New Progressive Politics

YearlyKos Event Tonight in Washington, DC

If you're in Washington, you should definitely check out the YearlyKos 2007 Convention grassroots fundraiser tonight at the Mott House from 6:30-9:00 on Capitol Hill.  Info below:

Join Sen. Feingold, Rep. Brad Miller, Rep. John Hall, Rep. Jerry McNerney and support YearlyKos in DC

Join... Senator Russ Feingold
Rep. Brad Miller
Rep. John Hall
Rep. Jerry McNerney
YearlyKos Convention Executive Director Gina Cooper

...activists, organizers and on-lookers as we drink, laugh and carouse liberally to celebrate the progressive blogging community and prepare for the 2007 YearlyKos Convention at a grassroots fundraiser...

Washington, DC on April 17, 6:30 - 9:00 PM,
at the Stewart Mott House at 122 Maryland Ave., NE

...(at the corner of Maryland Avenue & Constitution Avenue.) It's about as close to the Capitol as you can get without being elected, a few blocks from Union Station & Metro. Best of all, you don't have to be a lobbyist or even a Republican to afford it. We are asking for a minimum donation of $35 per person. Light snacks and soft drinks will be available. A modest donation will be asked for beer & wine. Parking is hard to come by in the immediate vicinity but should be available on the street within a few blocks or at Union Station.

Op-ed on "The Democratic Opportunity"

The Politico asked me to write an essay on what advice I would give to the Democratic Presidential candidates.  It is running today and is below.   Would love your thoughts. 

The Democratic Opportunity

Simon Rosenberg
April 11, 2007 05:28 PM EST

As we look to 2008, it is clear the two parties face a vastly different political landscape than anything we’ve seen in recent years. For the first time in a generation, the Republicans are in retreat, their brand damaged and ideology discredited. The Democrats won a resounding national victory in 2006 and according to a recent Pew Center poll, have opened up an extraordinary 15 percentage point advantage in party identification.

It is now reasonable to speculate that if Democrats win the presidency in 2008 it could be the beginning of a sustained period of Democratic control of government, akin to their run in the middle of the past century. President George W. Bush, meanwhile, is looking more like a 21st century version of Herbert Hoover each day.

Thus the stakes in 2008 are very high. It is not just about the control of the White House, but whether Democrats can take advantage of a profound mishandling of government by the Republicans, and build the foundation for a 21st century majority as strong as it had in the 20th.  
To do so, Democrats will have to apply their values to a new set of realities that are making the new politics of this new century different from the one just past; requiring us to offer a new agenda that meets the challenges of our time, master the new technology and media that is changing the way we all communicate, and speak to and engage the new American population of this new century, one very different from Americas of previous generations. 

A New Governing Agenda That Tackles The Emerging Challenges Of Our Time
When in power during the 20th Century, Democrats succeeded by tackling the great challenges of that time. Abroad, we defeated fascism, were instrumental in the triumph over communist totalitarianism, and constructed an international system based on FDR’s vision of a United Nations, bringing unprecedented liberty and prosperity to the people of the world. At home, we rescued America from its greatest economic crisis, the Depression. We further created Social Security and Medicare, and spearheaded the civil rights, consumer, labor, women’s and environmental movements that have helped make America not just great, but good. And, when we last held presidential power in the 1990s, progressives oversaw the greatest economic expansion in our history. It is a record to be proud of.

In the years ahead, our leaders will face a new set of tough 21st century governing challenges. We must keep the world peaceful and our country safe, restore broad-based prosperity in a much more competitive age of globalization, invest in infrastructure and people to ensure future prosperity, address global climate change and move toward greater energy independence, modernize our health care system while guaranteeing that all Americans have access to health insurance, manage the retirement of the baby boom, get our federal budget under control, and reform our broken immigration system. These are no small set of challenges.

For Democrats, success in 2008 will require offering real solutions to these great challenges, something the current governing party has utterly failed to do.

A New Post-Broadcast Media And Communications Era
As FDR mastered early broadcast radio and JFK excelled on the new technology of his time, television, future success will depend on the mastery of an emergent post-broadcast communications environment. We are in the very early stages of a whole new era of political communications, which is more personal, iterative, participatory, mobile, fragmented, digital, networked – and whose rate of change is accelerating.

