An ‘Army of 16-Year-Olds’ Takes On the Democrats
To me, this suggests that these kids want what they want and they want it now... no matter the cost.
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S E E D E D C O N T E N T
BOSTON — Dana Depelteau, a hotel manager, had just gone public with a long-shot candidacy for mayor in Boston when he noticed that someone in city politics was going after him online.
The effect of this attack, he said, was lightning-fast and pervasive. The morning after he announced his candidacy on Twitter, he showed up at his local barbershop and, while staring at himself in the mirror, overheard a customer describing his views as white supremacist.
“I’m thinking, ‘Man, politics is dirty,’” recalled Mr. Depelteau. He rushed home to fire back at his critic, a sharp-edged progressive who had dug up some of Mr. Depelteau’s old social media posts and was recirculating them online. But that, he discovered, was a big mistake.
“I didn’t know how old she was,” he explained. “I just knew she was a prominent person.”
That is how he became aware of Calla Walsh, a leader in the group of activists known here as the Markeyverse. Ms. Walsh, a 16-year-old high school junior, has many of the attributes of Generation Z: She likes to refer to people (like the president) as “bestie.” She occasionally gets called away from political events to babysit her little brother. She is slightly in the doghouse, parent-wise, for getting a C+ in precalculus.
She is also representative of an influential new force in Democratic politics, activists who cut their teeth on the presidential campaigns of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
The full strength of these activists — many of whom are not old enough to vote — did not become clear until last fall, when they were key to one of the year’s most surprising upsets, helping Senator Edward J. Markey defeat a primary challenge from Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, who had been heavily favored to win.
In conversation, Ms. Walsh tends to downplay her movement, describing them as “Markey teens” and “theater kids” who “formerly ran, like, Taylor Swift or K-pop stan accounts.”
But the Markeyverse carried out a devastating political maneuver, firmly fixing the idea of Senator Markey as a left-wing icon and Representative Kennedy as challenging him from the right. They carried out ambitious digital organizing, using social media to conjure up an in-person work force — “an army of 16-year-olds,” as one political veteran put it, who can “do anything on the internet.”
They are viewed apprehensively by many in Massachusetts’ Democratic establishment, who say that they smear their opponents and are never held accountable; that they turn on their allies at the first whiff of a scandal; and that they are attacking Democrats in a coordinated effort to push the whole party to the left, much as the Tea Party did, on the right, to the Republicans.
Ms. Walsh, for one, is cheerfully aware of all those critiques.
In a podcast this spring , she recalled the day last summer when the Kennedy campaign singled her out in a statement , charging that negative campaigning online had created a vicious, dangerous atmosphere.
“I won’t lie, I was terrified,” she said. But then, she said, the fear evaporated.
“That’s when I realized I had a stake in this game: They are scared of me, a random teenager on the internet who just happened to be doing some organizing with her friends,” she said. “I think that made us all think, ‘Hey, they’re scared of us. We have power over them.’”
The next round
After Mr. Markey beat Mr. Kennedy in the primary, Ms. Walsh taped a copy of his victory speech to the wall of her bedroom in Cambridge and turned her attention to down-ballot races.
In his speech, Senator Markey had specifically thanked the Markeyverse for helping him beat Representative Kennedy. During a cycle in which campaigning moved almost entirely online, the young activists had done more than rebrand the candidate .
They seemed to have affected long-established voting patterns: In Massachusetts, the turnout among registered voters between 18 to 24 had shot up to 20.9 percent in the 2020 primary from 6.7 percent in 2018, and 2.1 percent in 2016, according to Tufts’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
The race had left them with a heady sense of power. Tristan Niedzielski, 17, a high school senior from Marlborough, decided to skip Model U.N. this year and instead signed up to work on two campaigns, one for a seat in the State House of Representatives, and one for a regional school committee.
He applied digital approaches he had picked up in the Markeyverse, using chat groups, direct messages and texts to convert friend networks into a volunteer work force. Both of his candidates lost, but narrowly, and he said he had learned something bigger: Outside of major cities, Massachusetts Democrats are not running sophisticated grass-roots campaigns.
“It’s this lax culture of ‘Who do you know?’” he said. “A lot of the state has never really seen any type of campaign political structure.”
Some of what the young progressives have done can best be described as opposition research, targeting Democrats whom they consider too far right.
In December, Ms. Walsh dug up off-color Twitter posts by Valentino Capobianco, a Kennedy supporter and candidate for a State House seat. (A few weeks later, allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against Mr. Capobianco, who would not comment for this article. He lost the support of leading Democrats, and won 8 percent of the vote.)
