NDN

New Gallup study shows:

- Democrats still hold a substantial national Party ID advantage: 49-41%.

- 33 states show substantial Democratic Party ID advantage.   Only 5 show substantial GOP Party ID advantage. 

And make sure you take a look at the map in the study.  It is amazing rebuke of the everything going the right's way narrative so hot in DC right now:

We will be announcing several new openings this week.  This one is the first:

Editor, Writer - NDN and the New Policy Institute seek an experienced editor to manage our content, oversee the execution of web communications strategies, and engage with our readers and supporters. Specific responsibilities include: maintaining and managing several websites and ensuring effective placement of content; promoting and distributing major work to the media and other interested parties; managing social media presences (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.); tracking and analyzing traffic trends; and writing for the NDN and New Policy Institute sites and blogs.

Job Requirements:

• 2+ years of previous experience as an editor with significant experience working with web content
• Excellent writing skills and experience writing for web
• Experience using content management systems and familiarity with Drupal and WordPress
• Functional knowledge of HTML/CSS (some PHP experience a plus)
• Organizational, communications, and multitasking skills, and a strong ability to work independently

Additional Qualifications:

• Experience using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, preferably for specific organizations, causes, or campaigns
• Previous experience in center-left politics 
• Visual/Graphic design experience

Salary and benefits package commensurate with experience.

Send cover letter, resume, 2 clips or writing samples and references by Feb 10th to jobs@ndn.org.

I am excited to announce a wonderful new addition to the NDN/NPI family - Alicia Menendez.   Alicia is a good friend, a thoughtful television commentator, and has spent years working on issues and strategies complementary to our work at NDN.  She will be coming on board to help advise me and the NDN team on a wide range of strategic issues, represent us in the media and in public and private gatherings, and continue her advocacy for and study of the Millennial generation and Hispanics.   She will be joining us full time later this month. 

I've known Alicia for many years now and am very excited to have her join our team.  Look for her on the blog, on TV, facebook, twitter and all the ways we all connect these days - soon.

More About Alicia and the Position

Alicia Menendez is a Senior Advisor to NDN and its sister organization, the New Policy Institute.  As Senior Advisor, Ms. Menendez will help guide the direction of the two organizations, represent the organization in the national media and at public and private gatherings, and work on NDN/NPI's projects on the rapidly changing  American electorate. 

Ms. Menendez comes to NDN/NPI as a well-established television commentator and experienced organizer in important emerging communities.  You can find her talking about national politics just about every week on the cable news networks, Fox and MSNBC. She is a veteran of both Rock the Vote and Democracia USA, successful organizations dedicated to increasing the participation of Millennials and Hispanics in the electoral process.  

She also spent time as a television segment producer and on-air contributor for RNN TV in New York, and was a primary surrogate on her father's successful 2006 bid for the US Senate in New Jersey.

Alicia graduated from Harvard in 2005, and had the honor to deliver the undergraduate commencement speech at her graduation ceremony that year.

Been thinking about the concepts of liberty and freedom a bit of late.  Wanted to revisit, with you, one of the great articulations of these ideas, FDR's Four Freedoms:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Thanks to a major foundation in Japan I am off to visit Tokyo and Kyoto at the very end of the month.  While there I will be giving a series of talks about American government and politics, and meeting with politicians, academics, business leaders and the members of the media.  I am looking forward to it of course, and will provide more details as we get them.  I think there will be a public event or two on the schedule which would allow folks in the NDN network to invite friends of theirs in Japan to come by and join the conversation.   

So, two things.  First thoughts on things I should do while there? Sites, restaurants, places of historical significance?  Books or articles I should read to prepare?  Please let me know. 

Second, just a big thank you to the members of NDN who have helped make this trip possible.  In the last two years I have visited Mexico twice, Chile, Great Britain and Israel.  All of these trips have incredibly informative for me and NDN, and have helped make sure that the global perspective we are trying to fashion at NDN is informed by more than just stuff we are picking up on the internet, or people we meet or feature in DC.   I am planning a few more interesting trips next year, and will let know as they develop.

These recent and future trips are only possible because of the generousity of supporters, so I end with big thanks to all of you who fund our work at NDN and our sister organization, the New Policy Institute.

Today, NDN kicks off a new, important fall fundraising drive. Our goal is to raise an additional $100,000 by the end of October, bringing in the last bit we need to reach our 2009 fundraising goals before the crush of the winter holiday season.

You can support our effort with a contribution of $25, $50, $250, $1,000 or more by visiting our site or clicking on this link today.

As you are aware, NDN does not make solicitations like this very often, and only when we really need the help. I am proud to say that despite the tough economic climate NDN and its affiliate, the New Policy Institute, are on track to raise as much as we raised last year, and perhaps even exceed 2008 levels. But given how unpredictable this year has been, we don’t want to wait till December to find out whether we hit our year end numbers, competing all the while with family time and other charitable giving that comes at that time of year.  If we can raise this additional money by October 31st, we will hit our year end numbers, and will end the year having hit our programmatic goals and in good shape to take on the many important battles of 2010.

Over the coming weeks, on our site and this blog, I will be providing even great context on why we believe that NDN is deserving of your support.  Several of our most loyal supporters have already stepped up to make initial contributions, and to help encourage others to do so. I hope that you too will do the same at some point over the next few weeks.

These are exciting and challenging times for those of us in the center-left think tank business. I am pleased with the contribution NDN is making, and hope that we can count on you to help us end the year as strong as we began it. 

Thank you.

Yesterday the White House announced that long time NDNer Joe Garcia had been named to be the new Director of Minority Economic Impact at the Department of Energy.   We of course are proud of Joe, and look forward to working with him closely in the exciting days ahead. 

