What a week

Simon just sent out the e-mail below, highlighting the extraordinarily strong week NDN had. Lots of press hits and interviews, with more to come.

------------------------------------------------------

Its been an incredible week here at NDN. A wave of enthusiasm is breaking right now and I can feel it in the excitement here in Washington. Nowhere is that clearer than in the debate over immigration. Today's LA Times article "Immigration galvanizes Latino voters" is a validation of the argument we've been making at NDN for the past two years: engaging the Hispanic community and supporting comprehensive immigration reform is the right thing to do morally, legislatively and politically.

Just as progressives stand to gain from the work we've done reaching out to this community, conservatives are about to pay a serious political price. Treating immigration as one more wedge issue that can be used to divide Americans was a huge political miscalculation. Here is how the LA Times put it:

"There's been a civic awakening," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, which has spent close to $2 million on Latino outreach for this election. Rosenberg points to in-house polls that show the immigration debate has made 54% of Latinos more likely to vote. "That's a significant shift," he said. "If Democrats make investments in this community, the benefits will be extraordinary."

At the same time, we've taken the fight to our opponents. Yesterday, NDN's Hispanic Strategy Center Senior Advisor Maria Cardona debated immigration with Patrick Buchanan on MSNBC. Not an easy task, but Maria more than held her own. And Wednesday, I was on NPR's Morning Edition discussing immigration reform and C-SPAN taking calls alongside the leader of an anti-immigration group.

Even David Brooks is agreeing with us. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then NDN's meta-narrative about the new politics is receiving a lot of flattery this week. Brooks' op-ed in the New York Times mirrors our own argument that conservatism as a governing philosophy is dead: "This election is a period, not a comma in political history."

Also this week, New Politics Institute Director Peter Leyden has been featured in MSNBC and on the front page of MYDD.com talking about how progressives can use Google and search technology to more effectively communicate our message. NPI's vision for a progressive movement that embraces the new technology and new tools is really taking off and changing how we practice politics.

At this critical moment we may not have time to catch our collective breath, but I hope you'll take a minute to enjoy the momentum that is building behind the NDN family and the entire progressive movement.

------------------------------------------------------

...Also:

Listen to Simon talk about NDN's "Condi Come Clean" campaign with Sam Seder on AirAmerica
"Democrats won't count votes before they're cast" (Washington Times, October 25, 2006)
"A Proliferation of political spoof sites"
(MSNBC, October 11, 2006)