I just saw this review of a new book called Millennial Makeover: YouTube, MySpace and the Remaking of American Politics by Morely Winogrand and Michael Hais. The reviewer, Mike Connery, is himself the author of a book on Millennials in politics called Future Majority. The political implications of generational theory interest me at least as much as the technology and workplace implications, which is part of the reason that I am moonlighting as a messaging strategist for a local Congressional campaign.

In my consultations with the professional campaign staff, it appears that convention thinking about the "youth vote" still refelects the disengaged voting patterns of GenX and the young Boomers in the 1970s (the ones who did not elect George McGovern president, for example, despite the urgings of Hunter S. Thompson and others). Barack Obama's success in getting young voters excited is unsurprising to them, but the fact that the under-26 crowd is actually showing up at the polls really seems to have thrown them for a loop.

Clay Shirky made an interesting point about Howard Dean's abortive run in 2004, noting that his use of technology such as meetups and web-rings did more to prove the community-building value of social networking tools than it said for their efficacy in actually delivering the results politicians care about, e.g., votes. Obama seems to have solved that problem. His supporters not only get excited and give money, they actually turn up - not merely to vote, but also to endure often lengthy and confusing caucuses with hardcore party regulars their parents' age or older.

Part of the credit belongs to Obama's campaign. He is a political organizer by trade, after all. Most of the real change, however, comes down to a newly-engaged and sophisticated electorate. Millennials are different from GenX and Boomers in many noticeable ways, and it should be no suprirse that their approach to citizenship is different as well. Strauss and Howe would suggest (and I suspect Winogrand and Hais would agree) that it would be so regardless of the existence of social networking technology, because the collaborative values of Millennials is part of their generational identity as civic builders. That's a tough counterfactual to prove, however, because social networks are here and they are obviously playing an important, if not decisive, role in the mobilization of young people.

In any case, I am looking forward to adding these books to my reading list.