New Progressive Politics

Simon and I made the case in a current Mother Jones magazine article that the 2008 election may well be like 1932. Among other things, Bush has the potential to do what Hoover did – tarnish the conservative brand for a generation or more.

Some have pushed-back that on the economic front Bush can’t be compared to Hoover, who was the steward of the biggest economic catastrophe in the nation’s history, The Great Depression.

But economist Joseph Stiglitz attempts to make the case of the enormity of the Bush economic catastrophe in the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine. We may not have to dig out of another Great Depression (thank goodness), but Bush’s economic legacy is going to be very bad. That legacy will include:

"…a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.”

The piece is well worth reading, though I do think Stiglitz goes a bit too far in criticizing our economic prospects. Many fundamentals are still in place that should allow the American economy to kick back into shape and sustain a long boom of economic growth that spreads prosperity far more widely. But that’s the fodder for another post.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

Earlier this week I wrote an essay reflecting on how obsessed - and perhaps crazy - the modern GOP has become with immigrants. Today, the Post explores a similar theme in a wonderful editorial. An excerpt:

Matt Bai has proven once again that he has that rare ability to see the meta-story within the myriad daily stories on the Presidential race. In his New York Times magazine column this Sunday, he points out one of the key shifts going on in politics – from highly controlled, top-down presidential campaigns to much more decentralized, bottom-up campaigns. The shift is underway, but most of the current presidential campaigns are resisting this mightily.

Bai looks at a few exceptions. There’s the crazy case of Ron Paul, whose campaign has been effectively taken over by libertarian techies who were able to raise $4 million in one day of online contributions – way beyond anything that the official campaign has been able to raise. And then he looks at how Obama has benefited from bottom-up energy, such as the Obama Girl and her video that has been seen more than 4 million times.

This fundamental shift is something that Simon and I laid out in our magazine piece The 50 year Strategy, still on newsstands for Mother Jones. We took a longer-range, historical lens to our current political situation, and pointed out that shift in the nature of campaigns, among several others things, that will be seen as the biggest development of the period we are now in.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter PAC which is dedicated to helping Democrats win with the youth vote. Through endorsements, funding, training and media support the Young Voter PAC changes the faces of elections…who participates and who wins.

In a series of unfortunate statements, the Clinton campaign took a stab at young people while attacking Barack Obama's effort to reach out to student voters. As reported in The Politico, a Clinton campaign official said "We are not courting out-of-staters. The Iowa caucus ought to be for Iowans."

Senator Clinton went on to say at a town hall in Clear Lake, Iowa: "This is a process for Iowans. This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here."

The problem with this statement is the thinly veiled target of her comments, that is the tens of thousands of students studying at any of the dozens of colleges and universities throughout the state. Iowa has a sales tax therefore every student who goes to school in Iowa—and makes Iowa their home for an average of four years—pays taxes every day when they go to the store. Naturally, many students also work to support themselves and thus pay taxes there as well. Additionally, students pay tuition and consequently help support many of Iowa's public and private institutions. And none of this addresses the many young people who, after they graduate, continue to make Iowa their home.

This discussion raises an important question, if a person moved to Iowa for a new job and was only going to be there for few years, does that mean that they should not be allowed to participate in the state's political process? Few would argue that it would, why then tell students they should not?

The residents of Iowa passed tax credits to help young people stay put after college because, like many mid-western states, too many young people leave because of a perceived lack of opportunities. Having recruited talented young people to attend Iowa's high quality colleges, you can bet that the people of Iowa would like to see these young people stay and contribute to building the state's economy and its communities, and many do. Clearly the residents of Iowa take students seriously and want them involved in determining their state's future. Shouldn't candidates then as well?

Barack Obama shot back at Clinton in the press and at rallies. He told a group of Iowa State University students "…one of the things we've been hearing lately is, 'Well, maybe young people shouldn't caucus if they just recently moved here because they are going to school here.' Don't let people tell you that you can't participate. You are an Iowa student, you can be an Iowa caucus-goer, and I want you to prove them wrong when they say you're not gonna show up."

The Dodd campaign initially made a negative statement about students and caucus-going as well but later clarified their intention. They believe students should participate in the caucus but they are concerned given some of Sen. Obama's previous campaign tactics -- particularly, the alleged busing of people in to the Iowa Democratic Party's Annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Fundraiser to pack the house with supporters, many of whom were not Iowa residents -- and don't want to see Obama busing in students who don't go to school in Iowa.

