- As this is being posted, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are appearing together in Unity, NH. Quoting Obama: "She rocks".
- In The Fix, Chris Cillizza looks at the presidential politics of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn DC's ban on handguns. On the same subject, PrezVid offers a video of Obama expressing his belief that the Second Amendment is an individual right. For more of the legal aspects, keep checking SCOTUSblog.
- Will there be a new debate format this Fall? According to the WSJ's Washington Wire, the Commission on Presidential Debates is hoping so.
- The Obama campaign continues to push the PowerPoint that Campaign Manager David Plouffe went over in DC this week, showing the strength of the campaign as well as highlighting fundraising realities among the candidates and party committees. All this comes as two more states shift to Obama.
- Michael Bush has an article worth reading in AdAgeentitled "The Web Is Where It's At for Youth Vote". Here's a provacative quote:
"The good news for Democrats is that they [have proved they] can connect with voters, and the good news for Republicans is that this isn't about party or candidate; it's about the tool," Mr. Irving said. "So the candidate who is good at using these tools will have better success at reaching these voters. These voters are going [online] to find information because they can shape the message they receive and that's the watershed."
- As I wrote this morning, both U.S. Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will be addressing the 25th Annual NALEO Conference tomorrow.
- John McCain has a new ad, "Purpose". Check it out below:
This week was an historic week in American politics and NDN was in the thick of it all when it came to commenting to the media.
Additionally, several articles on new polls showing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama with a significant lead over U.S. Sen. John McCain among Hispanics validates NDN's recently relesed report, Hispanics Rising II and confirms that while Obama still has work to do to lock down the Hispanic vote, the real onus is on McCain to make up ground with the Hispanic electorate he turned his back on by abandoning his own legislation calling for comprehensive immigration reform.
- In the inevitable post-mortem following Obama's Minneapolis speech, Simon was quoted in a report by Sarah Lai Stirland on the Wired Blog Network about the Obama campaign's groundbreaking use of new tools, particularly the Internet, during the primary. (6/3/08)
- Writing for the Boston Globe, Susan Milligan talked to Simon about some of the flaws in the Clinton campaign for Her first steps set stage for fall. (6/3/08)
- The Sydney Morning Herald's Ian Munro quoted Simon in his story about Clinton and her future. Simon said of Clinton, "She has got a very bright future ahead. Democrats are likely to be in control of the House and the Senate for a very long time...I think Senator Clinton has come out of this election as a much more influential individual." (6/4/08)
- Simon also talked to the Telegraph's Toby Harnden about the Democratic primary candidates' campaigns in Harnden's How Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton.
- Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson talked to Simon about how Obama's challenges in unifying the Democratic party in his piece, Obama’s E Pluribus Challenge. (6/4/08)
- Speaking at a political forum in San Francisco at which he was joined by Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, Simon covered a wide range of issues. The San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci detailed one of Obama's challenges in Obama faces tough task healing rift with women. (6/5/08)
On May 28, NDN released its newly updated report, Hispanics Rising II, which used new demographic and polling data to show that the Hispanic population in the United States is booming, that Hispanics are voting in greater numbers, that Hispanics are trending heavily Democratic and that they are locating in key battleground states. Recent polls, including a new Gallup poll, have affirmed the report.
- Sam Stein, writing for the Huffington Post, included Andres Ramirez, NDN's Vice President for Hispanic Programs, in his report. (6/5/08)
- Writing today, the Los Angeles Time's Peter Wallsten spoke to Simon for his article, Obama leads in battle for Latino vote, which cited several polls showing Obama with a significant lead over McCain among Hispanics. (6/6/08)
- The Hartford Courant also carried Wallsten's report. (6/6/08)
Makeovers or realignments occur about every four decades in American politics, resulting in forty years of partisan advantage for the party that catches the next wave of generational and technological change. For the other party, it means spending forty years in the minority. Whether a party prospers or loses ground at the time of a realignment depends, in large part, on whether it is willing to embrace a new coalition of voters that is aligned with the larger changes taking place in society or whether it remains locked in the divisions and debates of the past.