Then she went after Mr. Depelteau , 36, a self-described “centrist Democrat,” recirculating social media posts he had made criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement. (Mr. Depelteau, who withdrew from the race in April, said it was not because of Ms. Walsh’s criticisms. He then left Twitter, which he called “toxic.”)
She maintains a detailed spreadsheet on the declared candidates for mayor in Boston, monitoring donations from developers, the police and energy companies. She runs trainings for young activists , entertaining her Twitter audience with juicy nuggets from campaign finance records, like a state representative who used campaign funds to expense AirPods .
Her father, Chris Walsh, the director of Boston University’s college writing program, said her political enthusiasms have drifted over the last few years, from the existential cause of climate change to an exceedingly detailed focus on government and policy.
Plus, he said, “Calla is also a 16-year-old. Like most, and maybe more than most, she’s not particularly communicative.”
“Some of what I say is informed by looking at her Twitter,” he said.
The surge of grass-roots activism has come as a jolt in Massachusetts, which, because it is so firmly in the grip of one party, does not have a history of competitive primaries.
“The old guard, the consulting class, hasn’t figured out a way of combating it,” said Jordan Meehan, 29, who turned to Ms. Walsh to organize digital outreach for a campaign last year, when he challenged a 34-year incumbent for a State House seat . He lost but credits Ms. Walsh with devising a creative approach, reaching out individually to his social media followers and recruiting them for events and volunteer shifts.
“It really does threaten the whole consultant-industrial complex,” he said.
Numerous political strategists in Massachusetts refused to comment for this article. This is in part because, as one of them put it, “I don’t want to be bashing high schoolers on the record,” but equally, perhaps, because they are wary of becoming targets online.
The Kennedy-Markey race left a bitter aftertaste for much of the state’s political class, who say the young activists overlooked much of Mr. Markey’s 44-year congressional record and unnecessarily vilified Mr. Kennedy.
“Either Kennedy or Markey would have been good for the things they care most about,” said Matt Bennett, the co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank based in Washington, D.C. “The idea that Joe Kennedy wouldn’t have been good on climate change is ridiculous. The notion that he wasn’t pure enough is a thing we have to be careful about.”
And he warned against overestimating the power of the Markeyverse, noting that since that primary, many challenges to moderate Democrats have fallen short. Even in Massachusetts, he noted, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the presidential primary, beating out Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren.
“Everyone pays far too much attention to Twitter,” he said. “It’s a fun-house mirror. It’s not real. It’s why so many journalists fell into the Bernie-is-inevitable trap. This is not where Democratic voters are.”
One test of the young activists’ clout will come in the upcoming Boston mayoral race, in which many former Markey volunteers have thrown their support behind Michelle Wu, a Warren ally who has proposed major changes to policy on climate, transportation and housing . City elections in Boston have, traditionally, been decided by middle-aged and older voters. But the surge of youth activism has thrown all those assumptions into the air.
“It’s energy from the bottom up, it’s not some ward and town committee chair telling people how to vote,” said the political strategist Doug Rubin, who is advising the campaign of Boston’s acting mayor, Kim Janey. “Previously, all the insiders used to find out who was going to win, and then they would want to be with the winners.”
He said he welcomed the change. If it makes consultants nervous, Mr. Rubin added, it’s meant to.
“People who say, ‘I can’t control it, I don’t understand it,’ well, that’s the whole point — you can’t control it,” Mr. Rubin said. “If you’re good on the issues they care about, they’re going to be with you. If you’re not, they’re not.”
Markeyverse vs. Markey
That became clear last week when the Markeyverse went on the offensive.
Their target, this time, was Mr. Markey himself , who on Tuesday had put out a carefully worded Twitter thread on the mounting violence in Israel, apportioning some blame on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
This was a disappointment for many of the young progressives, who had been hoping for a sharp rebuke of Israel, like the ones that came from Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren , or from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez .
Though Mr. Markey’s voting record on foreign policy was no secret — he voted to authorize the occupation of Iraq in 2002, for example — it had faded into the background in their embrace of his candidacy, which focused heavily on his record on climate. Now, the group chats and Slack channels that comprise the Markeyverse were flooded with emotion, disappointment and betrayal.
“It’s horrible to watch, and it’s disappointing,” said Emerson Toomey, 21, one of the authors of Ed’s Reply Guys , a Twitter account that helped establish Mr. Markey as a progressive star.
Ms. Toomey, a senior at Northeastern University, was computing, with some bitterness, the “hundreds of thousands of hours” of unpaid labor she and her friends had provided to the senator. It made her question the compact she had assumed existed, that, in exchange for their support, he would accommodate their views on the issues that mattered.
“Maybe he just said those things to us to get elected,” she said.