Joe joins other NDN alums in the new Administration.  Former NDN Advisory Board Members Ron Kirk, Ken Salazar, Adolfo Carrion and Karen Kornbluh are now United States Trade Representative, Secretary of the Interior, Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs and Ambassador to the OECD.   Both Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and the new Ambassador to India Tim Roemer were active with NDN during their days in the US House.  NDN and New Policy Institute authors and collaborators Alec Ross, Tom Kalil and Kenneth Baer are now Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for Innovation, Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Communications Director for the Office of Management and Budget.  And former NDN intern and staffer Patrick Dillon is now, excitedly, Deputy Political Director in the White House itself.

As NDN matures it has been very gratifying to see people we have collaborated closely with rise to positions of influence throughout the government and center-left politics.  There is certainly a longer list I could site today - including former NDN Board Member Kirstin Gillibrand, now Senator from New York - but for now I will sit back, thank and congratulate the talented group of NDN friends who are serving the country at this time of great challenge - and heartily wish them well.

News came this week that Al From, the CEO of the DLC, is stepping down after 24 years at the helm. As he looks backs at those years, Al certainly has a great deal to be proud of. The DLC was instrumental in mounting the first sustained, center-left intellectual and political response to the rise of modern conservatism, and was central to crafting the argument that became the core of Bill Clinton's inspiring campaign and successful Presidency. The language, arguments and analysis of those days, while they are perhaps not as fresh as they once were, are still are very much alive and still influential in today's Democratic Party.

There is a strong argument to be made that the DLC has been the most influential think tank in American politics over the past generation. Some may argue that the Heritage Foundation did more for the conservatives than the DLC for the center-left. However you come down on that one, what we do know is the DLC helped set in motion a period of party modernization that has helped the Democratic Party finally, in this last election, led by Barack Obama, overcome the potent and ultimately ruinous rise of the New Right and become once again America's majority party.

But as an alumnus of the DLC, I can say that I think Al From's greatest legacy may not be the Clinton Presidency or the many politicians the DLC has helped over the years. Al's lasting legacy may very well end be in the intellectual leaders he helped train, and the many DLC-inspired institutions these leaders have gone on to create. The Third Way, NDN, Democracy Journal, Education Sector, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the newly independent Progressive Policy Institute and of course, the new DLC under Bruce Reed, can all trace their lineage back to Al From and the DLC. Al helped birth a Presidency, but he also helped spawn many vibrant institutions who will be in their own way carrying on his mission for years and perhaps generations into the future.

His argument that "ideas matter;" his understanding of the need to revitalize the great progressive tradition which had lost its way; his own entrepreneurial spirit, and intolerance of lazy compromise, helped inspire not just a President, but thousands of elected officials, writers, thought leaders and next generation progressive entrepreneurs. While I had my differences with Al over the years, I for one hope that he looks back with bountiful pride at the dynamic, modern and successful 21st century progressive movement and Democratic Party in place today, ones he very much helped architect and create.  

From those of at NDN, we thank you, Al, for your years of passionate service, and wish you good luck in this next chapter in what has been a full life, hard fought and well-lived. 

I've been in Washington for 16 years now, coming as many did with President Clinton back in 1993.  I have seen a lot of changes in my time here, but the rate of change we are witnessing today is breathtaking.  Just take a look at a few of the headlines today from a vastly changed political and societal landscape:

Economy Shrinks at Staggering Pace

Obama Announces Iraq Withdrawal Plan

AIG Faces Possible Breakup

Part of Denver's Past, the Rocky Says Goodbye

Broadcast TV Struggles to Stay Viable 

Obama's Greenhouse Gamble

Top Officials Expand Dialogue on Race

Playing With Fire In Pakistan

'Great Society' Plans for the Middle Class

The Bill That Could Break Up Europe

There are large and systemic changes underway here in the US and around the world. 20th century challenges, institutions, ideologies, economics, media and even racial understanding are being swept away.   A new global political era is surely emerging now, unfolding in front of us, one that our new President is both responding to and attempting to shape.  The President's ambitious budget this week was itself the most powerful examples of how much our politics is in the process of changing.  

I end my quick morning post with an excerpt from Joe Nocera's column from the New York Times today.  Nocera has been writing as intelligently as anyone about the financial and economic crisis, and this column, Propping Up A House of Cards, is an absolute required read: 

Next week, perhaps as early as Monday, the American International Group is going to report the largest quarterly loss in history. Rumors suggest it will be around $60 billion, which will affirm, yet again, A.I.G.'s sorry status as the most crippled of all the nation's wounded financial institutions. The recent quarterly losses suffered by Merrill Lynch and Citigroup - "only" $15.4 billion and $8.3 billion, respectively - pale by comparison.

At the same time A.I.G. reveals its loss, the federal government is also likely to announce - yet again! - a new plan to save A.I.G., the third since September. So far the government has thrown $150 billion at the company, in loans, investments and equity injections, to keep it afloat. It has softened the terms it set for the original $85 billion loan it made back in September. To ease the pressure even more, the Federal Reserve actually runs a facility that buys toxic assets that A.I.G. had insured. A.I.G. effectively has been nationalized, with the government owning a hair under 80 percent of the stock. Not that it's worth very much; A.I.G. shares closed Friday at 42 cents.

Donn Vickrey, who runs the independent research firm Gradient Analytics, predicts that A.I.G. is going to cost taxpayers at least $100 billion more before it finally stabilizes, by which time the company will almost surely have been broken into pieces, with the government owning large chunks of it. A quarter of a trillion dollars, if it comes to that, is an astounding amount of money to hand over to one company to prevent it from going bust. Yet the government feels it has no choice: because of A.I.G.'s dubious business practices during the housing bubble it pretty much has the world's financial system by the throat.

If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks "will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect." A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners - which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.