NDN Blog

We are pleased to offer a recording of NDN's signature presentation, With Democrats Things Get Better, from Friday, Feb 11th, 2022.  This was a particularly lively session, with lots of great discussion and loads of new material.  Hope you will check it out. 

With Dems is a 25 minute long data-filled look at the performance of the two American political parties since the end of the Cold War.  What we learn is that Democrats have repeatedly made things better when in power; the GOP not so much.  It is as we say in the deck the most important least understood story in American politics today. 

Perhaps the most remarkable stat in the deck - since 1989, and the Cold War ended, 42m net new jobs have been created in America.  40m - 95% - have been created under Democratic Presidents. 

We will be presenting With Dems once or twice a month through the end of the year, and we intend to take many of the arguments in our presentation to the public with op-eds, media appearances etc. You can sign up for a future showing and learn more about the arguments in the presentation here.

Thank you for your interest, and please share this video and future invites with friends and family - the more the merrier!

So the insights in our big new strategy memo, Time for Dems to Come Together, has gotten some attention in recent days. Simon discusses the memo’s insights in Ron Brownstein’s smart new column on the 2022 midterms today and in this Politico article by Christopher Cadelago and Laura Barron-Lopez.  You can also catch him talking about the memo in this Newsy piece with Andrew Rafferty, and in Ian Masters’ new podcast.

But the highlight of the week is Simon’s sit down his with old friend, Joe Trippi, for his excellent weekly podcast, That Trippi Show.  The episode is called “3 Ways To In in 2022.” Simon and Joe go in-depth into the memo, and spend a significant amount of time discussing the reasons why Simon thinks 2022 can be a very good year for Democrats.  It is a wonderful conversation between two old friends, and they end sharing their optimism about our prospects next year – as Simon says, “I’d rather be us than them.

NDN was pleased to host an extended conversation about what can be done about Facebook and Instagram on Wed, October 6th, 2021. Joining us was Zamaan Qureshi, the co-author of a recent Time Magazine essay, "Instagram Is Doing Grave Harm to Our Generation. We Need Help to Stop It." Zamaan's essay reflects on the recent Wall Street Journal expose, “Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show.” In what is a truly shocking set of revelations reported in this article, it appears internal, hidden Facebook studies have found that Instagram makes “body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”

You can watch our spirited conversation by following this link.

For more on Zamaan, a very inspiring and courageous thought leader on the future of social media, follow him here on Twitter, watch his appearance on Morning Joe the morning of our event, and review his bio below. 

Our discussion was originally intended to focus on the damage Instagram is doing to the mental and physical health of American teens, but was expanded to look at the full set of issues, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, is bringing to light

Zamaan Qureshi is a policy advisor and social media coordinator for the Real Facebook Oversight Board and a researcher for The Citizens where he focuses on Cambridge Analytica. Zamaan is also a privacy advocate, has written for TIME and Byline Times, and has been featured in Newsweek, Forbes, and Cybercrime Magazine for his work exposing Facebook’s data collection on its users. Zamaan is currently pursuing a BA in International Studies and Political Science at American University.

President Biden stated today that the Supreme Court decision on Texas “insults the rule of law." We agree, and send along a memo below we released in May about Dems needing to make the radicalization of the GOP a kitchen table issue.  We returned to this issue in a June memo, talk here about the need to lean into the GOP’s COVID extremism, and explain in a new thread why this Texas law and decision are yet another sign of just how radical and dangerous the American right has become.  

Learning To Talk about Democracy, Patriotism and the GOP’s Radicalization

By Simon Rosenberg

As I learned during my stint with the DCCC from 2016 to 2018, Democratic pollsters have felt very strongly that Democrats needed to steer away from conversations about Trump’s manifest illiberalism, and keep focused on “kitchen table” issues like the economy, health care, defeating COVID.  It’s hard to argue with this rationale, as Democrats have, in the last few years, won the Presidency and retaken the House and Senate. 

But with Trump’s illiberalism now becoming the politics Republicans have chosen, even after their significant electoral losses in recent cycles, it is time for Democrats to elevate the threat the GOP poses to our democracy into one of those kitchen table issues.  It is not just the right and necessary the thing to do, but a new paper from Stanford suggests there is significant electoral opportunity here for Democrats too. In this study weak Republicans and independents were able to be pushed away from the GOP brand when exposed to a better understanding of the GOP’s ongoing attacks on our democracy. 