In 1896, the Democrats and William Jennings Bryan looked back to an agrarian America and to Jefferson's and Jackson's "yeoman farmer", leaving it to Republicans William McKinley and Mark Hanna, the Carl Rove of his era, to appeal to an emerging urban America. The result was GOP dominance of U.S. politics for the next forty years.
The Democrats got it right in 1932. That year, spurred by the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt built a coalition based on the economic egalitarianism of the GI Generation, many of whom were blue-collar workers and the children and grandchildren of the last great wave of European immigrants to the United States.
But as late as 1968, many Democrats still wanted to rely on the New Deal coalition even as a young idealist generation, Baby Boomers, attempted to get the party to focus on a different set of concerns including civil rights, women's rights, and opposition to the Vietnam war. The resulting divisions presented an opportunity that the Republicans have exploited ever since.
Now, forty years later, American politics is undergoing another period of political and generational change just as it did in 1896, 1932, and 1968. If the Democratic Party has the courage to embrace a new generation of young voters and the group-oriented values it favors, it can once again recapture the political advantage for the next four decades.
Unfortunately, most of the advice the party is getting on what constitutes a winning coalition in 2008, is being provided by pundits and candidates who seem locked in the politics and divisions of the past. Some tell the party to focus on the "white working class," or "hardworking white people." On the other hand, a recent Wall Street Journal article suggested that the focus should be on "senior citizens," virtually all of whom vote and who, together, comprise about 20-percent of the electorate. But these approaches to coalition building neither recognize the major demographic changes continuing to take place in America nor the factors that lead to political makeovers or realignments.
Throughout history, realignments have been produced by the political coming-of-age of a large, dynamic generation and its use of a new communication technology that mobilizes the opinions and votes of that generation. Today's realignment stems from the emergence of the Millennial Generation (Americans born 1982-2003) and its use of Internet based social networking technologies.
The Millennial Generation is the largest in American history. There are over 90 million Millennials, about four in ten of whom are of voting age, making them just as powerful a force in the 2008 election as the much more frequently touted senior citizen cohort.
The Millennial Generation is also the most diverse in our history. Four in ten are non-white and about 20-percent are the children of at least one immigrant parent. Reflecting their gender-neutral behavior, a majority of college undergraduates are women, for the first time in U.S. history. Solid majorities of Millennials are tolerant on social and racial issues, favorable to governmental intervention and egalitarian policies in the economy, and an activist, but multilateral, approach in foreign affairs. With few exceptions, Millennials have overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama in this year's presidential primaries and caucuses.
At the same time, changes in America's economy and the composition of its population serve to continue the half-century long trend, noted recently by Alan Abramowitz in the Rasmussen Report, of the diminishing contribution of "white working class voters" to the American workforce overall and to the Democratic electorate specifically:
"In the 1950s, manual workers made up 47 percent of the white electorate in the United States while sales and clerical workers made up 21 percent and professional and managerial workers made up 32 percent. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, manual workers made up only 24 percent of the white electorate, while sales and clerical workers made up 33 percent and professional and managerial workers made up 43 percent. Since the 1960s, however, Democratic identification among both white manual workers and white sales and clerical workers has declined sharply while Democratic identification among white professional and managerial workers has risen. Today, white professional and managerial workers are actually more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than either white manual workers or white clerical and sales workers."
As Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel wrote recently, the Democratic Party is rapidly becoming a party of "gentry liberals", minorities and youth with little resemblance to the working class-based party coalition assembled by FDR almost eighty years ago.
This shift in America's economic dynamics and demographics, coupled with the generational and technological changes the country is experiencing, produces an historic opportunity for the Democratic Party in 2008. In a March 2008 Pew Survey, Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by a greater than 2:1 margin. Millennials are the first generation in more than forty years in which a larger number say they are liberal rather than conservative. In contrast to older generations that are sharply divided by sex and race in their ideology and party identification Millennials are united in their political leanings, a fact that serves to enhance the potential decisiveness of this powerful new generation.
