New Progressive Politics

Al Gore has a strongly worded op-ed in the Times today on climate change.  It also previews the Live Earth concerts next week, and the pledge we will be asked to take:

Next Saturday, on all seven continents, the Live Earth concert will ask for the attention of humankind to begin a three-year campaign to make everyone on our planet aware of how we can solve the climate crisis in time to avoid catastrophe. Individuals must be a part of the solution. In the words of Buckminster Fuller, “If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?”

Live Earth will offer an answer to this question by asking everyone who attends or listens to the concerts to sign a personal pledge to take specific steps to combat climate change. (More details about the pledge are available at algore.com.)

In today's Post Jose Vargas takes a deep look at how folks in politics are using mobile telephony and media this cycle.  The story features NPI Fellow Tim Chambers, and our his recent report for NPI.  You can find Tim's report at www.newpolitics.net. 

An encouraging new poll released today by the New York Times/CBS News/MTV found that younger Americans are more liberal than the general public. The Times poll closely echoes most of the main points of the report NDN's New Politics Institute released last week, entitled The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation (which Future Majority encourages readers to make "your Bible for talking about young people in politics.")

Some of the new poll's findings about young people include:

• 28% describe themselves as liberal, while only 20% of the whole American public does
• 44% support same-sex marriage, compared to 28% of the general public
• 62% support government-sponsored universal healthcare coverage, compared to 47% of the public
• They are more likely to favor a common-sense drug policy, being more inclined than the general public to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
• They are more open to immigration than the general public, with 30% saying America should always welcome new immigrants, compared to 24% of the general public.

The most striking part of the report, however, was this:

"By a 52 to 36 majority, young Americans say that Democrats, rather than Republicans, come closer to sharing their moral values, while 58 percent said they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and 38 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans.

Asked if they were enthusiastic about any of the candidates running for president, 18 percent named Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and 17 percent named Mrs. Clinton, of New York. Those two were followed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, who was named by just 4 percent of the respondents."

Contrary to popular opinion, the Millennial generation is not politically cynical or apathetic: again reinforcing the findings of our NPI report, the Times found that 77% of Millennials believe their generation will have an important effect in the next presidential election, and 58% already say they are paying attention to the 2008 election (compared to 35% of 17-to-29 year olds at the same point in the last election).

Their lack of cynicism is frankly surprising, given that they have come of age in a political climate defined by unprecedented corruption and corporate influence, headed by perhaps the worst president and most hubristic vice-president in the history of our nation. But their optimism is very good news for America, because a full "70 percent said the country was on the wrong track." And to paraphrase Socrates, realizing there is a problem is half the solution.

Peter Leyden, the Director of our New Politics Institute just announced our new NPI paper on The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation. Check out the text (and links to the paper) below:

One of the most underappreciated assets for progressives in the early 21st century is the rise of the young Millennial Generation, the biggest generation in American history, and one that is clearly trending progressive and voting Democratic in large numbers.

The New Politics Institute released a new report that is a comprehensive look at almost all available surveys and polls that have tried to figure out the politics of this important new generation of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s. The cumulative evidence shows that this generation is overwhelmingly progressive and unusually engaged in politics.

The Millennial Generation has the potential to become a core constituency of the progressive movement and could help sustain political majorities for a long time. By the 2008 election nearly 50 million of them will be eligible to vote, and by the 2016 election, the entire generation of 82 million people will be of age.

No one in politics can afford to ignore this emerging generation born between the years of 1978 and 1996. And they are not just passive political consumers, but actors who are adept with the powerful new participatory tools that NPI has long championed.

The report was released at an event in Washington DC this past Thursday, June 21st. Video from the event will be posted on the New Politics Institute website shortly for those who were unable to make it. Check out the full report as either a "pdf" or "web version" both with live links to all the reports we cite.

Feel free to pass the report around – especially to those in the Millennial Generation who are only now coming to understand the importance they will play in American politics for a long time to come.

For those of you in or around D.C. today, be sure to come check out our New Politics Institute's event at 12pm on the Progressive Politics of Millennials.

The Wall Street Journal does a good job overviewing how the presidential candidates are increasingly embracing online ads, particularly search ads, though they seem to spend more time focusing on the Republicans. The New Politics Institute has been hammering on this theme for the past year, encouraging progressives to shift ad spend to these new ad forums that have been proven by the private sector to be highly effective. Don’t take our word for it, take it from the WSJ. Here are a few passages to give you a flavor:

Look at the rate of rate of return on the spending:

In the first quarter, the presidential candidates spent collectively an estimated $1.7 million on Internet sites and fund raising -- including $100,000 on blog ads -- and collected about $22 million online, campaign-finance reports show.

Or here shows more directly McCain’s success with it:

It is also considered effective. Republican John McCain's presidential campaign raises about $4 for every $1 it spends to raise money online, according to Rebecca Donatelli, a consultant directing the online fund-raising strategy for the Arizona senator.

This puts the costs of it in context with the enormous costs of broadcast TV:

One reason for the increased Internet advertising spending: It is relatively cheap compared with radio and television. A one-week television-ad buy in Des Moines, Iowa, would cost about $90,000 to $110,000, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a political-advertising tracking firm. By comparison, one week of blog ads on 102 conservative blogs costs just $7,500. It costs about $24,000 to advertise for a week on 121 liberal blogs.

So the shift has begun. Look at Obama’s spend in the first quarter compared to all the spending on these ads in 2004 combined:

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination has also aggressively moved onto Google as an advertising platform, spending more than $72,000 on Google search ads during the first quarter, according to financial records compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine.com. By comparison, the Democratic presidential candidates in the 2004 presidential race spent about $87,000, records show.