Many believed that the best way to confront the growing radicalization of the GOP was to defeat Trump and knock the GOP from power.  That strategy, however, has proven to be insufficient.  It is my belief that we must now take the illiberalism of MAGA head on, and not just defeat the party and its candidates but the argument itself.  Leaning into the radicalization of the GOP can bring several other benefits for Democrats: 

1) It creates an opening to explain how radical the rest the GOP agenda has become.  From the economy to COVID to climate to guns to health care many of the GOP’s ideas are just as radical and out of the mainstream as those about our democracy

2)   It creates an opportunity for Democrats to find a language grounded in patriotism and love of country, understanding that patriotism is a powerful, benevolent and perhaps necessary antidote to nationalism

3)   It is possible that creating more pain around their radicalization may be required to get the GOP to start taking an off ramp from MAGA – which has to be one of our goals now.  

There has to become a party wide effort to find the language and arguments required to make the dangers of the GOP’s current path understandable, salient. This will be particularly true for Democrats in swing states and districts where are just more Republicans and Republican leaners they have to talk to. It is time, my fellow members of the great American center-left, to take on this battle, and recognize that defeating autocracy, perhaps the most intrinsically America project, begins this time here at home – and failure is not an option.  

More - Greg Sargent cites this memo in a new Washington Post column. 

Yes, it is a little early but we are reviving one of our more popular programs from the 2020 election cycle. – a live, Zoom based deep dive on recent polling and economic data.  These reviews take about 20 minutes and then are followed by what is often a spirted q and a session.  We are taking RSVPS for our next election review now scheduled for Friday, December 17th, 2pm ET.  Hope you can join us – these are always fun romps through the mountain of data we all have to make sense of every month.

In our election review we will be taking a look at the standing of Joe Biden and the Democrats a year out from the 2022 elections, and spend a bit of time looking at the impact the remarkably strong economic recovery may have on the elections next year. You can also find lots of new political analysis on the NDN website, and be sure to follow my far too frequent postings on Twitter. 

Here is some recent work from us worth reviewing:

Memo: Time for Dems To Come Together (Updated)

5m Biden Jobs, Twice As Many As 2 Bushes, Trump Combined 

Catch Simon on That Trippi Show, In The Atlantic, Politico and More 

Getting Real About the Public Opinion Data We’re Seeing

Why 2021 Is Like 2009 In Important Ways

Memo: 2022 Dem Election Narrative Begins to Take Shape

Memo: A Fall To Do List for Democrats - COVID, A Growing Economy, Climate, Immigration

A Good Week for Biden, More To Do–This has been a good week for Joe Biden.  GDP came in at a roaring 6.5% annual rate for q2; the historic bi-partisan infrastructure bill made significant progress in the Senate; the House Committee on Trump’s attempted coup began its essential work; and the President began to putting in place a far more aggressive plan to counter the dangerous rise of the delta variant.   When you add in 3m new jobs, millions gaining health insurance, the tens of millions beginning to get their child tax credit it’s pretty clear Joe Biden is meeting the central commitment of his campaign – he is making things better for the American people.     

While there is much on the President’s plate, it is our hope that in the coming days the President does a prime time address to the nation about COVID and delta.  While the government acted this week, there is still a great deal of confusion about where we are and what we should be doing. Prior to kids returning to school the President should lay out in plain simple terms what we should be doing now and why; remind people of the very real progress we’ve made, and make clear the steps he and others are taking to counter delta. He should explain why global COVID has made supply chains harder to stand back up, and that some inflation is to be expected due to our rapid recovery.  He should announce an expansion of our work overseas to help bring COVID’s reign of terror to an end everywhere.   

The President needs, in our mind, to go back a bit onto COVID war footing, and offer a clear plan on how we are going to win the war.  Defeating COVID is and will remain job #1 for Joe Biden until it is defeated here and everywhere.   

NB: Simon is quoted in a new Politico story making the case for a Presidential prime time address on COVID.