In 2003, we saw how an unknown candidate, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, used these new 21st century tools to leapfrog his competition among rival Democratic presidential candidates. In 2004, we saw the DNC use them to raise more money than the RNC for the first time in recent memory. And in 2006, we saw the early power of viral video help take down GOP Sen. George Allen in Virginia, giving Democrats control of the Senate.

The rise of the broadband internet, cable and satellite television, mobile telephony and media and their increasing use is radically changing the way the American people connect and communicate with one another.  In response, we must radically alter our approach to media and political communications. For Democrats, success in 2008 will require replacing the 20th century model of political communications, with a new spirit of experimentation, and a new set of political tools.

The American People Themselves Have Changed
Since FDR built the Democratic Party’s last great majority electoral coalition, the American people have changed a great deal. In recent decades America has become increasingly suburban and exurban, Southern and Western, Hispanic and Asian, immigrant and Spanish-speaking, aging Boomer and Millennial, and more digital age in our orientation towards life and work than industrial age.  We live in literally what is a new America.

These new demographic realities have created a new 21st electoral majority strategy for Democrats, one that was used to win the Senate and House in 2006, and that has now produced 42 states with either a Democratic senator or governor. This new map starts with Democratic strengths in the Northeast, Midwest and Coastal West, and seeks to consolidate opportunities in the Inter-mountain West, the Southwest, the Plains and the South.

Democrats start the hunt for the presidency with much more strength at the Electoral College level than is widely understood; having what could be considered perhaps a high floor but low ceiling. The party has received 250 Electoral College votes or more in the last four national elections, a feat last accomplished in the FDR era.

While Ohio alone may give the Democrats the presidency in 2008, a great new Hispanic opening has emerged with what may be a permanent degradation of the Republican brand resulting from the terrible immigration debate in 2006. Exploiting this opening could flip Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada, and give the Democrats another 56 electoral votes. What is remarkable is that this new Electoral College strategy is essentially the same way Democrats won the Senate and House, creating for this old party a very new, achievable and durable way of holding power in this new century.

What’s Next
So how are Democrats doing so far in mastering this new politics of the 21st century? Well, after years of failed conservative government, Democrats have put big issues – restoring broad-based prosperity, fixing Iraq, health care for all, reforming immigration, global climate change and energy independence – on the agenda. Our presidential candidates have already embraced powerful new tools like viral video and social networking, and are using these and other new tools to involve already close to a million people – an extraordinary number – in their campaigns.  Our party’s emerging leaders – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, DNC Chairman Dean – look like 21st century America, and hail from the region’s critical to locking in this 21st century electoral majority.

Our new primary calendar includes states from the fastest growing regions of the country, the South and West, which will allow African-Americans and Hispanics to participate in our primary process as never before. Our 2008 convention is in Denver, at the epicenter of the most important new strategic opening in this election, the Southwest, and will be chaired in part by the compelling Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, a member of a new generation of Hispanic leaders.

There is much at stake in 2008. Only one political party, the Democrats, built a sustained majority coalition in the 20th century. The historic failures of the Bush era have made it possible for Democrats to imagine replicating this success in our new century. And while a great deal of attention will go into winning the 2008 elections, it is critical for us to also be looking ahead at a much more strategic level, and recognize that by mastering this new politics of the new century we may be taking the critical early steps in building a majority coalition as robust and durable as the one FDR built more than 70 years ago. 

Simon Rosenberg is the President of NDN, a progressive think tank and advocacy organization.

MoveOn and more on how the internet is changing politics

Tonight MoveOn attempts a rather remarkable thing - a virtual townhall meeting with the Democratic Presidential candidates.   You can participate or learn more at www.moveon.org.

Additionally, the Boston Globe's Rick Klein has a must read piece on the meaning of the Democratic Presidential candidates huge 1st quarter fundraising advantage. It starts:

WASHINGTON -- Democrats appear to have erased the decades-long Republican edge in campaign fund-raising, building a network of well-off donors that rivals that of the GOP -- and that recently has generated more cash.