They had shifted into full organizational mode, circulating a letter of protest that, Ms. Walsh hoped, could induce Senator Markey to revisit his positions on the conflict.
“He owes us much of his victory,” she said, “so we do have leverage over him.”
Over the days that followed, Mr. Markey’s office was buffeted with calls from young volunteers. Twitter was brutal. John Walsh, who had been Mr. Markey’s campaign manager and is now his chief of staff, said he understood that they were disappointed and sounded regretful. (He is no relation to Calla.)
“I can tell you, Senator Markey loves these people,” he said of the young organizers. “He fought very hard for everything he told them he would fight for.”
The Markeyverse, he said, now faced a key moment in their movement, determining whether they were willing to bend to preserve a relationship with an ally.
“If compromising is not in your toolbox, that’s a hard thing,” he said. “Finding that balance is something, I think, anybody who stays at this for a long period of time figures out.”
Late on Friday evening, Mr. Markey’s office offered a second statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . This time, it called on Israel to seek an immediate cease-fire, and invoked “defenseless Palestinian families who are already living in fear for their lives and the lives of their children.” Mr. Walsh said the statement was a response to Israel’s plans to deploy ground troops.
It could have been recorded as a win for the Markeyverse, a sign that the senator had to pay attention to their views. But Ms. Walsh wanted to push further , pointing to a list of four policy demands that volunteers had sent to the senator’s office .
The moment had become about proving something different: that the young progressives care more about issues than alliances. She concluded that they had been somewhat naïve last year. “We were politically infatuated with Ed during the campaign, which caused us to have those blind spots,” she said. “Looking back, I think we should not have developed those blind spots.”
She said that, in the future, she would probably never support another candidate whose views on the Middle East did not line up with hers. Then she ticked off a laundry list of legislation she would be happy to work on with Senator Markey, like climate change and universal health care.
She sounded, for better or for worse, like an experienced political hand.
“It was never about him as an individual,” she said. “We will always have this community, whether or not he is the figurehead. We have moved beyond this being about one candidate.”
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NO PERSONAL ATTACKS!
NO INFLAMMATORY OR DEROGOTORY STATEMENTS!
COMMENTS REGARDING THE ARTICLE ONLY; OFF-TOPIC COMMENTS WILL BE FLAGGED.
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT TRUMP; ALL COMMENTS THAT DISCUSS OR MENTION TRUMP ARE OFF TOPIC AND WILL BE FLAGGED.
Very few 16 year olds understand politics or issues well enough to be an informed participant. They should stick to their teenage gossip etc at least until they go to college or are otherwise no longer in high school.
I totally agree!
OTOH, the same is true for those in their 20s.
And 30s.
And...well very few people of any age understand these things in order to be informed participant.
(Don't believe? Just take a look at any political discussion here on NT!)
Before I get attacked for that, I should point out that the seeder of this article felt it necessary to point out, in the very first comment here:
NO PERSONAL ATTACKS!
NO INFLAMMATORY OR DEROGOTORY STATEMENTS!
COMMENTS REGARDING THE ARTICLE ONLY; OFF-TOPIC COMMENTS WILL BE FLAGGED.
THIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT TRUMP; ALL COMMENTS THAT DISCUSS OR MENTION TRUMP ARE OFF TOPIC AND WILL BE FLAGGED.
And I'm assuming that most NT users are hardly 16 year olds!
(OK, now that I've had the nerve to tell the truth-- let the personal attacks begin!
Like many people, for quite a while I've only had a relatively small circle of close friends. (Offline). Recently I've expanded that group group considerably. On rare occasions we discuss politics-- but unlike on most Social Media sites, not a single one of them do it to prostelyize their political views-- not do we think political "discussion" is about personally attacking others. Rather, in those discussions we are interested in getting at the actual facts...
And, finally, I should point out that we all don't have the same opinions. In fact, in 2016 one of my closest friends (who also happens to be one of the most brilliant people I know) mentioned he voted for Trump. Rather than launching onto the childish personal attacks we see so frequently here, many of us were curious-- mainly interested in why he made that decision.(His reasoning I found to be quite fascinating...but them again he is a highly successful software engineer....which implies that in order to be sucessful he has to be able to "think different"!)
Note to the "intellectually challenged" on NT-- I did not mention this to either praise or bash Trump but rather as an illusion as to how a group of intelligent and emotionally mature adults can have real political discussions rather than obsessing with attacks on other people.
Acceptable mention; you used it to clarify how you discuss politics in the real world rather than the slap fests we often see online. I merely didn't want to begin one of those aforementioned slap fights about what president did what and who's methods were better. That's not what this discussion is about. The method of your mention was to push the idea that we can in fact have a discussion as adults without the bully-behavior.
