AS GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS stepped to the mike, the young crowd whistled and cheered. “Because you voted in 1992,” Stephanopoulos said, “there are more student loans for young people. Because you voted in 1992, there are fewer guns on the streets. Because you voted in 1992, we made efforts to clean up the environment and to protect a woman’s right to choose. But in 1994, a lot of young people stayed home and you saw a Republican Congress come in led by Speaker Gingrich, who tried to take away a woman’s right to choose.”
This was the non-partisan message of a non-partisan rally organized in part by the non-partisan organization Rock the Vote, run by a former Clinton White House official and supposedly “dedicated to protecting freedom of speech, educating young people, and motivating them to speak out.” Other speakers at the rally included heartthrob Billy Baldwin and a token conservative, Republican pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, who described the event as “a Hard Rock Cafe filled with screaming 17-year-old girls who only wanted to catch a glimpse of Baldwin and Stephanopoulos.”