In dwarfing the sums raised by Republicans in the first three months of this year, Democratic presidential candidates capitalized on growing support from upper-income professionals. While higher-earning households overwhelmingly favored Republicans as recently as the start of President Bush's first term, the gap has narrowed to 4 percentage points among voters with annual household incomes of more than $100,000, according to the Pew Research Center's latest polls.

Democrats' recent fund-raising success challenges the traditional assumption of the Republican Party enjoying a reliable financial advantage -- and points to the outlines of a new Democratic coalition that could change the nation's political dynamics in 2008 and beyond, according to campaign finance specialists.

"It's a whole new world," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who was a top adviser to Vice President Al Gore, who was out spent by more than $65 million by Bush in the 2000 election. "To call it revolutionary is not a stretch. It is a game-changer."

The shift leaves Democrats confident that for the foreseeable future they will be able to compete dollar-for-dollar with Republicans, after decades of expecting to be outspent. By reaching a new crop of contributors -- largely through the Internet -- Democrats have tapped into a potentially powerful army of higher-income and better-educated voters who are increasingly aligning themselves with Democratic values, according to polls and demographic data.

As recently as 2002, 45 percent of voters with annual household incomes of more than $100,000 identified themselves as Republicans, while just 28 percent said they were Democrats, Pew polls found. But Pew's 2007 polling shows that gap closing to a 33-29 GOP advantage, with most former Republicans now calling themselves independents.

Just as working-class voters have been drawn to the GOP because of the party's emphasis on traditional values, many higher-income, higher-educated voters who once favored Republicans over tax policy have been moving toward the Democrats because of more liberal stands on social issues and a more internationalist perspective on foreign policy.

Those trends powered voting shifts toward Democrats in the suburbs in last year's congressional elections, where widespread dissatisfaction with the Iraq war and the Bush administration gave Democrats control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years.

"We're going through a period of transformational change," said Alan Solomont , a veteran Boston-based Democratic fund-raiser who is working on the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. "Business folks -- not ideologues, but entrepreneurs, new economy workers, venture capitalists -- are [looking at Republicans and] saying, 'This is not how I want my government represented around the world.' "

Throughout recent history, Republicans have been able to count on greater financial resources than Democrats, with an immense fund-raising operation that relied on big business and wealthy individual backers. Many observers predicted that the gap would grow wider in the wake of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform act, since Democrats had long relied on labor unions' unlimited "soft money" donations, which the 2002 law banned.

But Democrat John F. Kerry surpassed fund-raising expectations in his 2004 presidential campaign, bringing in $253.9 million, just $38 million less than President Bush, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Democrats built on that trend in last year's mid-term congressional elections, with the party's House and Senate campaign committees pulling to within $7 million of their Republican counterparts.

In the first three months of this year, Democratic presidential candidates blew past Republicans, raising a total of $78 million compared to only $52 million for Republicans. Two Democrats -- Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton of New York -- surpassed $25 million apiece; the leading Republican fund-raiser -- former governor Mitt Romney -- hauled in $23 million.

"Clearly we've had more success with people who named themselves independents and moderate Republicans," said Hassan Nemazee , a New York-based fund-raiser for Clinton and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "We're able to pick into areas where we haven't been able to in the past."

On one level, the tremendous amount of cash flowing to Democrats is a measure of Democratic excitement about 2008. Energy translates into campaign dollars, particularly with online tools making political donations the equivalent of civic activism.

While much credit is given to the Democrats' extensive efforts to use the Internet to raise money, no fund-raising tool can be effective unless potential donors have the resources to give to a party or cause. There, Democrats are encountering a political landscape that is vastly different than it was just two years ago, when some conservatives boasted of building a permanent Republican majority in the United States...

The Emerging Political Agenda from the Bottom Up

The bar just keeps getting higher when it comes to all the innovative ways new tools are being used in politics, and now, government. I’m referring to two very recent developments where average people are given opportunities to contribute their own ideas on what to  do about issues for a candidate, and for a sitting governor.

The first is Obama’s new feature on his campaign website where he gives people the opportunity to submit their ideas about what to do about the national health care problem. The ideas, and the supportive contributions, can take many forms: a written idea blurb, a written personal story, a video that sheds light on the issue, or a recorded audio message that people can  make with any computer with a microphone, which is most decent ones. The audio contribution was something I had not seen done before. But taken all together, the package opportunity is different too.

