oil companies and for the ethanol industry. However, thinking that a solution will just suddenly appear if the price of oil doubled is basically wishing upon a star that will just leave us bummed out because we don’t have electricity to run our TV to watch our Disney movies.

The problem now isn’t we are passing out incentives, the problem is we don’t really have a plan for our energy future.

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Ron Paul has raised over $1 million online this quarter, a number that is usually online reached by a handful of Democrats.

Dr. Paul was campaigning in New Hampshire with his wife Carol and their family when our $1,000,000 goal was reached last night. As the time drew near, they watched on a laptop as the counter reached the $1 million mark. They, along with staff, supporters and volunteers throughout the country then celebrated this extraordinary accomplishment.

Over $1,000,000 raised in seven days for the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign. Remarkable!

On behalf of Dr. Paul and every member of the campaign staff: Thank you!!

Kent Snyder
Chairman
Ron Paul 2008

So it is looking like Paul will have some money to spend. The question now is will he use it to campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire. So far Paul has only taken 3 trips and spent 10 days in Iowa and taken 4 trips and spent 8 days in New Hampshire. If Ron Paul is as serious as his supporters about being President he needs to start campaigning in the early states.

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Chris Bowers at Open Left has a chart that shows how many days each candidate has campaigned in the early states. The chart shows Ron Paul has only spent a total of 32 days campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and Florida. Only Mike Gravel and Fred Thompson have spent fewer days campaigning than Rep. Paul.

I know Ron Paul has a lot of serious support online, but he won’t move up unless he gets serious about campaigning.

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