NDN Blog

Matt Bai on the Dems in today's Times Magazine

Matt's piece today is well worth reading.  Among other things includes a reference to one of our recent post-election memos, summarized here.

More on the GOP Latino collapse in the Washington Post today

Another in a long line of pieces about the Republican meltdown with Latinos, and the role immigration played in bringing it about. 

Update: the Manhattan Institute's Tamar Jacoby weighs in through the LA Times with a similar message:

"ACROSS THE NATION, Republicans are asking what they did wrong in the 2006 midterms. This is a question with many answers. But few missteps were more foolish — and few will be harder to correct — than those made with Latino voters. The appointment this week of Cuban-born Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida to chair the Republican National Committee is a good way to make a new start. But the damage done in the last year goes deeper than symbolism, and it will take more than one appointment to undo it."

Nancy Pelosi in Prospect

With apologies for the self promotion, i just wrote a piece in Prospect on Nancy Pelosi. Prospect is roughly the UK equivalent of the Atlantic Monthly. Here is the gist of the argument:

Although the Republican implosion was the main reason for the Democrat landslide, Pelosi deserves partial credit for the result. First, she instilled discipline. An old American bumper sticker joke is “I’m not a member of a political organisation. I’m a Democrat.” Pelosi has gone some way to squashing this stereotype. A study by Congressional Quarterly showed Democrats at their most united for 50 years. She has achieved this unity at least partly by frightening her party into line. Under her leadership, Democrats might not land many blows, but they make far fewer mistakes.

Second, she achieved the near impossible task of uniting her party on Iraq. The war presented Pelosi with a dilemma. She voted against it. But her lack of credibility on military matters meant that she could not argue for withdrawal without playing into Republican hands. She cleverly got around this by using Congressman John Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran, to make the case for withdrawal. She also managed to hammer out an uneasy truce among her colleagues. Democrats would go into the election arguing for “strategic redeployment.” The policy was close to meaningless. But when Iraq began to deteriorate over the summer, Democrats were just unified enough to take advantage.

Third, Pelosi successfully denied the Republicans victories. Most important was the 2005 battle over social security. Bush had made reform of America’s state pension system a signature issue. Pelosi spearheaded a smart fightback. She cannily mixed denials that the system was broken with a campaign to scare American OAPs about Bush’s plan. This ruthlessness was evident elsewhere, not least in her approach to corruption. When the FBI found $90,000 in the freezer of a prominent congressional Democrat, Pelosi quickly fired him. Such decisiveness surprised her colleagues and helped insulate her party from the charges of sleaze besetting the Republicans. It also meant that Democrats could take full advantage of the Foley scandal, a major tipping point in the campaign cycle.
 

(As ever, this is not to be taken as NDN's view - merely my own musings.)

Making sense of the 2006 elections: a recap of recent post-election analysis

Be sure to read this e-mail Simon just sent out - there's a ton of good stuff in it. (Note: this can also be found in memo form on the NDN website here)

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We’ve all had a week to think about it, and there is now little question that 2006 was an historic event. It doesn’t matter if you call it a wave or a thumpin. This election now takes its place alongside the other the game-changing elections in our nation’s recent history: 1994, 1980, 1974, 1964 and even 1932.

I’m very proud that our work here at NDN has helped to put this election in context, and explain through the media the meaning of these important events. You can read some of the many pieces that feature our analysis: on NPR (here and here); at Business Week, La Opinion (here and here), Investor's Business Daily, The New York Times (here and here), The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Week In Review, Newsweek, US News And World Report, Reuters, The Washington Post (here and here), The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times (here and here), The Miami Herald, The St. Petersburg Times, The St Louis Post-Dispatch, The Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, The Santa Fe New Mexican, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill, and blogs like DailyKos and TPMCafe. Also listen to our commentary on The Al Franken Show on Air America.