This appears to be just the beginning of many other tool rollouts for Obama. Healthcare is just the first issues of many that will soon appear but also the website indicates that there will be opportunities to collaborate in other ways too. Collaboration, after all, is the essence of the new power of what is called Web 2.0.

Then there’s Deval Patrick’s morphed campaign site. The new governor of Massachusetts, who rode the new tools and much bottom-up energy to his election victory, is now trying to harness them in governing. His nascent attempt gives residents a chance to propose and support issues that the governor should take up and try to enact.

It’s very early days in both these efforts, but they are telegraphing a trend that is bound to pick up steam in the months ahead. If this country is truly going to take on the new challenges of the 21st century in effective ways, then people in politics will need to tap into the creativity and brainpower of millions of Americans who have been shut out of politics and governing – until now.

Peter Leyden  

NDN Press Release: Statement on Presidential Campaign Fundraising

I released the following statement to the media earlier today:

"Today’s announcement by Barack Obama that he has raised $25 million shows that Democrats are clearly ahead of Republicans in adapting to the new opportunities and realities of 21st century American politics. 

It appears that the collective Democratic field has raised about 50 percent more than the collective Republican field.  When the official FEC filings come out next week, there is little doubt that Democrats will far exceed Republicans in the number of people who have donated as well.

No matter how you measure it - money raised, sign-ups on social networking sites, people at events, downloads on YouTube and of course as the recent Pew poll showed, party identification - Democrats are structurally ahead of the Republicans in mastering the new politics of the 21st century. 

The 100 dollar revolution that started in 2003 continues to radically change American politics.  A combination of more states voting earlier in the primary process and an acceleration of the adoption of new tools that are making it easier for people to participate in politics will mean that by late February of 2008, tens of millions of Americans will have voted, donated, volunteered, blogged, signed up or taken some sort of action on behalf of a candidate. 

There also should be little doubt that effectively managing and tapping into the new prominence of average people in our 21st century politics is going to be one of the most critical tests of our political leaders.  

Another measure of how Democrats are better adapting to the new realities of the 21st century is the historic diversity of the Democratic Presidential field: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden look like the diverse America of the 21st century."

MySpace Primary: Social Networking Gone Wild

Social networking is going to play a big role in the politics of this cycle, but I think having a primary on MySpace might be going a bit far. We’ll see.

The MySpace primary seems to me to be gimmicky at this point, and I hope that does not turn off political people from the idea that social networking tools can be a powerful way to do what politics has always been about – connecting up people and their “social networks” of family and friends behind a campaign or candidate.

I made that point in an interview I did today around the breaking news. Separate the importance of social networking from the potential relevance of the MySpace primary. They should be evaluated on their own terms as two separate things.

There is no question that social networking will be big in politics – not the least because it is a critical medium to reach the Millennial Generation, that increasingly important young constituency.

There are a lot of questions about how a MySpace primary will fare in a real-world primary world. But you never know. I could be wrong….

Peter Leyden   

Google & Echostar Partnership: a first step towards buying political ads on satellite TV?

As television audiences become increasingly segmented through technologies such as cable, DVRs, and satellite TV, a broadcast-only strategy of reaching viewers just doesn’t work anymore. Satellite TV subscribers, for example, are among the most difficult for political advertisers to reach because ads can only be bought nationally on the non-local channels.

Simply put, while a political advertiser can buy ads on popular cable channels such as TNT, TBS, and A&E by buying through their local cable company, it’s been impossible to buy ads on those very same stations on satellite networks.

Today’s announcement by Google and Echostar could change this dynamic. Google announced today that it will sell TV ads on the 125 stations distributed by Echostar Communications’ DISH network.

The TV ads will work much like Google’s online search ads do – advertisers specify how much they’re willing to pay, and through an automated auction, the ads with the highest price are selected. What’s more, just like in the online search ads, advertisers can choose by geographic region:

Mr. Desai said the television ad system would work much like Google’s existing online and offline advertising systems. EchoStar would make some unspecified amount of air time available to Google’s advertisers. Advertisers or agencies would upload video spots to the system along with their desired target audience or network and would specify the price they are willing to bid for the air time.