All of this gives the Democrats a clear leg-up in the Millennial makeover that's under way. Whether the Democratic Party takes advantage of this historical opportunity largely depends on the choices it makes in building its electoral coalition. Will it look backward, as it did to its detriment in 1896, or forward, as it did in 1932, to its benefit? The consequences of that choice will shape the fate of the party and the nation, not just in 2008, but also for the coming four decades.
Tom Schaller - a panelist at our upcoming event on Friday, May 9, New Tools and New Audiences (RSVP here) - has an analysis of the Clinton campaign's strategy in the election thus far that is very much worth reading. The lede from Slate:
If Hillary Clinton fails to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from Barack Obama, there will be plenty of second-guessing about how she ran her campaign. What if her loyalty to campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and chief strategist Mark Penn had not prevented her from demoting them sooner? What if her electoral strategists had better understood the power of caucus states and the way in which votes cast there translated into delegates? What if she had actually planned for the month following Super Tuesday, thereby preventing Obama from posting the 11 straight wins after Feb. 5 that provided him the pledged delegate lead he enjoys today? But beyond these questions, one little-discussed factor (with direct or indirect relation to all of the above) appears to have had fatal consequences for Clinton's campaign: She failed to mount a strong enough challenge to Obama's claim on the African-American vote.
With record breaking fundraising comes record breaking spending. A recent NYTimes article cites CMAG figures showing that the Democratic candidates are spending more on TV advertising than in any previous primary, but given that none of these ads cast aspersions in the direction of the Republican nominee, this has led some to worry that McCain is getting a free ride.
After spending nearly $16 million in Pennsylvania, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have already passed the $100 million mark on television advertising in the states that have had primaries so far. The two Democrats' aggressive campaigns against each other have left little in the bank to mount an attack against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Given that the Democratic candidates have maintained their focus on each other—at least when it comes to TV advertising—the DNC, Moveon.org and the SEIU are picking up the slack and have begun running TV spots critical of John McCain.
While McCain is on the bus peddling his newly unveiled healthcare plan, the SEIU has put together an ad featuring healthcare workers' take on the Republican Senator's proposal. (Hint: they don't think much of it.) The ad will air in Ohio and Washington, D.C.
In time for the five-year anniversary of Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" pronouncement, which has come to symbolize how acutely Bush has misunderestimated the difficultly of waging a war in Iraq, Moveon.org has seized the opportunity to remind us of where McCain stands on Iraq with both a quotation from his "100 years" remark and a picture of his lovely Bush embrace. The ad will first be aired in Iowa and New Mexico. The SEIU reportedly plans to spend $1 million over the course of next month on ads critical of McCain.
Lastly, the DNC has been getting some media attention for the two ads it has launched in the past few weeks. Taking a similar tact as MoveOn.org, the DNC's most recent ad makes use of McCain's "100 years" response to a question about the length of the US troop presence in Iraq. The ad powerfully couples the McCain sound byte with disturbing imagery and facts from Iraq.
Note: For more on political TV advertising, check out the video from a recent event we did on this very topic.
Sidestepping the issue of whether he can stand the heat of the "Kitchen", Obama's response to Hillary's ad follows the campaign's usual parry to the the experience jab by highlighting his judgement and unifying quality. The reply seeks to shift the terms of debate from which candidate would be best in a crisis to which candidate can best bring about change.
And a quick side note, some in the media have disparagingly described Hillary's recent attacks as a "kitchen sink" strategy. Now, it's not a stretch to say that entitling an attack ad "Kitchen" seems to invoke that very characterization. Seems like a strange move on the part of the Clinton camp.
A deeper look at the Democrats' TV ad spending in Pennsylvania yields a significant validation of an argument NDN and the New Politics Institute have long been making.
As Gail Shister wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, candidates are beginning to increase their spending on cable advertising.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama together will spend close to $5 million on TV ads in the closing week before the state's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.
Philadelphia stations will take in more than $2.5 million of that total, including $445,000 spent on cable - an impressive 17 percent. Cable's average for the five weeks running up to the primary is even more impressive: 22 percent.
Nationally, cable accounts for about 20 percent of political ads this election cycle, experts say, up sharply from the 2004 presidential campaign.
