Part of the candidate supporter series

It's hard not to say that the work of youth vote advocates in Iowa has been magnificent.  They've shown themselves willing to flex their muscle, even in a Democratic primary, and they produced results.

Whereas just yesterday, it looked like more and more Democratic campaigns were abandoning student voters, and most media coverage related it as an Obama-Clinton spat instead of weighing in on substance.  Organizations like Young Voter PAC, Iowa PIRG, and Rock the Vote put out tough statements, worked behind the scenes, and stuck to their principles.

Let me make clear: The idea that a student should only be able to vote in the community they come from, rather than in the community they live in, is in itself an attack on the student vote as such.  And it's wrong to spontaneously create new standards of citizenship that apply to no other category of citizen but students.  No other Iowa resident would be challenged for spending the holidays with family and returning home early to Iowa to cast their vote.

Today, the Iowa Democratic Party released a statement making clear all Iowa students are eligible to caucus and making clear their intention to encourage all Iowa students to exercise that right.  Iowa'sleftyblogosphere seems unanimous in challenging Yepsen on this.

And the Clinton campaign released a near flawless statement today (despite insisting once again on raising the specter of youth voter fraud):

"Hillary wants every student who lives in Iowa and wants to caucus in Iowa and is eligible to caucus in Iowa to do so. We hope that they will and we hope that they will caucus for Hillary[...] We hope and trust that every campaign is making sure that potential caucus goers have all the information they need, and in no way explicitly or implicitly encourages anyone to break the law by participating in two places. Not only is it okay to engage students in Iowa, but it is critical to ensure that they are active participants in the process, and we are doing everything we can to get them out to caucus."

What I like about the statement is that it not only an endorsement of the right of all Iowa students to participate, but it is a commitment to work in engaging those students.

This is a dramatic reversal from their earlier statement:

There's a big difference here. We are not systematically trying to manipulate the Iowa caucuses with out of state people. We don't have literature recruiting out of state college students.

And an improvement over their last "clarification":

Senator Clinton... hopes that all Iowa students who have made Iowa their permanent home participate in the caucus.

So why am I still not optimistic?  For one, I'm still worried that while comments disparaging student voters received wide coverage, such as Clinton's comments insisting that students don't pay taxes or Dodd's comments that students from out of state aren't legitimate Iowans, retractions have been mostly mailed out to progressive youth voting advocates and haven't received much attention.

Second, let me pause for a minute on the issue of youth voter fraud, a bizarre topic to suddenly be releasing press releases about.

On the stump yesterday at Grinnell College, a college where all but 13% of students are from out of state, Bill Clinton responded to a question about the student vote:

Clinton responds to the question first by arguing that a "caucus" is not in fact an "election" and thus should only be for "Iowans" --- that a caucus is inherently limited, in that service members and workers on a night-shift are disenfranchised by not being allowed to vote absentee.  This is an argument against part of the caucus format, but how is it an argument for disenfranchising student voters?

Second, Clinton argued that the decision to vote was a matter of conscience, arguing that students should caucus only if they consider themselves Iowans.  Iowa Independent's Chase Martyn was at the Grinnell College event and had this to say:

Implied in Clinton's argument is the premise that college students feel too strongly connected to politics in two different states, as if that is the true problem: conniving young people are so eager to vote that they will do so in two different states at the same time.  Does anyone actually think that's the problem?

In truth, college students, like other young people, feel increasingly disconnected from politics, whether we're talking about politics where they grew up or politics where they live now.  There is no epidemic of college students who vote in too many elections. To the contrary, the problem is that they don't vote enough.  Viewed in this light, Clinton's argument sets up nothing more than a straw man designed to suppress youth turnout.

Lastly, Clinton repeatedly implicitly criticized same-day registration for opening the door to voter fraud, arguing that it allows people to come in, claim to be a resident, vote, and then leave.  Instead of forcing young people to make a true commitment to a place by registering to vote in advance apparently, voters can vote and run.  It is odd, to say the least, that he would challenge the idea that perhaps has the greatest short-term potential of boosting voter turnout.

Maybe I'm cynical because last week saw a string of candidates saying one thing on the stump and then releasing press releasing saying another about the right of students from out of state to participate.

Needless to say, the strategy is beginning to backfire on Iowa campuses.  Clinton campaign volunteers in Des Moines were confused on their own campaign's position on Iowa students from out of state when doing phone banking for the Grinnell area.  And Clinton's rally at the University of Iowa was sparsely attended and the audience, according to Iowa Independent, was there for Bill and had little interest in voting for Hillary.

Over the weekend, Biden and Richardson announced that they do not support the right of Iowa students from out of state to caucus.  Dodd has had four different positions in the span of as many days.  The Clinton campaign seemed to retract her earlier comments and then notsomuch.

What is so shocking is that so few in the Democratic Party establishment and no one else in the Democratic primary field has weighed in on behalf of the utterly unproblematic, long-held progressive position that students have every right, and should be strongly encouraged, to register to vote.  How hard can this be?

There's more...