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NDN News: A New Day, Cincinnatus, GOP Has An Off Ramp
New Day – Hard to overstate the significance of what’s about to happen in the next few days. More than a transfer of power – the Biden team is coming in ready to hit the ground running as few Administrations in recent American history have. Biden has a clear world view; has built a remarkable team; is already rolling out cogent, smart plans on the biggest challenges we face. The change in language, agenda, orientation is going to be dramatic, jarring, needed, and oh so welcome.
We keep coming back to the concept of experience – Joe Biden and his team just know their way around the place. We are witnessing a remarkably sure footed operation come in at a time of enormous crisis in America – COVID, the economy, body politic, cyber, climate, America’s standing in the world – and it is hard at this point to not feel a bit lucky that Biden, like Cincinnatus, came out of retirement and suited up one more time for the good of the republic.
In a 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 another one from a few months back with Salon’s Chauncy DeVega.
Republicans Have An Off-Ramp – They Need to Take It – The radicalization of the modern GOP is not an issue which can be ignored any longer, and it is critical that leaders across the country demand now that Republicans take the off ramp from radicalization that has clearly been offered to them. As Simon writes in this new Medium piece there are three things the GOP must do now to prevent Trump’s insurrection from becoming a violent insurgency against the US:
1. Declare the election results legitimate
2. Demand the insurgents stand down, end their futile quest to overthrow the US govt
3. Cease using the language of extremism, of violence – referring to Democrats as radicals, extremists is itself a call to violence, a justification for action outside normal politics. It isn’t true and the GOP simply must step away from this rhetorical relic of the dangerous Trump era.
The longer the GOP sticks with this false narrative of insurrection the more likely it is that violence will continue; and as damaged as the Republican brand is now, months or years of sustained political violence could, rightly, bring a permanent end to what we know as the Republican Party today.
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.
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 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 this last election, Democrats now hold all 8 of the region’s Senate seats and have 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. 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. It includes a link to our recent interview with Rep. Ruben Gallego, one of the architects to the political transformation we’ve seen in Arizona.
Onward,
Team NDN
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