Then, candidates bought cable time "to an embarrassingly low extent," Gallagher says. "They didn't understand we were able to deliver such power for them."
A greater interest in cable isn't suprising given cable's ability to provide much more granular targeting than broadcast. In the same piece, Evan Tracy, a panelist for our upcoming April 24 Reimagine Video event, sums up this point nicely saying, "Cable sells by the pint. Broadcast sells by the gallon."
Turning to the content of the advertising, Hillary's latest ad is very much in keeping with the uniformly strident tone the campaign has been taking in the final days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary. Thematically in harmony with her now notorious 3 A.M. ad, "Kitchen" repackages the readiness question. It begins with the narrator describing being the US president as "the toughest job in the world" while we are shown images of past US crises. Our attention is then brought to the current slew of challenges facing our nation ending with, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Who do you think has what it takes?" Presumably the implication is that Hillary does have what it takes, turning on its head the demeaning sexist quip that Hillary should be relegated to the kitchen by inferring that yes, she should be in the kitchen, because it is a very hot kitchen and no one else can handle it.
Of course Hillary isn't the only one on the attack. In a break from the generally positive tone of the Obama camp's Pennsylvania ads thus far, "Afford", which began airing on Saturday, goes after Hillary's health care plan. The ad focuses on the same critique we have heard Obama lodge in debates, charging that people who can't afford health care will be penalized. (Another Obama ad, "Reason" also begin airing in Pennsylvania on Saturday.)
On the airwaves Clinton and Obama are engaged in a back-and-forth over his now infamous "bitter" remark. According to Evan Tracey, a speaker at an upcoming event of ours, Obama is outspending Hillary on TV ads by a factor of 5-to-1. Outside groups are joining the fray with the American Leadership Project airing a pro-Hillary ad on healthcare. There is simply an enormous amount of political activity on Pennsylvania televisions.
Here's a little glimpse into the latest TV ad sparring. First, in an ad called "Pocket", Hillary challenges Obama on his commitment to take on oil companies.
The Obama camp was quick to respond while being careful to stay close to his narrative of harkening a new kind of politics.
Amongst reports that Obama is outspending her 3-to-1 in Pennsylvania, the Hillary campaign is certainly not keeping quiet. According to The Page, she now has five TV ads on the air in various media markets in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Governor Rendell narrates this ad calling Hillary a "fighter." Perhaps further developing the Rocky narrative.
Another Clinton surrogate, Philadelphia Mayor Nutter also stars in an ad. In "Get It Done", Nutter tells voters that the reason he is supporting Hilary is because, "She gets it and gets the job done."
In addition, the Hillary campaign is running a bio ad, which highlights her Scranton roots. It reaches back a couple of generations to point to her Grandfather's job as an example of her blue collar credentials. You can watch the ad here.
Also airing is an ad we have seen previously called "Falling Through." The ad runs in Spanish and English.
Lastly, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh provides a testimonial entitled "Steel" for the Indiana media market. Like Rendell, he also describes Hillary as a fighter, but he takes it one step further saying, "she has a spine of steel." Watch the ad here.
As Hillary says herself, this is not a typical ad. It runs a full minute and consists entirely of Hillary speaking directly to the camera, describing the concerns that she says voters have communicated to her. Perhaps the more personal and empathetic feel of the ad is meant to address the concern that some have had that Hillary needs to show a more sensitive side.
Also of note is what comes towards the end of the ad. Hillary directs viewers to www.NCAskMe.com, which in turn redirects you to a page on the campaign website where anyone can submit questions. As she did in her web video announcing her exploratory committee, Hillary talks about engaging in a conversation with voters. She says that she will be using her TV ads to answer questions submitted by voters. This strategy is an interesting hybrid of old and new media. The campaign looks to be channeling the participatory spirit of new media through the powerful pipelines of old media.
Be sure to pay attention to the sort of questions the Hillary campaign chooses to answer. In this case, the kind of participation that is allowed can be the most salient indicator of the willingness of the campaign to adopt new media strategies.
For more on the use of web video check out the New Politics Institute memo.
