As part of some consulting I am doing for Congressional candidate Darcy Burner (D-WA 08), I attended a strategy session yesterday with DNC Chairman Howard Dean (seen left exchanging words with your humble narrator). Dean discussed Democratic prospects in the upcoming election and fielded questions from party activists and campaign staff. One of the most interesting points he made is how the increasing participation of young people is pointing the way toward a long-term realignment in favor of Democrats. Dean noted that party identification among those under 32 favors Democrats by margins of greater than 65-35%, and these younger voters are turning up at the polls in historically unprecedented numbers over the past two election cycles.

One observation Dean made is that, unlike previous generations that identify first by race, religion, or national origin, Millennials consider themselves "young people" first and place far less emphasis on the traditional dividing lines of American politics. They are a multi-racial generation whose affinity for new technologies have made them unusually aware of global issues. Even young evangelicals, Dean observed, are more interested in issues like global warming, Darfur and HIV/AIDS than in traditional social hot-button topics like abortion and stem-cell research.

Dean also made the point (right out of Generation Blend!) that new networked communication and collaboration technologies are leading to more decentralized, bottom-up organizational models, and younger people who grow up using these technologies as students and consumers internalize a bottom-up approach to management and problem-solving. They don't think in terms of traditional authority structures and don't see institutions that operate on top-down principles as reflecting their values. "Other than the military," said Dean, "the only other organization in the United States that relies so heavily on a command-and-control management model is the Republican Party."