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NDN News: Rising Extremist Threat, Big GA Wins, New COVID Strategy Needed

Confronting the Rising Extremist Threat in America – Team Biden has been left with an historic array of challenges to tackle in the coming years; but as this past week reminded us, graphically, there is one more beyond COVID, the economy, climate, etc that will be front and center in the days ahead –the rise of violent domestic extremists in America. We offer some thoughts about the nature of the extremist challenge here and here; call upon AG Rosen and DHS Sec Wolf to testify in front of Congress about the US govt’s lack of preparedness last week; and urge the Trump Administration to immediately respond to DC Mayor Bowser’s request for a clear plan to keep the Capital region safe over the next two weeks so America can complete the coming transfer of power without further incident.

NDN has been warning for months that the President has been both attacking our democracy and calling for violence to help him stay in office. The idea that no one could see this attack on the Congress coming is absurd – it was the culmination of months of work by Trump and his allies. We are in a dangerous place now, and the only way forward is for the Republican Party to step back from its encouragement of extremism and embrace of illiberal tactics. Continuing to look away at what has happened to the once mighty party of Lincoln and Reagan will only result in more “carnage.”

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 of ways of immediately improving the catastrophic vaccine rollout, and we were pleased to see new ideas being debated in the NYTimes and Washington Post in recent days. 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 a big national discussion about speeding up the vaccine needs to be happening now.

Historic victories in Georgia – In the chaos of the week, many have lost sight of just how extraordinary the Democratic victories in Georgia were last Tuesday. Writing in the Hill on the morning of Election Day, Simon predicted the twin victories, penning: “Democrats should be very optimistic about Georgia. Despite being outspent, running against two incumbents, and historically struggling in Georgia runoffs, Democrats head into Election Day in better shape in the early/mail vote than at this time in the November elections, which they won.

This strong early vote performance is a sign that the powerful new coalition Stacey Abrams and others have forged is here to stay and is showing up again.

Finally, what is the GOP’s closing argument in Georgia? It appears to be chaos, corruption, cheating, more COVID-19, fewer jobs — who wants that? The advantage goes to Ossoff and Warnock.”

Friday 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.

We will be showing With Dems every Friday at 2pm ET for the next two months. You can sign up for a future presentation, 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 recent 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 4 of the 6 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.

Sincerely,

Simon and Georgia

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