(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

This afternoon was chock full of information — and was a very long and crowded meeting.

Here in San Diego, the DNC’s Executive Committee met in a joint session with the ASDC. The day begain with an address from Governor (and DNC Chair) Howard Dean. He talked about the progress we’ve made over the past four years. In particular, one focus of many speakers was the new-found success among younger voters. For the first time in a long time, more people under the age of 35 voted than people over the age of 65 — a pretty stunning statistic. He also talked about how the DNC has been able to erase the technological advantage the Republicans once had.

But Governor Dean was not all positives. “With this extraordinary victory comes extraordinary responsibility. We have a lot of promises that were made and we have to keep those promises.” He spoke of the challenges to keep young people involved, and how we need to keep showing up and asking people in all reaches of the country for their support.

And Governor Dean made a bold statement: Texas is next.

That’s right, the buzz here is about our next big hurdle: winning in Texas. If we can win there, the back of the Republican Party nationally is truly broken.

After Gov. Dean spoke, we heard from several state party leaders about the success of the 50-state strategy and the importance of continuing to build on this historic program. Ray Buckley of New Hampshire talked about the amazing turn-around in New Hampshire and nationally, and presented Gov. Dean with a resolution from the ASDC. The numbers are pretty amazing — we’ve gained 6 Governorships, 14 seats in the Senate, 55 seats in the House, 6 state senate chambers, and 9 state house chambers under Gov. Dean’s chairmanship. We’ve gone from a 3% registration advantage for Democrats in 2005 to a 9% advantage today. Buckley was followed by Sam Lieberman, the Nevada chair, Larry Gates, the Kansas chair, and Caroline Valand, the North Carolina Executive Director. All had similar stories of successes due to the investments made by the DNC in our state parties.

Finally, the ASDC “presented” Gov. Dean with a token of our appreciation: a chair. A chair for the chair from the chairs. A Massachusetts chair-maker is hand-making a chair for Gov. Dean engraved and embossed with his name and title. He seemed genuinely surprised.

After a few more reports, we went into an informal “closed” session to hear some polling data and to have a conversation with representatives from the Obama transition. Steve Hildebrand, the deputy national campaign director for the Obama campaign, spoke about some of the things we learned from the campaign. He noted that Sen. Obama ended up with the largest popular vote margin in American history for any non-incumbent, and the 6th-largest popular vote margin overall.

He also noted the success of our voter registration efforts, singling out the importance of those efforts in Colorado. In Colorado, we were able to register 202,000 new voters; we won by 192,000 votes. We saw similar importance of the efforts in states like Florida, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Another key statistic from Colorado: voters age 18-29 made up a larger share of the electorate than those age 60+ — a pretty stunning statistic! We were able to win Colorado’s hispanic population by 61-38. And our success among younger voters showed not only in the electorate, but also among the registration rolls — there are now more registered voters in Colorado age 18-29 than voters age 60+.

Finally, we heard a wonderfully detailed discussion from the DNC pollster, Cornell Belcher. Since this was a closed session, I don’t want to reveal too much of his data, but one very key point: in 2004, the vast majority of Kerry voters polled said they were voting AGAINST George W. Bush rather than voting FOR John Kerry. As one Democratic strategist said, “We will never win an election like that!”

However, the tables turned in 2008. In 2008, 76% of Obama voters said they were voting FOR Obama, while only 4% said they were motivated to vote AGAINST McCain, and only 17% said they were voting AGAINST Bush policies. It was a very positive voting population for us!

One last encouraging point from Sam Lieberman, the Nevada Chair: apparently, in Nevada, the Republican Party office has had to close down, and the only employee is the state’s Executive Director, who is — get this — working out of his parents’ basement. Literally.

Nice.

Tomorrow morning will be solely for ASDC meetings. I’ll try to write more tomorrow afternoon.

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