Mike Hais

I wanted to follow up on yesterday's excellent presentation by NDN Fellows Mike Hais and Morley Winograd on the changing coalitions of the 21st Century Electorate by offering twoways to access the information from today's presentation online. 

You can download the slide show as a PDF and an Executive Summary of the poll here.

As you know, this poll is the first of three national polls of NDN's 21st Century America Project.  This project has been established to help policy-makers, elected officials and the public better understand the great demographic changes taking place in America today.  This new poll has been specifically designed to provide more insight into how the political coalitions of the two major political parties in America are adapting to these rapid changes.

Tomorrow, Thursday March 4th at 12 noon, we're going to be having a great event here at NDN,  a special presentation on a new poll regarding the changing political coalitions of the 21st Century.  I encourage partisans and political idealogues of all stripes, as well as those interested in changing demographics to join us.You can rsvp to jsingleton@ndn.org or by following this link.

Part of what is so great about this presentation is that it takes a look at very important segments of the electorate (Millennials, Unmarried Women, African-Americans and Latinos) and really emphasizes how their power exists in their emergence as a coalition - and how that coalition is growing. 

I know that this is going to be an exciting kickoff for our 21st Century America project.

The folks over at Netroots Nation just released the video of my introduction of President Clinton from this year's conference.  If interested it is about 12 minutes, and in it I offer up some observations about the history, and future, of progressive politics. 

And be sure to see the former President's speech that night.  It was awfully good.

I first discussed some of the themes in these remarks in my foreword to Markos's first book, Crashing the Gate.  And I was lucky enough that night to get a little time with my old boss.  He was, as always, engaged, curious, inspiring.  In our brief time together I gave him a copy of Crashing the Gate, another book in what must be a huge library back home.

And if you haven't watched NDN Fellow Mike Hais's remarkable presentation about the politics of the Millennial Generation from Netroots Nation, be sure to watch it here.

Just got home from Netroots Nation.  It was a very good event this year.   It had very little tension.   Calm.  Workmanlike.  In part a reflection of how this is the first gathering of the netroots since the historic 2008 elections, which rid the country of the force that in many ways brought the netroots to life, the failed conservatism of the early 21st century.  Amazingly 2000 or so people attended, as many as last year.  And Pittsburgh was a wonderful host city, pretty, clean, impressive.

NDN had a strong presence this year.  Not only were we a major sponsor of the event, but we managed a panel on the coming Millenial Age with Mike Hais; offered a screening of the incredible film about immigration, 9500 Liberty; participated on a panel about race, Beck and Dobbs; and I was fortunate enough to address the whole gathering in the moments before President Clinton's remarkable speech on Thursday night (NN has already loaded the Clinton speech up, and you can watch it here). 

A big Saturday night shout out to Raven Brooks and the whole NN team for pulling off another great gathering.  I, like many others, already have NN 2010 in Las Vegas July 22-25 on my calendar.

Simon's series of essays on Iran have continued to be picked up in the blogshphere, starting with his June 16 column, "Obama: No Realist He," in the Huffington Post, where it has been retained a high profile since it was posted on the site. 

Another essay by Simon on Iran, "The Impact of the Iranian Uprising on Other Repressive Governments," was picked up by The Moderate Voice and Politics for the Common Good blogs.

Sam, Dan and Jake also have been writing about Iran, and NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais weighed in on the Huffinton Post with "Will Young people Unite to Save the World?"

Check the NDN on Iran often to see new essays and newsroundups from Simon and the rest of the team as this uprising continues into its third week.

NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais published a major op-ed ed on Millennials prospects for jobs during these tough economic times. The op-ed, "Are the Millennials the New GI Generation?" has been picked up by several newspapers across the country and beyond, including the Albany Times Union, the Glen Falls Post Star, the Concord Monitor, the Miami Herald, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Austin American-Statesman and the Guelph (Ontario, Canada) Mercury.

Morley and Mike also were quoted in a new FORBES column, "The Economics of Quarterlife."

