Friday, March 30, 2007

Simon Rosenberg gives presentation "The Dawn of New Politics"...

The numbers look good for the Democratic Party!

Talk about lifting the spirits! How about a rundown of the Electoral College that shows the Democrats with 345 votes?!
There it was on the big screen at the Biltmore Hotel, with more than 60 Democratic activists in the audience listening enthralled as Simon Rosenberg laid out the math behind the "Dawn of New Politics." In case you've forgotten, it takes 270 votes to win the presidency, so 345 is a whuppin'.

Simon Rosenberg is founder and executive director of the New Democratic Network (www.ndn.org) and his appearance in Miami on March 22 was arranged by the new Miami-Dade DEC chairman, Joe Garcia, who heads the NDN's Hispanic Strategy Center.

Here's how the numbers add up. Start with the Democrats' core of 248 electoral votes. Add four states in the Southwest with D-switching Hispanics, plus (Yes!) Florida, and then Ohio (D-swept in '06) and Iowa and New Hampshire. There you are, 345 electoral votes for the D side.
To accomplish this, we will have to execute the 21st Century agenda that takes account of demographic changes and uses new technology. If you were surprised that Barack and Hillary announced online, or that John Edwards operates a blitz of blogs, you will need some educating to get up to speed.

This will be a mission of the DEC in the coming year, and the www.ndn.org website has a lot of nuts and bolts advice on the tech side.

And now to the daily newspaper...Headline: Political Landscape Tilts to Democrats
The other day the Miami Herald printed a letter from a reader who complained about the conservative tilt of all three commentators the Herald published in one day on the Op-Ed page. The reader noted wisely that there are two main political parties, and that more people say they are Democrats than Republicans, and he admonished the Herald to give the liberal side its due.
Metaphorically, I shook my head. This guy hasn't noticed that the Herald is a Republican newspaper.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see on p. 3 of the Friday Herald a story from Washington with the headline above: Political Landscape Tilts to Democrats. All is not lost with the Herald. Reality intrudes, even on the comfortable, confident, compassionate conservative.
The story reported on a survey by the Pew Research Center that should give heart to progressives who see too many Republicans in the political landscape because that's what the Republican media want the citizenry to see when they're not watching reality TV.
The truth is that 50 percent of the people call themselves Democrats, against 35 percent identifying themselves as Republicans. This isn't only because of the lies and bad performance of loyal Bushies -- it's also that the American people agree more with Democrats on issues like the use of military force, religion, affirmative action and homosexuality. So say the results of the Pew survey on topics the respected center has been following since 1987.

Here, you can read it all yourself: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/434/trends-in-political-values-and-core-attitude
s-1987-2007

And now the Herald link. http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/50089.html

Read and grow more confident...