Rocking the Vote to the Left
That left-wing group called Rock the Vote has released its latest silly new video urging the youth of America to vote. But vote for what? As usual, they featured celebrities and young people urging a turnout for marriage equality, for global warming awareness and against deforestation. It comes with visual aids for their pet issues. There’s a globe with an old-fashioned ice bag on it, a gun with a padlock on the trigger, and a ball-and-chain representing student loans. There are those edgy figures, like the rapper whose “song” drones throughout the video: “My name is Lil Jon and I’m turning out for the legalization or marijuana.” HBO star Lena Dunham doesn’t get naked (as she usually does), but she does proclaim, “My name is Lil Lena, and I’m turning out for reproductive rights.”
Co-authored by Tim Graham.
That left-wing group called Rock the Vote has released its latest silly new video urging the youth of America to vote. But vote for what? As usual, they featured celebrities and young people urging a turnout for marriage equality, for global warming awareness and against deforestation.
It comes with visual aids for their pet issues. There’s a globe with an old-fashioned ice bag on it, a gun with a padlock on the trigger, and a ball-and-chain representing student loans.
There are those edgy figures, like the rapper whose “song” drones throughout the video: “My name is Lil Jon and I’m turning out for the legalization or marijuana.” HBO star Lena Dunham doesn’t get naked (as she usually does), but she does proclaim, “My name is Lil Lena, and I’m turning out for reproductive rights.”
What’s completely, transparently fraudulent at this late date is Rock the Vote announcing on the FAQ section of its website that the group “does not support or endorse candidates, nor do we advocate for one political party over another. We don’t care who you vote for – we just want you to vote, period.”
This is not just wrong, it’s dishonest. And they’ve been doing it for years. On that same page, the group boasts, “Millennials are a huge voting bloc that can and does swing elections. The youth vote is a huge force for social change. We are the most diverse generation yet. … We will swing elections this year, and we could even swing the Senate with our voting block in 2014 if turnout is high.”
But news outlets like CNN and The Washington Post still regurgitate the “nonpartisan” baloney for them. Let’s just guess that if the group thinks they are a “huge force for social change,” that doesn’t match with “We don’t care who you vote for.” The ads clearly explain which causes of “social change” they favor, and President Obama would embrace their leftist agenda. But they’re nonpartisan.
They’ve been leftists from the start. The group was founded in 1990 by record executive Jeff Ayeroff to protest against the Parents Music Resource Center advocating warning labels for filthy rock and rap lyrics. Ayeroff has a list as long as your arm of Democratic donations – to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Boxer, and so on.
Rock the Vote first worked hard to elect President Bill Clinton. After that, they hired as their leader Ricki Seidman, who’d worked for Mondale, Dukakis and Clinton – three Democratic presidential campaigns in a row. This Clinton enabler also talked Anita Hill into smearing Clarence Thomas as a brutish sexual harasser in a failed attempt to kill his Supreme Court nomination in 1991.
The group’s new leader, Ashley Spillane, has the perfect partisan resume for Rock the Vote: stints at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the AFL-CIO Political Department, the short-lived Tom Vilsack for President campaign in 2007, and most recently a group called Democratic GAIN, which trains activists “to make sure that the progressive movement has the talent it needs to achieve landmark victories.”
They really ought to just own up to it and call the group Rock the Landmark Liberal Victories. If they can make that happen in 2014, that would be impressive indeed.
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