Here at NDN we’ve been thinking a lot about how to think about what just happened, as I’m sure you have too. To help make better sense of this historic event, I wanted to send along a compilation of all the four key documents we have put out, trying to contextualize and explain the magnitude of last week’s events.

  • My initial narrative, highlighting a “day of reckoning” and discussing the end of the generation-long conservative ascendancy, along with a second piece on the same theme.

  • Our post-election analysis, highlighting some of and the practical reality that the Republicans are no longer America’s dominant party.

  • An analysis of the importance that the economy played in the victory, and the clear mandate for economic action that follows from this.

  • A memo outlining the strategic importance of our victory, and the republican failure, in the year long battle over immigration.

We also recommend the following essays that you might find helpful - some of the best analysis on the elections from friends in the progressive family.

  • NPI fellow Joe Trippi in the Washington Post talking about an election that kicked "open the door to a new era in American politics."

  • Matt Bai, of the New York Times, in a preview of an essay to come out this Sunday, on the "last election of the 20th century."

  • John Podesta, of the Center for American Progress, gives his view on the impact of the election for the conservative movement.

  • Bruce Reed, head of the DLC, gives his thoughts on the election, and our lame duck president, in his columns over at Slate.

  • Tom Schaller’s post-election analysis from The American Prospect (here and here).

  • Ezra Klein, at The American Prospect, rebutting the notion that last week’s elections were a victory for conservatives.

  • The website immigration2006 to get an even more in depth look at how immigration played in the election.

  • Stan Greenberg's comprehensive post-election polling analysis on "The Meltdown Election."

It was a remarkable election. But as important as it was, it feels like even more important ones lie ahead.

Unpublished
n/a

The diversity of today's Democratic Party is a great strength

Our government was designed to be a contentious, dynamic, messy, ineffecient thing.  A system where people with diverse views could come together, debate, argue and hash out a rough consensus on the best course for the nation.  By designing a system that allocated power in such a diffuse manner, our Founding Fathers respected the rights of an individual, and protected these rights.  To work, our government requires a diversity of views, and requires that those views are not transformed or subsumed into a single national path.  Tolerance, an early and vital American ethic, becomes the paramount ethic for leaders in such a system and for the system itself to succeed. 

To succeed in such a system, a political party must then best understand how to encourage and manage diversity, finding again and again a dynamic and ever changing consensus on the major issues of the day.  To that end Steny Hoyer's election as majority leader seems to be a good thing. 

The new Democratic Congressional Majority is a diverse lot.  There is great generational, regional, racial, ethnic, gender, and ideological diversity in this new group.  There is no "majority way."  There are liberals, blacks, moderates, Hispanics, conservatives, Southerners, Mormons, moderates, Westerners, business people, Midwesterners, farmers, Asians, cityfolk, Northeasterners, ranchers, surburbanites, Catholics, immigrants, vets, countryfolks, the first woman Speaker and even a Muslim.  Sure sounds like 21st century America to me. 

From this diverse Party, The Democratic Congressional Leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will have to craft a rough consensus of the major issues of the day.  But this is what our system requires - negotiated and hard fought settlements.  The more diverse Nancy's leadership team is the more likely they will be able to manage this process of finding rough consensus in Congress, something the Republicans were so unable to do.  Wherever you came down on the Murtha/Hoyer battle, it feels to me as if the Hoyer win was somehow the best outcome for a Party right now that has no settled path forward on the big issues of the day, but will have to hash them out, together, in a respectful way, in the days and months ahead.  Having Steny there, who clearly comes from a different part of the Party then Nancy, will make it much more likely that the Democratic rough consensus is more representative, and thus more durable, than perhaps it would have been under a Murtha tenure. 

As America itself grows more racially and ethnically diverse, this capacity to show tolerance, manage diversity and find consensus will become even more essential for political success.  The events of this week show the Democrats seem comfortable with this type of the politics, the Republicans not.  Their new RNC Chairman, a minority himself, is lambasted for his support of immigration reform, and Trent Lott, a leader with a history of racism, is elevated up in his Party.  As we move further into the 21st century, it is increasingly clear that this comfort with diversity - ideological, regional, ethnic, racial, generational and gender - will be one of the Democratic Party's greatest stengths. 

