New Progressive Politics

Celebrate Democracy's 1st Anniversary

As you know, NDN has been at the forefront of a national effort to imagine and build a progressive infrastructure capable of doing battle on the new emerging battleground of the 21st century.    This month we celebrate the 1st anniversary of the founding of an important new piece of this emerging infrastructure, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.  This compelling new journal was founded by two good friends of ours, Kenneth Baer and Andrei Cherny, and has been supported by NDN from its inception.

You can learn more about Democracy by visiting their web site at www.democracyjournal.org

Democracy was launched to be the progressive analogue of the idea journals on the conservative side – such as Public Interest, National Interest, and Commentary – that have been the original source of many of the big ideas the right wing used to appeal to Americans over the past 30 years. And it has had a very strong first year. Democracy’s readership has shot up to more than that of Public Interest at its peak during the Reagan years.  The journal can be found in major bookstores in 49 states – in places like Gulfport, Mississippi and Anchorage, Alaska – on shelves where conservative journals used to have all the space for themselves. It has subscribers on every continent, and is finding its way into libraries across the nation.

Most importantly, Democracy is a crucial part of creating the intellectual underpinnings of the next wave of progressive action.  They feature thoughtful groundbreaking pieces from established thinkers such as Joseph Nye, Jr., Peter Bergen, Dennis Ross, and Elaine Kamarck as well as up-and-coming writers. This is why they have been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and on hundreds of blog posts over the past year.  Maureen Dowd wrote that Democracy is “a progressive journal to ponder big ideas that might help the wretched Democrats stop driving on Ambien and snatch back a little power.”  Not exactly how I would have said it but you get the idea.   

In honor of Democracy’s first anniversary, NDN has arranged for a special subscription discount for our members and friends of $24 for the entire year.   I hope you will help us celebrate their anniversary by subscribing – and supporting – this very worthwhile venture today.   

Nielsen rates DVR usage

AdAge highlights new Nielsen ratings on DVR usage. From the article:

  • Nielsen estimates that about 17% of U.S. households have DVRs, and that 42% of broadcast viewing within those homes occurs through some sort of DVR playback.
  • Nielsen also noted that among all U.S. households, including those without DVRs, 90% of all broadcast prime-time viewing among viewers 18 to 49 occurs live, meaning that 10% is seen via DVR playback. The impact of DVRs on cable and syndicated programming is lower, with 97% of all prime-time viewing on cable seen live and 98% of all syndicated programming seen live.

NPI Director Peter Leyden in the Washington Post

Jose Antonio Vargas has a piece in the Washington Post today that picks up on an idea that the New Politics Network has been talking about for some time, that Democrats and progressives more generally are opening up a digital gap over Republicans:

Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that in recent months has been advising Democratic members of Congress and their staffs on how to take full advantage of the Web, argues that the culture of Democrats is a much better fit in the Internet world.

"What was once seen as a liability for Democrats and progressives in the past -- they couldn't get 20 people to agree to the same thing, they could never finish anything, they couldn't stay on message -- is now an asset," Leyden said. "All this talking and discussing and fighting energizes everyone, involves everyone, and gets people totally into it."

The NPI Web Video Event Now Available For All

The New Politics Institute held a terrific event on the exploding world of political web video last week. We had four outside experts come and talk about how to use this increasingly valuable new tool.

The event was well attended by those within Washington DC, and was selected to be covered by C-Span, which was rerunning the event for days. We had announced the event to those on our national list with the promise that we would video the entire thing and post it for all to see. (How could we not use the medium as the message?)

So here are the various ways to view the material: 

Here it is off the front page. You can  watch in a small screen there.

Then here it is anchoring the video page, with each part laid out, including each  speaker’s section, and each question  from the audience followed by the entire panel’s answers.

Then here is C-Span's version as flowed through the web. We have it on our Buzz page:

Stay tuned for more events in this video space. We will continue to keep pushing the boundaries with our ongoing “Re-imagining Video” series.

Peter Leyden 

Are you an OPO?

From Jose Antonio Vargas at the WAPO:


Howard Dean's cometlike campaign in 2003 was the first to integrate the Internet into a presidential race, and Joe Rospars was there, a 22-year-old working as an "all-around Web guy" until the campaign suddenly collapsed.

Four years later, it's not just the upstarts, as Dean was, who have embraced online campaigning. And Rospars is part of a new generation of strategists who share a passionate belief that they can transform not just individual campaigns but also politics itself...

For these online political operatives -- or OPOs, as a few have taken to calling themselves -- the Internet isn't just a tool. It's a strategy, a whole new way of campaigning, a form of communication, from blogs to MySpace to YouTube, with far more potential than the old media of print and television. "TV is a passive experience, and the Internet is all about interactivity, all about making a direct connection," said Rospars, waxing expansive in the way all the OPOs tend to do.

Yet if it's understood that the Internet has a role to play in the 2008 presidential campaign -- voters are increasingly going online to find out more about the candidates, donate money and join networking sites, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project -- it's not yet clear how large the role of the OPOs will be. And the struggle between them and more traditional campaign operatives for influence over their candidates is likely to be a subtext at every headquarters, Republican and Democratic, in the next year and a half.

Jonathan Chait and TNR on the netroots

If you haven't read it already, check out Jonathan Chait's cover story from The New Republic on the netroots The Left's New Machine.  And American Prospect Senior Editor Garance Franke-Ruta has a reasoned critique of Chait's tomb over at her blogTNR Editor Franklin Foer says that the magazine will be publishing responses to Chait's piece in coming editions, let's hope that Franke-Ruta is one of the responders. 

