July 27, 2004

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Not the Democrats, but yours truly. As I sit here at 1 a.m trying to digest the last few days here in Boston, MA, I can’t believe that the only Harvard graduate in WWE history got smoked by a 9-year-old earlier in the day. It was a trivia contest with Jay Leno’s NBC “The Tonight Show” while I was on the floor of the Fleet Center. The Fleet Center must be bad luck. I got my nose destroyed there at the Royal Rumble in January 2003. Today, I get my reputation destroyed.

“The Tonight Show” was walking the floor of the convention with Noah McCullough, a three-and-a-half foot tall candidate for the 2032 presidential election. He is also a presidential history genius. He beat me in a presidential trivia contest 6 to 1 - after I had challenged him. (He had just defeated Mick Foley, who fared better than me, too.) I can’t get this off my mind, but maybe it will seem less important as I relate to you what has happened in the last 36 hours.

For a first-time conventioneer, this has been an absolute whirlwind tour.

A major part of the convention is about getting together with people with similar goals and sharing the energy. That is sometimes best accomplished through partying. And young Democrats know how to party. This city is crawling with young, motivated people from all over this fair nation. Ivory, Mick Foley, and I spent Sunday night at Avalon nightclub, at an event sponsored by the Youth Democratic GAIN and Rock the Vote. And rock we did. While kicking it old school to some turntable work by my hero and yours Biz Markee (Oh baby yooooooooouuuuuuuuu, you got what I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed, but you say she’s just a friend….), we had a chance to listen to some rousing speeches by Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, Natalie Portman (fellow Harvard graduate who dated the guy who lived next door to me her freshman and my senior year), and Jerry Springer.

Side note #1 – After hearing major politicians speak to a motivated audience for the first time live and in person, television sound bites do not do them justice. Before knowing what a candidate is about, you really have to see a long-form speech. That means either showing up or watching C-SPAN, because the rest of the media isn’t going to show you that side of them. Dean’s passion was palpable.

Side note #2 – My Natalie Portman story from college: The new Star Wars Playstation game had just come out, and my roommate Ted had been playing for about eight straight hours during the day. As we were walking down the stairs of the dorm to dinner, Natalie was walking up. We all gave each other our little “ooh, there she is looks” as she walked by and she didn’t make eye contact with us (not many girls made eye contact with me when I was 300 pounds). Ted, having spent the last eight hours trying to save her character in the video game, pipes up, “I just spent all day trying to save you, and you don’t even say ’hi’ to me?” Good times. Now back to the substance.

Monday morning, I made a return to the old stomping grounds to take part in a Harvard Institute of Politics panel, “Students Motivating Students”, which covered many aspects of voting on college campuses (This Harvard mention is not my fault). Joe Trippi, the famed Howard Dean campaign manager and fellow panel member, came very close to receiving an Honor Roll, or at least a knockout shot with the mask, like the one which gave me a victory over the Dudleys at 2003’s Bad Blood.

We were discussing why young people don’t vote, and their numbers have been steadily declining for a while. A very smart young man in the audience asked the question, “What about 2004 will be different?” I made the point, trying to put Trippi over a bit for his strong usage of the Internet in the Dean campaign, that this year the Internet is a more powerful tool than ever.

Through websites like www.Smackdownyourvote.com, young people can get access to the information on the issues that will get them to the polls. Everybody is passionate about at least one issue, whether it’s Iraq, paying for college, or access to health care. I will forever stand behind the philosophy that every rational person will vote when they realize how exactly it is in their own interests and the interests of their country. I was on a roll.

So, Trippi stole my thunder and disagreed with me. I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the fact that his point was terrible. His rebuttal was that people have to stop thinking about personal interests, and start realizing that voting is their responsibility, and that this country is better and stronger when they participate. Visionary. Everybody in the room loved it. But that is preaching to the choir. The problem was that that message is the same load of crap that everyone has been told for the last 40 years, and the declining voter numbers show that it’s a message that just doesn’t work. Damn the experts.

We have to reach the voters that we haven’t been able to reach before. The next brilliant point to follow was by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Professor David King. I’m going to give Professor King a platform here, because he “gets it.” This is the problem with the system he shared with me before the session. “The majority of American children, birth through 18 years old, today live in homes in which no parent present in that home has ever voted. Generation X is not voting, maybe 40 percent at most, and their children haven’t witnessed it happen. America’s young people are now growing up without the most important way of learning how to vote—the example set by their parents. They are also growing up without schools teaching them about civics. The two traditional pinnacles of transferring democratic values, families and schools, have been crumbling, and that’s why movements like Smackdown Your Vote! are so important, because they give legitimacy to voting.”

If we want higher participation, we’ve got to find a way to reach those young people that aren’t at four-year colleges and aren’t online (seems like an odd thing to say in a blog). That’s a very hard thing to do. Young people at the convention know that. Ann, 28, and an employee in the Kerry campaign said, “The majority of young people don’t vote, so it’s really important you guys are getting this issue out there. The people at the bottom have the least amount of representation, but they are the most dependent on the government, and that’s why it’s about getting the message out there.”

Throughout the first day and a half of the convention, I wanted to find out why the young people at the convention are so darn motivated and involved in politics. Amazingly, the first thing that every young Democrat told me was it was because they hate Bush so much.

Ann said, “The fact that George Bush wasn’t elected, but ‘appointed,’ I think set off a lot of voters to think they don’t have any power. George Bush is not going to help me.”

Jenna, another Kerry campaign employee, said, “The past few years I’ve seen how Bush has taken this country down at so many levels.”

Matthew Schmidt, 19-year-old delegate from Preston, Iowa, told me that he’s so involved in politics because, “Right now the motivation is to get George Bush out of the White House.”

It’s interesting that these younger delegates disparage Bush before they support Kerry. I think the test for Kerry is to come out of this convention starting to get his supporters talking about why he should be President, rather than why Bush shouldn’t be. Answering our 18-30 Voter Issues Paper is a good start. I hope more people go read his and President Bush’s answers. So far, the convention does not seem to be focused on getting these messages to young voters.

One thing is clear. I’m going to avoid 9-year-old experts in American Presidential history. Stay tuned for my next column on Wednesday at noon.

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