American Forum

Is your vote up for grabs? Karen Finney and Kevin Madden are certainly trying.

By: Claire Rychlewski

Democratic political strategist Karen Finney and Republican political strategist Kevin Madden sparred over partisan issues at last night’s American Forum, while the audience furiously narrated the debate on a “Live-Tweet” projection behind them.
             The question for discussion last night was, “Is your vote up for grabs?” Both Finney and Madden answered with a resounding yes, as they gradually slipped out of their initial bipartisan positions and began to assert their own political opinions—possibly in hopes of swaying their mostly 18-24 aged audience. 

The American Forum is an hour-long recorded interactive program with a live town-hall audience. Typically, analysts that specialize in national and international media issues are brought to answer audience questions. Jane Hall, former LA Times Reporter, and associate professor of communications at American University, hosts the forum. The panelists were Karen Finney, MSNBC political analyst and former communications director for the Democratic National Committee, and Kevin Madden, a public relations executive, Republican strategist and former press secretary to Governor Mitt Romney's campaign and House minority leader John Boehner.

             The discussion started off neutrally. Finney and Madden both agreed that the use of social media and popular culture are most effective in getting the youth vote. Candidates and their campaign staff are learning to engage in what Finney called an “ongoing, two-way conversation” with young voters, and this is mostly happening online. In fact, the concept of social media was not only present in the discussion. Behind the panelists, there was a projection screen allowing the audience to tweet their opinions of the forum using an American Forum hashtag as the forum was happening.

             Quickly, though, the discussion shifted, when a question as raised as to whether President Obama would be able to get the youth vote like he did in 2008. Right away each panelist swung back into partisan politics, as Finney maintained that Obama is very popular with the base, and will turn out the base, while Madden said that young voters will hold him and his party accountable for the lack of change they see.

             Debates on Obama’s presidency and approval rates and Tea Party motives followed and took over the discussion, as Karen Finney repeated, “I’m going to have to be partisan here,” several times. The objective of the forum revealed itself to be a provocation of bipartisan debate, as some of the moderator’s questions were politically loaded—questions like whether President Obama was lecturing young people about voting in a recent article in Rolling Stone, or whether the media is backing President Obama.

Melissa Elgendy, a junior at American University, was unimpressed with the discussion. While she agreed with some of the points about the use of social media to galvanize young voters, she also felt like she did not learn anything new. “It kind of just seemed like they were attacking each other, just coming at each other with numbers and statistics,” she said.