More evidence to keep making the case….

Peter Leyden  

The change in mobile telephony and media is accelerating:

AT&T Inc. on Tuesday launched what it said is the first service letting callers share live video between cell phones.

The new AT&T Video Share service won't apply to the iPhone, which uses an older network. AT&T has an exclusive deal to offer service for much-anticipated Apple Inc. device.

But the launch of the video service adds to the company's momentum as it gears up for the June 29 introduction of the iPhone, which it called a ''game-changer'' for the telecommunications industry.

Video Share was introduced in three markets -- Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio -- to start with and will be available elsewhere in late July.

It works only on the company's 3G, or third-generation, wireless network and requires a Video Share-capable phone, AT&T said. The company said it will offer Video Share service packs for $4.99 and $9.99 a month, depending on included minutes. Without a plan, the service costs 35 cents a minute.

New AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told a telecommunications industry trade show in Chicago that the new service has the potential to expand rapidly beyond wireless-to-wireless.

''You should expect this to quickly reach the other two screens, and that's the PC and the television,'' he said at NXTcomm...

Obama launched his first major foray into mobile today. 

Simon was featured on NPR this morning in a major piece by Mara Liasson on how progressives are Meeting the Conservative Challenge.  This is of course one of our favorite subjects.

Listen, and let us know what you think. 

We’ve been talking a lot at the New Politics Institute about the technological development of mobile phones morphing into mobile media platforms. The iPhone launch this month will simply kick that tool side into high gear. But the other side of the equation, content, needs to rapidly evolve to fit this new space. The content side has been lagging somewhat, which is to be expected as the new tech gets positioned in place. However, content is fast catching up.

The New York Times had a nice story this weekend that catches people up the excitement around mobile content. Simon mentioned it briefly, but I want to just add my two cents. The pattern for mobile content is following the classic trajectory. Niche content makers, like ESPN, go first and break the new ground, trying new forms of short content. The general TV content makers, like the big broadcast networks, go next, trying their old long form shows, but also trying mobisodes, as Fox calls them. And then, after the private sectors does enough trial and error, the political world will wade in. Watch for some of the presidentials to go beyond texting experiments very soon.

The other interesting side to the piece was the generational aspect. The graphic in there tells a lot, and explains why the private sector is so interested in his space. The Millennial Generation, those in their 20s and younger, live on their phones, and don’t particularly use traditional TV. So the next great market may well be pierced through the tiny screen rather than the big one. For more on this young generation, watch out for the release of a new NPI report later this week on “The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation.”

Peter Leyden  

In 2006, driven by a great degree by the immigration debate, Hispanics fled the Republican Party.  From 2004 to 2006 the national Hispanic vote moved close to 20 points, going from 59/40 Kerry/Bush to 70/30 D/R.  And turnout was up 33% from 2002.  This part of the American electorate has become energized, and much more anti-Republican. 

Remember that we've seen this happen before.  In California, Pete Wilson and the GOP took on Hispanics and turned a swing state into a blue and progressive one.  Hispanics responded to the GOP attacks by registering and voting in huge numbers for Democrats.  In the first election after the GOP attacks the effect was modest.  The impact came in the 2nd election, and the ones after. 

The question about the anger Hispanics across the nation now feel towards the GOP was whether or not it would sustain, and if so, what impact it might have.  For it is hard to see a viable electoral college map for the GOP that doesn't contain the heavily Hispanic swing states of AZ, CO, FL, NM and NV.  Take these 5 states away and it starts to become hard how to see the GOP wins in 2008.  A continued big swing of Hispanics in 2008 could deny this states to the GOP, and mark the way the GOP has handled the immigration issue as one of the greatest strategic blunders of modern politics. 

Well, over the weekend, we saw a story that shows this degradation of the Republican brand with Hispanics continues apace.  Peter Wallsten of the LATimes published a remarkable piece showing that those newly eligible citizens registering to vote in South Florida, a place where most Hispanics are Republican, are becoming Democrats:

MIAMI BEACH — As a Cuban who fled Fidel Castro's communist rule for a new life in the U.S., Julio Izquierdo would seem a natural Republican voter — a sure bet to adopt the same political lineage that has long guided most of his countrymen who resettled in South Florida.

But moments after taking his oath this week to become a U.S. citizen and registering to vote, the grocery store employee said he felt no such allegiances.

"I don't know whether Bush is a Democrat or a Republican, but whatever he is, I'm voting the other way," Izquierdo, 20, said Thursday as he waited for a taxi after a mass naturalization ceremony at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Izquierdo said he did not like President Bush's handling of the Iraq war and was miffed at politicians, most of them Republican, who seem to dislike immigrants.

That sentiment, expressed by several of the 6,000 new citizens who took their oaths Thursday in group ceremonies that take place regularly in immigrant-heavy cities nationwide, underscored the troubled environment facing the GOP in the buildup to next year's presidential election.

Surveys show that among Latino voters — a bloc Bush had hoped to woo into the Republican camp — negative views about the party are growing amid a bitter debate over immigration policy.

Republicans in Congress have led the fight against a controversial Senate bill that would provide a pathway for millions of illegal immigrants to eventually become citizens. All but one of the GOP's leading White House hopefuls oppose the measure.

Many Latino leaders, including Republicans, have said the tone of some critics in attacking the bill has been culturally insensitive. They say that has alienated some Latinos from the GOP....

Read on my friends.  This is one of the most important stories in politics today.