Lastly, Simon, Morley and Dan are at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City today. Simon and Morley have just wrapped up their compelling presentation -- moderated by the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning Jose Antonio Vargas -- on "America 2.0 - How Our Changing Demography Is Helping Create a New Politics." Dan Twittered throughout the panel. Check out what his Tweets here.

President Barack Obama is hitting the commencement trail. He gave a truly inspiring speech last night at Arizona State University and is headed to Notre Dame (a little bit of controversy brewing there) on Sunday.

Atlantic Media's (National Journal, The Atlantic, etc..) powerhouse political director Ron Brownstein has a fantastic piece on these young college graduates and their political preferences. In his report, he extensively quotes NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, who've just wrapped up the most recent stretch of their book tour for the new paperback edition of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics.

Brownstein writes about the huge edge Obama and the Democrats have with Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, and the largest and most progressive U.S. generation ever.

"If anything, Obama's position with the Millennial generation appears even stronger today. Apart from African-Americans, these young people have been Obama's most enthusiastic and consistent supporters in office. In the Gallup tracking polling that's been conducted since January, Obama's approval rating among voters younger than 30 has never fallen below 66%. His approval rating among young voters consistently runs somewhere between six and nine points higher than his overall showing: today, Obama receives positive approval ratings from a dizzying 75% of voters under 30, compared to 66% from the country overall.

Another set of numbers Gallup released earlier this month shows how Obama's strength can bolster his party. Gallup cumulated all of its 123,000 interviews this year to examine party identification in the electorate. Among the Millennial generation, it found that just 21% identify as Republicans, compared to 36% as Democrats and 34% as independents. "Republicans, for all practical purposes, aren't even on the radar screen with them," says Michael D. Hais, a fellow at the Democratic advocacy group NDN, and co-author of Millennial Makeover, a recent book on the generation.

The enormous advantage among young people for Obama in particular and Democrats in general matters for two reasons. The more immediate is that this generation, which is generally defined as the 93 million people born between 1983 and 2002, will comprise a rapidly increasing share of voters through the next decade. Hais and his co-author, Morley Winograd, also an NDN fellow, have calculated that in 2008, 41% of Millennials were eligible to vote, and they constituted 17% of the electorate. They project that by 2012, 61% of the Millennials will be eligible, and they'll comprise 24% of the electorate; by 2016, the numbers will reach 80% and 30%. By 2020, virtually all of them will be eligible and they could constitute as much as 36% of all voters. If Obama maintains anything near his current strength among Millennials, they will produce a substantially larger vote surplus for him in 2012 than they did in 2008-leaving Republicans a larger deficit to overcome with older voters."

Morley and Mike have been speaking out on this issue (How to Lose a Generation) quite a bit lately. Last Sunday, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by Morley and Mike, "The Republican Party ignores 'millennials' at its peril." Later in the week and further north, the San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci had a front page story about the GOP's problems with young voters. Her article, "Is Meghan McCain the New Face of the GOP?" was a truly interesting read, with a lot of great quotes from Morley and Mike.

As I noted, the Millennial Generation is the largest ever -- and very engaged, both socially and politically. If I were a Republican, I'd take one look at those numbers and do some very serious "rebranding" -- and soul searching.

For much, much more on Millennials, click here.

As NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais wrap up another successful leg of their tour to promote the new paperback edition of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics," we are pleased to present a collection of the authors' additional essays for NDN:

• Millennial Enthusiasm is Contagious, 1/31/08 - Big things are on the horizon in America. After decades of gridlock and disillusionment, a new and, in Caroline Kennedy's words, "hopeful, hard-working, innovative, and imaginative" generation is spurring massive change and renewal in our nation's political life.

• Millennials Makeover the Four Ms of Politics, 3/05/08 - With the showdown primaries on March 4 over and the outcome of at least the Democratic contest still to be finally decided, it is a good time to point out what the 2008 primary campaigns have already made clear about the future of American politics. After this year, the four basic elements of any campaign - Messenger, Message, Media and Money - will never be the same.