I am going to flag it though, because I maintain my promises. However, I will request that it's not removed based on the merit and peaceful discussion.
Do not remove the above; I am merely following my own rule.
Do whatever you want.
Your the moderator here, not me.
u8nlike so many people on Social Media, I don't have such a tremendous Ego (or such a lot of self-esteem) that I freak out everytime something I post is deleted.
Heck, I don't even give a flying fuck if I get suspended for a day...or more!
Although it may not seem that way, as I am a pretty typical ENTP, most of the arguments I get into are not to win nor prove a point-- but rather that's one of the unusual characteristics of an ENTP--- we argue for a very different reason that most of the other MBTI types.
(In fact, we have one unusual trait-- often when we're clearly winning an argument-- we switch sides!)
This is what I got taking that quiz:
Once in a blue moon, we agree on something JR... this is one of those times.
I have a 19, 17 and 12 year old at home... They've all stated that they're not prepared to make decisions for the country based on what little information they actually know regarding politics and the policies that are being put forth.
It appears that she/they have no in depth understanding of the issues. Ignorant enthusiasm will not accomplish much
There is something involved in this that goes beyond MA politics. It is the matter of primaries and who participates in them. Concerned citizens must get involved in them or the extremes will be producing our candidates for us.
Well the good news is: Republican legislatures in many states are doing what you just recommended-- they are currently passing legislation making it easier for people to vote...as we speak!
Teenagers, as a group, have never been described as patient and pragmatic. Teenagers aren't causing a problem, either.
The real problem is that our political system has been rigged to only allow two parties. So, any grassroots political effort has to gain control of one of the two parties for any chance of being heard. The self-serving political establishment created this mess.
The political establishment of the two parties wailing about what is happening doesn't merit any consideration. The two parties plowed this field and sowed this crop; too late to complain about the harvest. Warnings about the demise of democracy by a political establishment that fights against democracy is nothing more than empty lies.
Neither party stands for any principle other than winning elections. Being forced to choose either a Democrat or Republican isn't democracy; that's autocratic corruption. Teenagers are only playing by the rules put in place by the political establishment.
Couldn't agree more with the sentiment you laid out.
Just curious. When you say "The self-serving political establishment"...are you referring to just the Democrats..or just the Republicans..or both?
Curious minds want to know!
-----------
{Aside to the moderator: In case there's any doubt, this comment is not a personal attack. In fact, its not any sort of statement at all-- its a question).
Its neither derogatory nor inflammatory (after all its a question...not a statement!)
As its a question..a request for clarification of a previous comment that is not off topic-- my question is obviously on topic..in response to another on topic comment!
And finally, while opinions may differ-- my comment is neither directly about Trump...nor is it meant to imply anything about Trump!
[deleted]
Whoa-- wait a minute!
Are you saying that he is saying that only Democrats care only about winning elections?
Or that only Republicans only care about winning elections?
Or is that actually true of both parties-- or neither?
Or...something else?
The self-serving political establishment includes political leaders (both Democrat and Republican), revolving door political appointees, think-tank pundits, and money-grubbing journalists; all who view the world in terms of only two parties.
Ronald Reagan was a Democrat before he was a Republican. And both parties adopted Reagan's policies because they were popular and won elections. Why do Democrats quote Reagan and Lincoln? Why do Republicans quote FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson? Are they trying to convince voters that Democrats are Republicans and that Republicans are Democrats?
Actually I think what she is saying is "I want a ticket for this personal attack". Well that's the way it seems. Nice try to save though.
So then obviously you feel (your opinion of course) is that accusations that the Democratic party stands for wanting to institute a Socialist agenda is sheer ka-ka?
(And since they don't care about anything except winning elections, obviously any claims like the accusation that, say, Bernie Sanders or AOC want to make this country"Socialist" is totally false...???)
Democrats will stand for anything that allows them to win more elections than Republicans. And, yes, Republicans do the same thing.
Bernie Sanders does want to make the United States Socialist. He has said so. But Sanders advocates Democratic Socialism and not Communism.
The two parties are only arguing about the definition of Socialism and Capitalism. But the sole purpose of the argument by both parties is to win elections. Neither party is making honest arguments about anything.
Teenagers not causing a problem?
Perhaps. you are right ..??(Have you ever actually known any teenagers...I mean personally, not what you may have seen on seen on the Internet: fb, Tik-Tok, WSB,etc)
Whoa-- wait a minute!
Are you saying that he is saying that only Democrats care only about winning elections?
Or that only Republicans only care about winning elections?
Or is that actually true of both parties-- or neither?
Or...something else?
I usually cannot decipher anything else but that
the voting age in my area
By any chance ...do you live (or vote) in Germany?
The young will change the world, after they are older
Not until then