Tactical debates aside, there is a long legacy of efforts to disenfranchise the student vote. From extra identification barriers for student populations to threatened legal action and tax penalties against students who register to vote on campus, this history is a struggle for a basic and fundamental right in our democracy -- the right to participate in the political destiny of our country. Thankfully, many of the attacks on such basic civil rights have been beaten back and our campuses, our young people and our democracy are better for it.

Senator Clinton's opposition to Iowa college students' voting simply because their parents may live out of state is out of step with the strong record Democrats have in standing up for voting rights and voter enfranchisement.

Youth vote leaders are proud of the Democratic campaigns who have dedicated staff people that are reaching out to not only students but also young people ages 18-35, a development which is vastly different than previous presidential cycles when campaigns essentially ignored the student and youth vote. However, we are deeply disappointed that the Clinton campaign is, in essence, arguing to disenfranchise the student vote. Young people reversed the trend of declining youth participation in 2004 and continued to show their impact at the polls in 2006 by helping elect Democrats such as Senator Jon Tester and Representative Joe Courtney.

Young people should never have been ignored by the political establishment but they were for many years. Now that some in political circles are waking up to the power of the youth vote, we hope all campaigns encourage young people to be involved in our democracy and in the selection of our next President. After all, young people will be 30% of the electorate in just a few years, ignoring them or saying they should stay home is at a candidate's -- and frankly, our country's -- peril.

UPDATE 12/5/2007 at 9:50pm: Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director Howard Wolfson just released this statement in response to this issue: “The Iowa caucus is so special because it is based on Iowa values. We believe that every Iowan and every student who is eligible to caucus in Iowa should do so and we hope they do."

The Times has another, and fascinating, look at the fast growing world of non-broadcast TV, and how the use of video is being re-imagined right in front of us.  Called, Lots of Little Screens, TV is changing shape, it begins:

INEXPENSIVE broadband access has done far more for online video than enable the success of services like YouTube and iTunes. By unchaining video watchers from their TV sets, it has opened the floodgates to a generation of TV producers for whom the Internet is their native medium.

And as they shift their focus away from TV to grab us on one of the many other screens in our lives — our computers, cellphones and iPods — the command-and-control economic model of traditional television is being quickly superseded by the market chaos of a freewheeling and open digital network.

According to Move Networks, a company based in Utah that provides online video technologies, more than 100,000 new viewers jump online every 24 hours to watch its clients’ long-form or episodic video. During the first two weeks of November alone, more than twice the number of Americans were watching TV online than in the entire month of August...

Many of you may have digested the basics of what happened at the YouTube/CNN debate of the Republicans presidential candidates last night in St. Pete, Florida. If not, check out the New York Times.

But I was there and had a different lens applied to it. I was one of the few people attending from the progressive side, as a guest of Google and YouTube, and I was watching it to see how the new format worked or did not work.

The gist of what I think was reflected in a San Francisco Chronicle story that I was quoted in and that I helped the reporter with. The short answer is that I think the hybrid version of new media (user-generated video) questions selected by old media journalists (CNN) did not work as well as in the first such debate with the Democrats in the summer. It seemed like the CNN filters were heavy-handed, looking to spark fights (like with immigration) rather than reflect the range of issues of concern to Americans (and the 5000 people who submitted questions.) How could there be no interest in health care, climate change, and new energy issues?

Another striking thing was how all the video submissions, with one or two exceptions, came from Millennials, those under age 30. And almost everyone in the audience was much older. In fact, before the show began, CNN host Anderson Cooper asked for questions on the format from the audience. One young guy from the balcony asked why so few tickets had been given to young people. Cooper shot back – the Republican Party gave out the tickets, not us. It’s another sign that the Republicans are having a hard time connecting with this massive generation of young people, as well as coming to terms with the new demands of the new online media.

I was also struck by how many times Hillary Clinton came up in the debate, and yet not once did Obama’s name come up. (I think Edwards and Kucinich each came up once). It seems the Republicans are on auto-pilot in accepting the old conventional wisdom that Hillary is going to be the nominee. They have completely missed the new dynamics of a race that is far from won.

Obama is getting new boosts from all kinds of quarters, including the powerful tech community who he wowed with his recent tech and innovation proposals laid out at Google. But that is another post of another time…

For now it is worth noting that almost every Republican candidate and most in the crowd expect Hillary will be the nominee and they clearly relish the thought.