A great NPI event today

We had a great NPI event in DC today on web video.  We will have our own video up soon, and photos, but if you are really dying to see it it is playing a lot on C-Span, and you can watch it on the web on the C-Span website right now.   Congrats to Pete Leyden and the team for putting on one of our better events.   For more on NPI and its thinking about web video visit www.newpolitics.net.

NPI Event Reminder: Tomorrow 5/2 - The Exploding World of Political Web Video

Join the New Politics Institute tomorrow for a special event on this exploding world of political web video, including:

Steve Grove, News and Political Editor, YouTube.com, on the role of YouTube and web video in politics.

Karina Newton, Director of New Media, Office of Speaker Pelosi, on how web video is being used for governing.

Dan Manatt, founder and executive producer for PoliticsTV.com, on how any organization can immediately start using web video.

Phil de Vellis, aka ParkRidge47, an important political web video innovator, on how progressives can use the new tools to make powerful, political content.

Jeff Weingarten, President, Interface Media Group (IMG), on how Presidential campaigns are using web video.

As always, the event is free and lunch will be provided. Video of the event will be posted on our site for those who cannot make it or are out of town. Please RSVP if you can come, and in the spirit of the new medium, feel free to spread the word.

The Exploding World of Political Web Video

Wednesday, May 2nd

12:00PM - lunch will be served

Phoenix Park Hotel

520 North Capital Street NW, Washington DC

For more information or to RSVP you can contact: Tracy Leaman, 202-215-2224, or tleaman@ndn.org

Learn more:

Watch The Political Web Video World

Read Julie Bergman-Sender's NPI paper Viral Video in Politics: Case Studies on Creating Compelling Video

http://www.newpolitics.net

NDN in the News: Peter Leyden in the NYT Sunday Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle

New Politics Institute Director Peter Leyden was featured in two major articles in the last few days.  The first was a San Francisco Chronicle preview of the role of bloggers at the 2007 California Democratic Party Convetion and the second, Matt Bai's piece in the NYT Sunday Magazine entitled "The Post-Money Era."  Excerpts from the articles and links are below.

Bloggers Descend On Dems' Gathering

(04-28) 04:00 PDT San Diego -- When Democrats gathered at their candidate-rich California state convention five years ago, a lone blogger from Berkeley was the first, and only, one of his kind to apply for media credentials to cover the events.

Today, an army has arrived in the wake of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the Daily Kos -- one of the nation's most highly trafficked Web logs, which boasts about 600,000 daily readers.

This year, a record 50 Internet-publication bloggers will join the estimated 400 credentialed "mainstream" media in the press room to track the goings-on of seven Democratic presidential candidates and 2,100 California party delegates this weekend.

And those numbers don't count the estimated dozens of mainstream media journalists who will be blogging for major newspapers or the unknown numbers of delegates who will be producing their own running commentary of the convention.

"What this is doing is blowing apart the old calculus for who gets to come to the party and who doesn't," says Peter Leyden, director of the San Francisco-based New Politics Institute, a think tank that tracks the intersection of the Internet and politics.

With the 2008 presidential election just 556 days away, political parties and candidates understand that bloggers have become a critical part of the commentary on political developments "on a scale that is absolutely astounding," he said.

"Many of them have passionate followers, people who are crazy about politics," Leyden said. "And if you legitimize them, and bring them into inner circles ... they will get a huge new segment of folks energized that aren't necessarily reading newspapers and aren't involved in politics..."

Read the entire article here... 

The Post-Money Era

By Matt Bai 

“...The need for money is probably going to reach some diminishing return, and it’s probably going to be a pretty low ceiling, compared to past campaigns,” predicts Peter Leyden, president of the left-leaning New Politics Institute. In other words, the emerging high-tech marketplace may yet bring us closer to what decades of federal campaign regulations have failed to achieve: a day when candidates can afford to spend less time obsessing over the constant need for cash and more time concerned with the currency of their ideas.

Read the entire article here...

Friedman’s Big Swing on Green Geopolitics

You gotta hand it to Tom Friedman. He’s not the first guy to spot a trend or big idea, but he has a great way of popularizing them. He’s great at squeezing down big ideas into slogans. Or forcing simple parallels that make you think. “If this, then that.”

Anyhow, he did it again this week with a terrific cover story in the New York Times Magazine. He lays out a big idea about how the United States can completely rework geopolitics and regain global leadership by truly taking on climate change, or, in his words, going “geo-green.” By taking the lead in alternative energy and a comprehensive environmentalism, the United States could help solve three of the biggest challenges of the early 21st century.

1/ Solve global warming, which does have the potential to remake the world – and not for the better.

2/ Solve the quandary of globalization and the new global economy. The United States could spawn the next generation high end technologies that could serve the needs of the world – and would not be easily replicated by low end labor. We could have a thriving next generation economy that could include all Americans.

3/ Solve our era’s security challenge of global terrorism, sustained by a militant radical Islam that is fueled by the oil regimes of the middle east. We cut our dependence, and ultimately the world’s dependence, on that resource and that region, and we undercut our biggest threat.

I could not agree more with his framework. This is a massive opportunity for the progressive movement and Democratic politics in general. The conservatives have completely failed on all these fronts – starting with their obstinate denial of climate change long after all evidence showed denial to be a sham.

Progressives have always taken the lead on environmental matters, and now they can extend that core competency into the reworking of the global economy, and a convincing strategy to truly make the world more safe.

Bravo to Friedman, who has done much to move this meme into the mainstream. Inevitably this piece will be his next book, and judging by the success of his other books, it will be a bestseller for a long while.

Peter Leyden

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