Greenberg on the "meltdown election"

Essential reading: pollster Stan Greenberg released a first cut of his big post-election poll last thursday. Yesterday, he put out the full version. Hat tip also to the Campaign for America's Future, who i think paid for it.  

An Awful Lott

But what a sad statement Lott's return to the leadership makes: With all his history, it appears that the senator from Mississippi is still the best that Republicans seeking renewal of their party's fortunes can come up with.

Back to the Future With Trent Lott, John Nichols at the Nation gives an overview of why everyone should be a little regretful that the GOP decided not to pick the reasonable, moderate Lamar Alexander to be their Whip. 

ThinkingBlue Search and Google Co-op

My cohorts and I at my company have been interested for a while at some of the functionality that Google has been opening up in their API’s and other services. I’ve been specifically looking as to how they could be put to use to help the liberal and progressive online (and mobile) community…

The first experiment is us playing with Google Co-op… http://google.com/coop/cse/overview
This Google service allows third parties to set up highly focused search engines powered by Google searching out specific subject matter, content and specific groups of websites…

So out of building something we could personally use, but also that might be of use to the larger community, we set up ThinkingBlue Search.

This is a custom search engine powered by Google Co-op focused specifically on searching out across the spectrum of politically progressive ideas and discussion.

ThinkingBlue Search is currently covering about 400 web sites, including every major progressive think tank (over 40 of them including NDN and NPI), every major progressive blog that discusses politics and policy (over 200 of them so far), every major official Democratic web site including every single local State party website (about 70-ish of them), every major liberal political journal and magazine in print and online (over 25), most of the major progressive syndicated columnists (right now just over 20 and growing), most of the progressive watchdog groups (also about 20 at the moment) and lastly, it also searches the early progressive political wikis that exist (about 10 or so).

..and we’re adding sites daily.

See what you think. Try it out, and as ThinkingBlue Search is very much a stable alpha at this point (and Google Co-op itself is a beta) but I would love early feedback, which you can leave in the comments here... or email to tchambers AT media50group.com..

McCain: Looking Wobbly

Its interesting to see the beginnings of a McCain backlash take shape. Yesterday he was rebuked by the top general in Iraq, who (for reasons that should be perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention) knows that more troops in Iraq is not an option for a host of good reasons. Today, CAP take a close look at McCains "dangerous vision", otherwise known as the plan to send another hundred thousand more troops. It has the benefit of being politically completely infeasible. And that is about the best which can be said about it. It is too early to say the wheels are coming off. But, frankly, McCain looks weaker this week than the week before last. 

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will deliver two major speeches today to prominent conservative political groups -- GOPAC and the Federalist Society -- in what is being billed as his assessment of the current state of conservatism and "how he would lead it." For an American public that just recently registered its utter dissatisfaction with the current course in Iraq, McCain's prescription for the future will be extremely unsatisfying. He has repeatedly called for an increase in U.S. troop levels, isolating himself from most national security experts and U.S. generals in Iraq. Yesterday, Gen. John Abizaid, the Commander of U.S. Central Command, rejected McCain’s calls for increased U.S. troop levels, informing him that he “met with every divisional commander, Gen. [George] Casey, the core commander, Gen. [Martin] Dempsey” and asked them if bringing “in more American troops now, [would] add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq and they all said ‘no.’” Escalation in Iraq would be a disastrous course for our nation's strategic security interests. Moreover, the overstretched American military does not have the manpower to provide more troops in Iraq. "He would just repeat the mistake of Vietnam," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. "If McCain refuses to acknowledge that some wars can become simply unwinnable, he may be exposing a weakness in his thinking that ultimately deprives him of the presidency."

 

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