• Will the Democrats Look Forward or Backward in 2008…and Beyond? 5/31/08 - Makeovers or realignments occur about every four decades in American politics, resulting in 40 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.

• Generational CONVENTIONal Wisdom, 8/20/08 - The key to waging a successful presidential campaign by either Barack Obama or John McCain will be their ability to use their respective conventions to overcome generational tensions.

• Governor Palin Is No Millennial, 9/22/08 - Much of the lost ground for the GOP as a result of Sarah Palin's nomination has come from the Millennial Generation, those 26 and younger. Millennials reject the confrontational or risk-taking style that Palin -- a classic Gen Xer -- exhibits.

• Will Millennials Vote in November?, 10/08/08 - The second presidential debate left few observers willing to predict anything but an Obama victory in November. But one nagging question remains in the minds of many pundits. Will Millennials, whose overwhelming support for Senator Obama’s candidacy represents his margin of victory in polls in many battleground states, actually turnout to vote in November?

• Coming Soon to Decide an Election Near You…the Millennials, 11/03/08 - The Millennial Generation is poised to play a decisive role in the election of Barack Obama on November 4.

• America in the Millennial Era, 11/05/08 - Senator Barack Obama’s success in the 2008 presidential campaign marks more than an historical turning point in American politics. It also signals the beginning of a new era for American society, one dominated by the attitudes and behaviors of the largest generation in American history.

• Results From The First Election Of The Millennial Era, 11/05/08 - The first large wave of the Millennial Generation, young Americans born from 1982-2003, entered the electorate to decisively support President-elect Barack Obama. Young voters preferred Obama over U.S. Sen. John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). And, dispelling the myth that young people never vote, Millennials cast ballots in larger numbers than young voters had in any recent presidential election.

• It’s Official: Millennials Realigned American Politics in 2008, 11/17/08 - The 2008 election not only marked the election of America's first African-American president, it also saw the strong and clear political emergence of a new, large and dynamic generation and the realignment of American politics for the next 40 years.

• Reinforcing Obama's Millennial Army, 12/01/08 - The Obama campaign took full advantage of the ability and willingness of Millennials to self-organize on behalf of the campaign and its voter turnout efforts. Now the former candidate and his incoming Administration must decide how to maintain Millennials' enthusiasm while ensuring that it channels their energies into the most productive activities.

• It's a Brand New Ballgame: Presidential Transitions in a Civic Era, 1/06/09- Almost before the echoes of Barack Obama's Grant Park victory speech had died away, pundits and the blogosphere began to keep score about the effectiveness of his transition. In a way, a presidential transition is like a political spring training that gives the incoming manager and his team a chance to prepare and set the tone for what amounts to a four-year long regular season.

• National Service and National Pride: Obama/Powell Initiative Is Down Payment to Millennials, 1/09/09 - The support of young voters was decisive in Obama's narrow nomination victory over Hillary Clinton and their 2:1 margin for him over John McCain accounted for 80 percent of his nearly nine million national popular vote lead last November.

• Mr. President: Bring Us Together, 1/14/09 - Reducing ideological divisions and unifying Americans to achieve important common goals has been a focus of Barack Obama since even before he announced his presidency. It is one of the key reasons his campaign had strong appeal to the emerging civic Millennial Generation, which he carried by a margin of more than 2:1.

• New Rules for a New Era, 1/27/09 - One week after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, it is clear that his election and ascension to the presidency have moved America from one political era to another. Realignments like these occur about every four decades with the coming of age of a new, large, dynamic generation of young Americans whose political participation is enabled by a new communication technology.

• It's No Time for Politics as Usual, 2/06/09 - Unfortunately, many in Congress, including much of the leadership of both parties, still don't understand that the United States has entered a new civic political era, demanding new rules of behavior in response to our dire economic circumstances.