Google’s ad system would then select the winning ads and play them on the air. Using information collected by EchoStar’s set-top satellite boxes, it will be able to give advertisers a report showing how many people viewed any ad and whether users tuned it out in the first few seconds.

Google will also use information collected by EchoStar to deliver the ads to their target audiences more precisely, the companies said.

Advertisers will not be able to designate specific households, but will be able to choose individual networks like ESPN or MTV and a time of day. Alternatively, they could choose a demographic group or geographic region, and Google’s system would schedule the ads across a variety of networks.

This is still a pilot program, but it could be the beginning of a significant change in political TV ad buying.

"La Audacia de la Esperanza"

I wanted to acknowledge the Spanish release of Sen. Barack Obama's best-selling book "The Audacity of Hope." From the AP article:

Vintage Espanol, a paperback imprint of Random House Inc., will publish "La Audacia de la Esperanza" in June with a first printing of 50,000, a high number for a Spanish release.

"It will be our biggest book of the year in Spanish," Vintage spokesman Russell Perreault said Thursday.

The work of our New Politics Institute - which encourages the use of new tools like speaking in Spanish - suggests that this could bode well for Senator Obama.

NPI Video Report: The Political Web Video World

Below is the email that went out to NDN and NPI members earlier today, highlighting NPI's newest report, an innovative video report "The Political Web Video World."  Watch the video below:

Web video and the power of user-generated content created by cheap digital tools has taken the political world by storm in recent weeks.

With that in mind, The New Politics Institute partnered with PoliticsTV.com and created a new kind of think tank product that we’re calling a “video report.” We've created a web video that gives an overview of the entire political web video world, breaking it down into a dozen categories that are seriously beginning to impact politics today.

Each category is explained and analyzed, and then portions of an example or two are laid out. You can watch the entire overview piece of all 12 categories taken together, or view each category as its own video piece. There's also a short accompanying written report that gives the link to every web video referenced.

NPI soon will be holding an event in Washington DC that will gather some of the most knowledgeable people on political web videos to deepen our understanding of how these powerful new tools work. More information on that event will be coming soon. For now, the report draws on the longtime experience of PoliticsTV.com’s CEO and Executive Producer Dan Manatt, and yours truly.

We welcome feedback on this innovative video report, and expect to do more experimentation the year ahead. Keep an eye on the New Politics Institute website, at www.newpolitics.net, where you can find work from a community that’s thinking deeply and strategizing about how politics is being changed by the transformation of technology, media and the demographics of the country. Please join us there throughout the coming political cycle – which promises to be a very interesting cycle indeed.

Links:

Click here or on the picture to watch the entire video

Watch individual sections of the video

Read the accompanying written report with links to web video discussed in the video report

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

Read Simon Rosenberg's essay TV ads feel different this cycle, and are

Watch other video content from the New Politics Institute 

Visit PoliticsTV on the web: http://www.politicstv.com

Visit NPI on the web: http://www.newpolitics.net

Crowning Edwards King of Social Networking?

The Washington Post analyzes John Edwards' embrace of social networking sites. Comparing his efforts to the rest in the 2008 field, the article shows that while Sen. Barack Obama might be more popular, Edwards is more visible:

All the presidential hopefuls are online. Everyone's got a Web site. A few hired full-time bloggers and videographers. Most have MySpace profiles, just a click away from "friending" a supporter. Yet Edwards has taken his Internet presence a step further, fully exploiting the unknown possibilities (and known pitfalls) of the social Web, online strategists say. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), judging by the number of friends on MySpace or number of views of his YouTube videos, may be the most popular online candidate, Republican or Democrat. But Edwards arguably has the most dynamic Web presence -- he's everywhere, doing everything.

But exactly where is he?

...the former senator is signed up in at least 23 socnets -- more than any other presidential candidate. And that's not counting John Edwards One Corps, his own networking site that campaign officials say has 20,000 members and 1,200 chapters across the country.

For more information on how candidates can leverage the internet and its possibilities, check out the work of our New Politics Institute.

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