College Democrats Are Taking A Stand For The Next AOC

By Christianna Silva


Led by the Harvard College Dems, more than 70 chapters of the College Democrats of America, the youth outreach arm of the Democratic National Committee with over 100,000 college and university members, are boycotting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee soon following the categorize determined to integrate a new policy that would protect incumbents from primary challenges. And the DCCC won’t even meet with the College Democrats over the change.


In early April, the DCCC, a political action committee that works to elect Democrats to the Home of Representatives by helping fund their campaigns, reported that it would not grant contracts to pollsters, strategists, or communications specialists working with Democrats who mount challenges to incumbents in 2020 – virtually blacklisting an entire sort of political reformers, who usually are progressive.


“I think this DCCC move [is] really a move to consolidate power and remove the structures that have allowed people to hold politicians accountable,” Jeremy Stepansky, the legislative director of the Harvard College Dems told MTV News of the DCCC’s planned policy. “I think it is absolutely important that they listen to young people.”


College Democrats can make or break an election. They're one of the biggest groups of people who canvass and phone-bank for candidates, they do massive voter-registration drives on college campuses, and they are a pipeline for future campaign managers, staffers, and politicians.


Some Democratic leaders think the new DCCC policy should make it easier for Democrats to take leadership of the U.S. Government. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the Washington Post that she largely helps DCCC’s policy, saying her “focus is strictly on winning the election and to putting our resources where it will win the election for the American people.”


Although other Democrats aren’t so sure. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recommended that her over-four million Twitter followers donate to individual candidates rather than to the DCCC, and for good reason: If this policy was in place in 2018, it may have impacted her run against incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley. It also could have stopped the successful challenges mounted by California Congressman Ro Khanna and Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.


Ocasio-Cortez’s protest was one of the reasons the College Democrats felt empowered to boycott the DCCC. This is one of the initial times that the College Democrats have leveraged such a massive boycott against the DCCC.


“I think [Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez’s] advocacy was sort of the genesis of this campaign,” Stepansky told MTV News. “As College Democrats, we have a responsibility to use our platform to hold people in power accountable. And we hope that a coalition of college democrats rallied around this call to boycott will send a collective message to DCCC that young people and their base won't tolerate their try to [control the outcome of] these races whose [candidates] can typically from historically marginalized communities that we should be really attempting to elect.”


Unsurprisingly, the DCCC isn’t budging to progressives asking for their policy to not be implemented; according to New York Magazine, “protecting incumbents is a core piece of [DCCC’s] mission,” given that incumbents tend to win elections at higher rates than political newcomers. What is surprising, is that the leaders of the DCCC don’t seem to be taking College Democrats seriously, Hank Sparks, the president of the Harvard College Democrats, told MTV News, because the DCCC is still refusing to meet with the categorize. DCCC also did not respond to a request for comment from MTV News.


Several people feel that the DCCC could be remiss to not take young people seriously, because the order has proven time and time again how committed they are about making themselves heard. For instance, last year, Harvard College Democrats knocked on thousands of doors on behalf of Jared Golden in Maine's second congressional district. He won by just one percentage point.


“College Democrats across the nation have an enormous, huge electoral impact,” Sparks told MTV News. He added that the Democratic party is being elevated by younger leaders like Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley, nevertheless that these young leaders tend to push the party to the left and cause some establishment and centrist politicians worried about electability. “I think the DCCC is scared of us and I think that they require to be,” he added.


College Democrats count on continuing to fight to have their voices heard. If the DCCC doesn’t respond to their boycott with a meeting, Stepansky says they plan to continue “increasing the size of the coalition [and] also potentially I think contacting major donors and seeing if they would sign onto the boycott in solidarity... I don't know if we're going to take those steps, nevertheless I think those sort of actions could be accommodating in increasing the pressure on DCCC.”


The sort also plans to continue their work in helping elect Democrats, whether or not they’re running against incumbents. For instance, Pennsylvania College Democrats are still calling on behalf of Marie Newman, a Democrat complicated long-time incumbent Daniel Lipinski in Illinois's third congressional district. Kelsey Denny, the president of the Pennsylvania State College Democrats, told MTV News that Newman is one of the reasons her categorize of College Democrats felt compelled to join this boycott.


“When the DCCC is defending these incumbents and not allowing vendors to help any new voices in the party, it's just sort of sustaining this old structure that is fully outdated also it doesn't permit these new and some days marginalized voices to come up in the party,” Denny mentioned, adding: “We believe that having those bases and having support for people who are new to the party is absolutely key to the success of the party.”