• New Attitudes for a New Era, 2/18/09 - President Barack Obama’s signature on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the clearest signal yet that America has entered a new civic era, very different from the idealist era of the past four decades. As has been the case with all previous realignments or makeovers in our history, this new era will be marked by a far different conception of the role of government and of the way in which public policy is made and judged.

• Positive Partisanship for a New Era, 3/24/09 - Bipartisanship. Other than "stimulus" or "bailout," perhaps no word has been written or spoken more often by politicians and pundits alike in Washington since the inauguration of Barack Obama. Commentators have generally characterized President Obama's attempts to engage Republicans as almost completely unsuccessful, while Republicans have derided his efforts as charming but ineffective, especially in light of the more partisan approach of his party’s Congressional leadership.

• Lessons from Detroit: 10 Years Later, the Overhaul of the Domestic Auto Industry and Its Parallels with the Republicans' Problem, 3/30/09 - Detroit had an opportunity -- nearly 10 years ago to the date -- to change. To understand the globalizing world around it, to understand that consumers' priorities and values -- especially those of the rising Millennial Generation -- were changing drastically. While some may think it's a leap to compare an overhaul of Detroit with an overhaul of the discredited Republican Party, the similarities exist.

• Everybody's Wrong but Us, 4/09/09 - Washington Post conservative columnist Michael Gerson says that the "polarization" between Democrats and Republicans in their approval of President Barack Obama's performance is greater than for any other president in surveys stretching back to the early days of the Nixon Administration. While Gerson's statement of the facts may be correct, his interpretation is dead wrong.

• Obama's Millennial Moment: President to Sign National Service Bill Today, 4/21/09 - Obama's signature of national service legislation represents a major redemption of candidate Obama’s promise to offer his most loyal and largest constituency, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, a chance to serve their country at the community level and in return earn assistance with the cost of their college education.

• The Honeymoon Isn't Over Until the Public Sings, 4/29/09 - While noting that President Barack Obama has higher job approval scores than any president in the past three decades, some in Washington also wonder how long this honeymoon can last and how much Obama can get done before it ends. The answer to those two questions lays in placing both Obama's performance and the questions themselves in historical context.

• Specter Party Switch Inevitable? History Holds the Answer, 4/30/09 - While Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter's announcement that he was switching from the Republicans to the Democrats may have gratified the latter and upset the former, no one should have been surprised by it. Historically, party switching is common, indeed inevitable, at times of party realignment.

In a ceremony fraught with political and generational symbolism, President Barack Obama today will sign the aptly named “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education” (GIVE) Act (now the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act) at the SEED school, a DC public school that caters to underserved children. This ceremony caps his campaign promise to ask Americans to reinvigorate their country through community service. GIVE represents a major redemption of candidate Obama’s promise to offer his most loyal and largest constituency, Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, a chance to serve their country at the community level and in return earn assistance with the cost of their college education.

Not everyone is ready to join hands and sing the praises of the concept, however. While GIVE enjoyed bipartisan sponsorship in both the Senate and the House, that didn’t prevent a majority of Republicans from voting against the bill on final passage. They complained that the bill was “too expensive” and would crowd out pure volunteer work with program participants receiving a modicum of financial support for their efforts from the federal government. In the House, 149 of 175 Republicans voted “no,” joined by 19 of their colleagues in the Senate, including the party's two top leaders. With all Democrats voting in favor of GIVE, the core of the Republican’s “Just say no” caucus demonstrated how out of touch with the Millennial Generation they are.

Of those Republicans expressing their opposition in the Senate, only one, John Ensign of Nevada, was from a state that Obama carried. Even though both Republican Senators from such bright red states as Utah, Georgia and Mississippi could see the potential value of increasing the number of volunteers and college students in the country’s civic life, both GOP Senators from South Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Idaho made it clear that there were no circumstances under which their hostility to government could be softened by the merits of a patriotic cause.

As Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina put it on his Web site, "We need to recognize that this bill does represent a lot of what's wrong with our federal government today.... civil society works, because it is everything that government is not. It's small, it's personal, it's responsible, it's accountable.” And Louisiana Senator David Vitter spuriously argued, “This new federal bureaucracy would, in effect, politicize charitable activity around the country." Echoing Governor Sarah Palin’s horribly off key comment at her party’s convention last August that “the world isn’t a community and it doesn’t need an organizer,” these Republicans demonstrated just how out of touch they are with Millennial thinking.

Meanwhile, President Obama’s signature initiative is drawing Millennials ever closer to his political agenda. Chris Golden and Nick Troiano, Millennial co-founders of myImpact.org plan on launching a social network designed to connect volunteers and their experiences to others with similar interests as soon as the legislation creates a market for such sharing and support. Two Millennials who served a term in the New Hampshire legislature as they began their college careers, Andrew Edwards and Jeff Fontas, are now anxious to play “a central role in getting a ‘Spirit of Service’ off the ground” as their next step in a career of civic involvement. These are just two examples of Millennials deep desire to serve.

Already the shift toward civic involvement by this new generation, in contrast to its Generation X predecessors, has doubled the proportion of 16-24 year olds serving in the nation’s existing volunteer corps. Ninety-four percent of Millennials believes community service is an effective way to solve problems at the local level and 85 percent thinks that is true for national problems as well. CIRCLE, an organization devoted to tracking the interests of Millennials in serving their country, points out that the second most important factor, other than having time, “in deciding whether or not to get involved in an activity is the impact that they [Millennials] think it will yield.” With the elevated profile such activities will enjoy under provisions of the GIVE Act, it is not too difficult to imagine Millennials taking up over 80,000 of the 250,000 volunteer slots that will be made available under GIVE’s provisions—greater than the number of all Americans currently serving their country’s communities.

At the signing ceremony, the President will be joined by many other equally committed sponsors of the concept of national service, including Senator Ted Kennedy in honor of whom the final legislation was named "The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act,” to celebrate the country’s embrace of this new ethos of service. While Millennials across the country join with them to celebrate this historic change in America’s behavior, Republicans will be left, once again, locked in the dogmas of their past, unable to imagine a country where government encourages private initiative and the nation is far better off for it.

NDN's two newest Fellows, Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, are on the road again to talk up the paperback release of their critically acclaimed 2008 book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics.

The paperback has a fascinating afterword about the historic 2008 election in which Millennials voted 2:1 for Barack Obama.  

Questions from the 2008 presidential campaign addressed in the new edition include: 

Every 40 years, America experiences a major political makeover during which important new allegiances and behaviors are established by an up and coming large generation. In 2008, it was the first wave of the Millennial Generation, born between 1982 and 2003, which provided the bulk of Barack Obama’s margin and Democratic victories. What are the key attributes of this new generation and how will they impact American society and politics?

The financial system meltdown in September 2008 was characterized by the Wall Street Journal as “the day Wall Street died.” The events of that week also triggered the “millennial makeover” predicted in the first edition of Winograd and Hais' book. Such triggering events usher in a new era in American history marked by profoundly different beliefs on the part of the American public. How will these new realities shape the outlook for investments and the economy in the decades to come?

Web-based social networking technology revolutionized presidential campaigning and fundraising in 2008, displacing television and top down fundraising strategies that have dominated campaigns since the 1960s. What lessons for marketers and brand managers can be drawn from that experience and what will be the future role of traditional advertising and media companies be in the new Millennial World?

Morley and Mike have gotten some great media attention lately, including this op-ed in POLITICO and prominent mention in a special report on national service (Millennials are very civic-oriented) in yesterday's USA TODAY.

Morley and Mike are in Boston and Cambridge today, where they will talk with graduate students at the Kennedy School of Governemnt. Next, they are off to the YouTube and 2008 Election Cycle Conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Then it's back to Boston for a full day at Tufts University (Simon's alma mater) and on to New York City, where NDN will be hosting a breakfast forum with Morley and Mike on April 23. If you'd like to come, check for details here.