On Tuesday, July 20th we were excited to host a discussion about countering disinformation with one of the best in the business, Tim Durigan, who runs the DNC's countering disinformation program.  Tim's bio and some recent stories about him and his work are below.  Yiou can watch the discussion here.  For anyone wanting to learn more about this important subject, do watch - Tim did a terrific job. 

Background/Clips

Washington Post: The Technology 202: Online disinformation has changed. Now the DNC is updating its response unit.

Social Media's Misinformation Mismatch | by Timothy Durigan | DNC Tech Team

CNN: Frustration and bewilderment: Emails show tension between Facebook and Biden campaign

Vox: How fake news aimed at Latinos thrives on social media

Tim Durigan Bio

Timothy Durigan leads the DNC's Counter Disinformation Program, where he oversees the DNC's efforts to track and combat online mis- and dis-information, build resilience within Democratic campaigns & state parties, and advocate for reform at social media companies. Prior to his work at the DNC, Tim supported Democrats' efforts to win a House majority in 2018 as a Deputy Director of Data and Reporting at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Notre Dame and lives in Washington, DC.

NDN is excited to share with you an in-depth briefing on President Biden’s climate agenda with two people working on it every day in the White House, David Kieve and Jane Flegal.  Our discussion took place over Zoom onTuesday, July 13th at 1pm ET.  You can watch it here.

We’ve asked David and Jane to come talk to our community about the important climate and energy related items in the Senate bi-partisan infrastructure framework, and the other parts of the President’s agenda we hope to see enacted in the years ahead including in the fall’s reconciliation process.  David is the Director of Public Engagement at the White House’s Council of Environmental Quality, and Jane is the Senior Director for Industrial Emissions there.

NDN is very excited with the far-sighted leadership President Biden and his team are providing on climate, infrastructure and in modernizing our energy systems.  It has been many years since NDN has advocated for making infrastructure investment central to our politics again, including a big commitment to climate friendly clean infrastructure.  NDN was also an early supporter of a carbon tax and of reforms that would make it easier for American utilities to make the transition to a low/post carbon future.   

It was a really terrific event, and hope you will take the time to watch. 

Few have been writing and talking more about the decline of the GOP and the increasing threat it has become to our democracy than Norm Ornstein.  Among the most influential scholars of the Congress and America's democracy more broadly, Norm joinied us for an important conversation about the threats our democracy faces today as the Senate debate HR 1/S 1, the legislation designed by Democrats to defend our democracy this year.

You can watch our conversation with Norrm here and catch some of his commentary on these matters here, here and here.  Here is a link to the Brookings essay Morley Winograd discussed during during the Question and Answer session; and you learn more and register for the NDN presentation we discussed, With Democrats Things Get Better, here. 

For more from us about defending our democracy feel free to watch our recent interviews with Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Ari Berman and Glenn Kirschner; and read Simon's recent essay on what Democrats need to be focusing on this summer. 

Norm Ornstein's Bio

Norman Ornstein is an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a contributing editor and writer for The Atlantic and has been an election eve analyst for CBS News and BBC News. He is also Chairman of the Board of the Campaign Legal Center. His family foundation, the Matthew Harris Ornstein Memorial Foundation, www.mornstein.org, sponsors a summer debate institute for public school kids in the Washington area through the Washington Urban Debate League, and created and funded the documentary The Definition of Insanity, that was broadcast on PBS in April 2020 and tells the story of how a remarkable judge in Miami-Dade County, Florida, transformed the way its criminal justice system deals with those with serious mental illness, saving lives and saving money at the same time.

He serves as a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission and co-directed the AEI-Brookings Project on alternatives to the Independent Counsel Act. Mr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, which reformed the campaign financing system. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy; The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, with Tom Mann; and The New York Times bestseller, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, also with Tom Mann (2012, named Book of the Year by Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, one of the ten best books on politics in 2012 by The New Yorker, and one of the best books of 2012 by The Washington Post. An expanded edition, retitled It’s Even Worse Than It Was, was published in 2016. His latest book, with EJ Dionne and Tom Mann, One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate and the Not-Yet-Deported (2017) was immediately on the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists. Ornstein has a BA from the University of Minnesota and an MA and PhD from the University of Michigan. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from his alma mater in 2007. Ornstein was spotlighted as one of 2012’s 100 Top Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine.