New Politics Institute

If you're headed to Denver, don't do anything you don't want to read on a blog or see on YouTube.

According to a recent article by the Wall Street Journal's Amy Schatz, a super sharp member of the Fourth Estate, the Netroots -- bloggers, citizens armed with camcorders, people on Facebook -- are going to be a big presence at this year's party conventions. 

The Big Tent, a two-story, 8,000 square-foot structure is being erected in Denver to house bloggers, new media, progressive leaders and others coming from just about everywhere. Google is a sponsor of the Tent and will offer massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. YouTube will have a kiosk for convention-goers to upload their videos. What does all this mean? Amy talked to Simon for her report:

"There's no such thing as off the record anymore. There's no such thing as private moments anymore," says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of NDN, formerly the New Democrat Network, and the New Politics Institute.

"We saw that with 'macaca,'" Mr. Rosenberg said, referring to an incident in 2006 when a videographer recorded then-Sen. George Allen using a term often considered derogatory to some ethnic groups. "This is the condition of life now in the new media age."

AFP also wrote about the Netroots at the conventions in a story that moved across the wire today. In it, Technology Correspondent Glenn Chapmann quoted Simon's foreword to "Crashing the Gate," a must-read by Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong for anyone who wants to understand why the Netroots took hold so quickly, deeply and strongly:

"This new politics is disruptive, upsetting old arrangements and displacing people invested in the old ways," Simon Rosenberg, president of progressive think tank NDN wrote in a forward to the book "Crashing The Gate."

"It is literally crashing the gate of the old system ... and to that I say, 'Amen.'"

The New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzberg took a fascinating look at Robert Kuttner's upcoming new book on whether U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has the right stuff to be a "transformative" president if elected.

The book’s premise is not only that Obama will be elected President but also, and mainly, that his character and talents—in combination with the manifest failures of conservative rule and the manifold crises it has created, exacerbated, or ignored—give him a fighting chance to lead the country into a deep and lasting era of positive change. (As it happens, there are signs that Obama understands this and is preparing to seize the moment.) Kuttner, in concise chapters written with great vigor and clarity, shows what the change could look like if Obama is bold enough to go for it and the gods continue to smile on him.

Thanks to Hertzberg for citing Simon's recent blog post (click on "signs" in Hertzberg's piece).

NDN Green Project Director Michael Moynihan recently talked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about energy issues.

Michael Moynihan, an energy expert at NDN, a think tank in Washington aligned with Democrats, said the candidates needed a far more robust plan for solar power.

"On this issue, I think that Americans are ahead of the candidates of both parties," he said.

To read more about the potential of solar, check out Michael's recent paper here.

Finally, Simon talked to the Washington Times' all-star, Christina Bellantoni, about whether Obama's vacation hurt him. The short answer is, "doubtful."

A new report set to be released by Volunteering in America on Monday, July 28, takes a detailed look at the state of volunteerism in America. Apparently, there's more at work when it comes to charity work than just the goodness in your heart. In fact, it may be influenced by where you live, how old you are and how our economy is doing. 

The study lists U.S. cities inhabited by people who give the most -- and the least -- of their time to volunteering. The top city? Minneapolis-St. Paul. Dead last? Miami, which knocked off Las Vegas for the bottom spot. Utah, with its heavy Mormon population, was the top volunteer state. Check out  report link above for more interesting tidbits on geography and do-gooders. 

According to another key finding of the report:

Baby Boomers will double the number of older American volunteers in the coming decades and young people are volunteering at higher rates than the last generation. “We have an unprecedented opportunity to seize this moment and usher in a new era of service in America,” said David Eisner, CEO of the Corporation.  “By giving us a look under the hood of U.S. volunteering, this research shows what we need to do to recruit and retain tomorrow’s volunteers.”

That's the key sentence here: young people are volunteering at higher rates than the last generation.

Our San Francisco-based affiliate, the New Politics Institute (NPI), has conducted an enormous amount of demographic research on these young people. What do we know about them? They were born in the 1980s and 1990s. They believe that the federal government can do good in the hands of the right people. They are more African American, more Hispanic and more Asian -- they reflect America's real demograhic makeup. And they are very civic minded. In other words, they volunteer.

What are they called? The Millennial Generation. According to a major 2007 report on Millennials by NPI:

Similar to the Boomers, the Millennials are poised to impact the country at every life stage and in myriad ways - but particularly in politics. By 2008, the number of citizen-eligible Millennial voters will be nearing 50 million. By the presidential election of 2016, Millennials will be one third or more of the citizen-eligible electorate, and roughly 30 percent of actual voters—and this is making no assumptions about possible increased turnout rates among Millennials in the future, which could make their weight among actual voters higher. Moreover, from that point on, the Millennials’ share of the actual voters will rise steadily for several decades as more and more of the generation enter middle age.

The Millennials are an unusual generation, not like young people we have seen for a long time. As first noted by generational analysts William Strauss and Neil Howe, they are not individualistic risk-takers like the Boomers or cynical and disengaged like Generation Xers. Signs indicate that Millennials are civic-minded (emphasis added), politically engaged, and hold values long associated with progressives, such as concern about economic inequalities, desire for a more multilateral foreign policy, and a strong belief in government...

Or take volunteerism, which is unusually high among Millennials. The American Freshman survey showed 83 percent of entering freshmen in 2005 volunteered at least occasionally during their high school senior year, the highest ever measured in this survey. And 71 percent said they volunteered on a weekly basis.

Finally, according to an Associated Press report, another factor in volunteerism was the economy:

On the worrisome side were mounting concerns that economic woes — including high gasoline prices and job insecurity — would be deterrents for some would-be volunteers.

"With more people in need — losing houses, losing jobs — there are more people to serve," said CNCS board chairman Stephen Goldsmith. "You have fewer people helping and more people needing help."

For more on the Millennial Generation, check in later this week.

Any one else notice the now ubiquitous Mark Udall banner ads on the big progressive blogs?  They are among the best I've seen this year.  Attractive, message-based, animated, about "joining," not about "giving."  They are setting a new standard for ads below the presidential level, and are clearly inspired by the success of Obama's deep success on the Internet. 

For more on how to best use the Internet in your advocacy work, visit our affiliate, the New Politics Institute, where you can find papers on to buy ads on the Internet, how to buy search and how to optimize your site for search engines, how to engage the blogs and the role of "influentials" in all marketing.  It is a powerful package and very much worth reviewing. 

Whatever ends up happening tonight, the drama in the air -- and on the air -- will surely yield extraordinary viewerships on the various cable TV networks, of course, benefitting both Obama and Clinton. I certainly am planning on watching.

But what the unfolding drama reminds us is how powerful cable TV news has become in recent years. Most of the too many debates this year happened on a cable network. A great deal of the strong analysis - particularly by John King on CNN - has happened on cable. Cable TV news had a banner year, and is well-poised to drive the election coverage more than any other single news outlet this fall.

At NPI, we've written a great deal about how TV and video are changing. For those in the advocacy business, be sure to check out our series on the growing power of cable itself, which can be found over at NPI's site, www.newpolitics.net.

Update: Reuters has a good piece today looking at how much cable news has benefitted from the long primary season.

NDN has a very aggressive schedule over the next few weeks. I'll be involved in many of these events, and am excited to reconnect with many of you.

Today in DC, we host an excellent event on how the most important medium of politics, television, is changing. It will showcase a remarkable panel of experts, including the head of audience research for TiVo, who among other things, will be discussing the impact of DVRs on how people are now relating to their TV. You won't want to miss this one.

Next Monday, I will be in New York hosting a forum on the growing power of the Millennial Generation, the largest generation in American history. Joining us will be Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, the two authors of a critically acclaimed new book, Millennial Makeover, and the man who introduced us to the whole Millennial concept, something NPI has done a great job promoting the last few years. Also joining us will be two people who work closely with Millennials, Jon Schnur of New Leaders for New Schools and Alicia Menendez of Rock the Vote.

The following Monday, May 5, again in New York City, I will be hosting a Bernard Schwartz Forum on Economic Policy that will celebrate the compelling new book of our Globalization Initiative Chairman, Dr. Robert Shapiro. Rob's book is a far-reaching look at how the world is likely to play out over the next 15 to 20 years, and the forum will be a discussion you won't want to miss. It will also be a good opportunity to talk politics and look at what is happening on the national stage these days.

Finally, I'll be back in DC on May 9, where Peter Leyden and I will be hosting a day-long working session on the important new tools and new audiences critical to 21st century politics. This event will feature several plenary sessions but will also include 10 or so breakouts to help our family drill down further on specific tools or demographics you might want to learn more about. We've got a terrifc line up of speakers and panelists, which you won't want to miss.

Of course there is more than even all this. We are hosting U.S. Rep. Barney Frank on May 20 here in DC, and have many more events in the hopper that we hope to announce soon. Additionally, the able NDN/NPI team is producing a great deal of new and dynamic content each day, which is best viewed here on our blog.

So keep coming back here, and I hope to catch many of you at our many interesting events over the next few weeks.

To see a whole new kind of 21st century political ad check out the new Obama ad on the main page of the Dallas Morning News running this morning. Don't know how long it will be up there so go now - and it will be hard to miss.

For more on how to use a new whole new generation of tools to improve your capacity to advocate visit the New Politics Institute and our "New Tools" campaign there.

This quote comes from yet another Times piece taking a look at the how the important tool of modern advocacy, television, is being reinvented.

In our work at NPI we've written a great deal about how the hegemony of broadcast television is being challenged by the rise of cable and satellite, digitial video recording devices and other new powerful tools like mobile phones, google search ads and youtube. This article takes a look at how the very economic model of what we have known as "TV" is changing.

Learning about how this very important advocacy tool - TV - is changing needs to be high priority for all of us in the progressive movement, for TV has been the primary tool of political advocacy for the last 40 plus years. The big picture here is that video itself is in the process of being liberated from the monopoly distribution of broadcast, and is increasingly being distributed through satellite, cable, mobile phones and the internet, and thus is becoming much more ubiquitous, accessable and commonplace. There is perhaps no more important and more radical change in modern advocacy than what is happening to what we know as "TV" - and there is much more to come.