If you haven't had a chance to pick up Millennial Makeover, you can buy it here. New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michiko Kakutani picked it as one of her top 10 favorite books in 2008, so check it out.

In a report from last Friday, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter got the jump on an important story that's very telling about the backgrounds and value systems of our new President and First Lady, the millions of young people -- Millennnials -- who voted for him -- and a (rare) bipartisan drive in Congress to create jobs, create opportunities for young people to help pay for their education through service activities.   

Writes Alter:

On Monday, Miller will announce that the GIVE Act (don't ask what the acronym means; too clunky) is on its way to passage by the House. Because representatives of the House, Senate and White House have been working together on a bipartisan basis for weeks, the skids are now greased for quick Senate passage of the Kennedy-Hatch Act for national service, the only specific piece of legislation the president mentioned in his address to Congress last month. Differences between the House and Senate versions will be minor.

By early April, Obama will sign landmark legislation expanding AmeriCorps from 75,000 participants to 250,000 over the next few years. This will take the national-service movement to a new level, create thousands of jobs and help young Americans pay for college. It's another sign that the president and his allies on Capitol Hill intend to redeem the promise of last year's campaign a helluva lot earlier than even his most ardent supporters expected...

...The outlines of what will pass, reported here for the first time:

• A boost in the educational stipend offered in exchange for service to $5,350, with the provision that it will continue to rise in tandem with Pell grants. (Pay for full-time AmeriCorps service is about $11,000 a year.)
• A $500 education award for middle-school and high-school students who take part in a "Summer of Service" or other service activities.
• The establishment of a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Services Corps.
• The establishment of new ServeAmerica Fellowships.
• The expansion of the Civilian Community Corps to include work on weatherization and other energy-conservation projects.
• The expansion of the Peace Corps (to 16,000) and other existing programs.
• The designation of September 11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

The Miller referenced above is U.S. Rep. George Miller, the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. First Lady Michelle Obama, a long-time champion of national service and volunteerism who worked at the non-profit, Public Allies, had buttonholed Miller earlier last week to tell him just how important the national service legislation is to her and the President.

Many of Obama's strongest supporters share the President's passion for giving back to the community. NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais -- co-authors of the critically acclaimed Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics, have written two important essays for NDN on Millennials, national service and volunteerism.

On December 1, 2008, in "Reinforcing Obama's Millennial Army," Winograd and Hais wrote:

According to Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, almost 60 percent of Millennials are “personally interested in engaging in some form of public service to help the country.” The ethos of service among Millennials is strongly supported regardless of gender or party affiliation. While many of those surveyed see public service as working for government, or even running for office, there is no reason to channel the generation’s enthusiasm solely into these more politically oriented activities. Instead, the incoming Obama Administration should create an entity to help Millennials find ways to rebuild all of America’s civic institutions.

On January 9, 2009, in "National Service and National Pride: Obama/Powell Initiative Is Downpayment to Millennials," NDN's newest Fellows said:

The selection of former Secretary of State Colin Powell to announce the Obama Administration's national service initiative, "Renew America Together" (USAService.org), is much more than a smart political move. It’s a perfect down payment on the promises Obama made to his most ardent supporters, the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003).

...By giving Powell this important and visible role, Obama simultaneously burnishes his bipartisan credentials and demonstrates his understanding that the United States has moved to a new era dominated by the outlook of a new generation determined to make America a stronger and more unified country.

...The willingness of Millennials to help make things better was reflected in their enthusiastic reaction to Obama’s call during the campaign for a program aimed at young people that would help them pay for college in exchange for two years of public service, either in the military or one of the federal civilian service organizations. While the financial concerns of a generation heavily burdened by educational debt may have partially accounted for the loud applause this idea always generated, there is far more to it than self-interest.

Expanding national service opportunities will help people and help the economy. It creates jobs and goodwill.

Recording artist Usher has weighed in, testifying before Miller's Committee last month. You can watch it here:

National service is in. Self service is out.