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NDN News: Dems Voting in GA, New Vaccine Strategy Needed, With Dems Wednesday

New COVID Strategy Needed, Now – The twin realities of a failed initial vaccine rollout and a new, more infectious COVID variant taking advantage of an already broad spread in the US population is creating a new urgency to our national conversation about how to best to defeat COVID. NDN offered some ideas this past weekend about ways of immediately improving the catastrophic vaccine rollout, and we were pleased to see new ideas being debated in the NYTimes and Washington Post. Simply, the emergence of a new more virulent COVID variant has made the need to improve the vaccine strategy an urgent one – it cannot wait till the Biden team is in place – and big national discussion about what to do needs to be happening now.

Dem Turnout Strong in GA – The GOP went into the GA runoffs with significant advantages – incumbency, more money, traditional poor Democratic performance in runoffs. Despite this the GA early vote is 4 points more Democratic today than it was in at this point in the November election, an extraordinary achievement by the Democrats and a sign that the changes we saw last year in Georgia will be lasting ones. While we don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, I would rather be Ossoff and Warnock now than Purdue and Loeffler – it is clear Democrats have a real shot at picking up both these seats this week.

This Wed 2pm ET – “With Democrats Things Get Better” – The depraved waning days of the Trump Presidency have confirmed the core narrative of NDN’s new big picture presentation – that the two parties are not the same, that to understand American politics today is it vital to understand just how different the parties have become; that attempts to portray the two parties as somehow mirror images of one another has become absurd, a willful deceit.

You can sign up for future presentations, see recordings of old ones and learn more about this important project here. And don’t miss Mike Tomasky’s rave review of “With Dems” in the Daily Beast, and our new programmatic area, Countering Illiberalism’s Rise.

Biden’s Opportunity – In his recent op-ed Simon offers some thoughts on Joe Biden’s historic opportunity to “build back better” here in the US and around the world. The piece argues that America’s new President should view the next few years as akin to the years after WWII; and use the need to fashion a successful recovery from a shared global trauma to reaffirm and reinvigorate the liberalism which has been so essential to America and the world’s success in the post WWII era.

You can catch Simon talking more in depth about these ideas in a new “Unpresidented” podcast, and one from a few months back with Salon’s Chauncy DeVega.

Young People Turned Out Again in 2020, Voted Overwhelmingly Democratic - Another big political trend we’ve been following here at NDN is what appears to be a significant awakening among young people in recent elections. In both 2018 and 2020 young people turned out in very high numbers, and were critical to Democratic victories in both cycles. According to the Exit Polls, 18-29 year olds went for Biden nationally 62-35 (+27), up from 55-36 (+19) for Clinton four years ago. 18-24 year olds went for Biden 67-29 (+38), up from 56-34% (+22) four years ago. These are big and consequential shifts.

We cover this trend in depth in our “With Democrats” presentation, but you can find Simon discussing it in these recent stories on CNBC, the Washington Post (here and here), Politico, US News and the Raleigh News and Observer (and again). A new Washington Post story on the youth vote in Georgia cites NDN’s work:

“A distinct youth politics has emerged in America, with its own issues like climate, racial justice and gun safety, and now with its own communications medium and idioms,” said Simon Rosenberg, president of the liberal think tank NDN, who has been tracking youth turnout. “What we are seeing with influencers and TikTok is new, different, constantly evolving — it’s all being invented in front of our eyes. It’s a new form of politics for sure.””

The Growing Importance of the Southwest to Democrats – In 2004 Republicans held all 6 of 8 Senate seats in AZ/CO/NM/NV and won all the region’s Electoral College votes. With important wins in AZ and CO, Democrats now hold all 8 of the region’s Senate seats and has claimed all of its 31 Electoral College votes. The modern Democratic coalition is much more Western than in the past, something you can now see now in its leadership – a VP and Speaker, HHS Secretary, DGA/DSCC/DCCC Chairs, and all 4 Senate seats won by Democrats in the last 2 elections have come from AZ/CO/NV. See our new analysis for just how important the heavily Mexican-American parts of the US have become to the national Democratic Party.

-Simon, Georgia, and the rest of the NDN team

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