Peter Leyden
Director of The New Politics Institute

I will be in St. Petersburg, Florida, Wednesday night for the second YouTube/CNN debates – this time with the Republican presidential candidates fielding the questions sent via web video from the American public. I am very curious about how their slate will handle the questions posed to them.

As you recall, the Republicans initially balked at playing ball in this more wide-open media environment. But after the Dems did it this summer, and their more youthful  supporters harangued them to get with it, they decided to try it out. We’ll see how they will manage, and how the CNN journalists who ultimately screen the questions will treat them as well.

For those who are just tuning in, you can get an overview of the debate in the New York Times blog, complete with a few links, or plunge right into the fray of the more than 5000 entries at the YouTube website. I will be in the spin room after the debate and will report back to this blog by the next morning. Check it out.

Peter Leyden  
Director of The New Politics Institute

In his New York Times column yesterday Paul Krugman thoughtfully examines the centrality of a great national electoral strategy, the Southern Strategy, to the recent rise of conservatives. It is a story line he explores in much more depth in his very worthwhile new book, The Conscience of a Liberal.

In our new article in Mother Jones magazine, The 50 Year Strategy, Peter Leyden and I argue that the progressives and Democrats are in the process of constructing the next great electoral strategy, one yet unnamed, that capitalizes on the emerging demography and politics of the early 21st century.

This new strategy builds upon Democratic strongholds in the Northeast and Pacific West, requires Democrats and progressives to win in all the other regions of the country, and builds particularly upon the support of two new groups that will end being very influential in the 21st century - Hispanics and Millennials.

Implicit in all this is how the concept of race is changing in America. For over 300 years, race in America was a white-black, majority-minority, exploitive experience. The very large wave of immigration America is currently experiencing, driven to a great degree by new Asian and Hispanic immigrants, is changing that historic and pernicious equation. In the age of the Southern Strategy minorities - African Americans - were a small fraction of the population. In America today "minorities" are 30 percent of our national population. In my lifetime America will become a majority minority nation. Even the word minority itself will begin to change its meaning as American becomes a very different place with a very different people in the 21st century.

To get a sense of all this look at the Presidential fields. Taken together the GOP Presidential candidates look that 20th century Southern Strategy Party. The Democratic field, featuring a woman, an Hispanic, a mixed race candidate of African descent and a white populist from the New South, looks much more like the Party of this next more racially and geographically complicated post-Southern Strategy nation.

For more on the changing nature of America's Hispanic population, check out our new report Hispanics Rising. And for more on Millennials visit our affiliate, the New Politics Institute.

We end the New Politics Institute’s Fall New Tools Campaign by releasing a new memo by the Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook on one of the least understood but most intriguing of the new tools: social networking technologies.

The memo “Five Main Ways to Use Social Networking in Politics” lays out how the booming social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace can be used to do many of the old-fashioned fundamentals of politics: branding, voter registration, fundraising, volunteering and voter turnout.

Politics has always been about “social networking,” or getting people to organize their friends and family to support a cause or a candidate. These new social technology tools just supercharge an individual’s ability to extend his or her reach. And so progressive organizations need to understand how these new approaches can make good old politicking so much more efficient and productive.

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer and Head of Global Public Policy, wrote this terrific guide that can be used by those just getting started or those looking for more nuanced ways to use these powerful new tools. You can read the memo off the NPI website or download a PDF file for printing.

Kelly also gave a talk on the topic, along with three other top experts in the social networking field, at NPI’s final tools event in Washington DC on Wednesday. Next week, video of the entire event, and the individual talks, will be available off the NPI website.

Plus you can find similar memos and video of the other eight new tools that NPI has explored this fall. We encourage you to use this material, and spread links to it far and wide.

Thanks.

Peter Leyden

The Times this am has one of their periodic stories about how new media is changing old ways.  This one focuses on one of the subjects we've been talking about a great deal over NPI - how video has been liberated from the distribution monopoly of broadcast TV.  It begins:

WHY are fewer viewers watching the new fall television series? Perhaps because they are too busy watching video online.

As broadband service becomes more available at home, the growing prevalence of video programming on the Internet is catching the attention of consumers — not to mention marketers and media companies.

“Video has been liberated” from the TV set, Beth Comstock, president for integrated media at NBC Universal, said last week at a panel at the Ad:Tech conference in New York.

“If you’re in the video business,” she added, referring to companies like her employer, the NBC Universal division of General Electric, “it’s exciting to see where it’s going..."