Friday Buzz: Judging Judd, Millennial Tremors, More

Simon's commentary on Senator Judd Gregg's surprise withdrawal of his nomination for Commerce Secretary yesterday was featured in the Huffington Post, the Economist, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Hill. From the Economist:

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, cheers the news because Mr Gregg had opposed a census reform that might have counted more minority voters, and the census is typically under the Department of Commerce's purview (although this would have been changed had Mr Gregg served).

From Michael Tomasky of the Guardian:

So Gregg was mad, apparently, but there's a back story here. Simon Rosenberg of the Democratic-leaning group NDN, and a former Clinton White House staffer, wrote on his blog:

During the Clinton Administration, Judd Gregg fought hard to deny the Commerce Secretary the ability to use the latest techniques to ensure the most accurate Census count. The goal of this effort was to make it harder for the Census to count minorities, young people and the poor, groups the Republicans do not view as part of their coalition.

And from Chris Cillizza's "The Fix" in the Washington Post:

"The longer the Washington Republican Party holds on to old plays from an old political playbook, fighting a popular Democratic President and a whole new set of 21st century political realities, the more likely they are to suffer in the eyes of the American people," predicted Simon Rosenberg, the head of NDN, a progressive think tank.

NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais were also quoted in a great National Journal piece by Ron Brownstein, "Millennial Tremors" (which would also be a sweet name for the 5th sequel). From the National Journal article:

Generational comparisons can simplify, but early indications are that Millennials may balance idealism and pragmatism better than either Baby Boomers (who have favored the former, at times to self-righteous extremes) or Generation X-ers (who have often had trouble rising above self-interest). Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, fellows at the Democratic advocacy group NDN and co-authors of the perceptive book Millennial Makeover, say that Millennials display the group-oriented values of a "civic generation" like the fabled "GI Generation" that surmounted the Depression and won World War II. Civic generations (a phrase originated by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe) tend to favor "inclusive solutions" that "accomplish results without ... ideological argument," Winograd says.