Buzz

About the Buzz:

Since the New Politics Institute (NPI) began in May of 2005 we have held a number of public forums in Washington DC and have put out a series of reports, surveys and white papers. Our work has been picked up in the national and local media, as well as made its way around the web and the blogosphere. Our staff and fellows have been used as a resource for journalists trying help the public understand the changes in politics.

Below are excerpts from various web and traditional media outlets that reference our work or draw off members of our network. They are currently organized with the most recent at the top.

Latest Buzz Entries:

With Latinos appearing key to the respective general election strategies of both John McCain and Barack Obama, experts say spending on Spanish-language media is set to shatter the previous record of nearly $9 million, the overall number achieved by both parties and outside groups during the 2004 race between President Bush and John Kerry.

"The spending is going to be unprecedented," said Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a liberal group that itself spent over $2 million in Spanish-language ads in 2004.

...at Washington's New Democrat Network, President Simon Rosenberg argues that that there's increasing evidence McCain will never be able to match George W. Bush's ability to win 40 percent of the Latino voter bloc. He insists McCain will be viewed as a flip-flopper who "threw Latinos over the side" and abandoned them when he sponsored - and then walked away from - his own immigration reform bill.
"Obama, McCain make strong bid for Latino votes," San Francisco Chronicle, June 26, 2008
...At Democratic think tank NDN, Simon Rosenberg estimates the campaigns will set aside less than 2 percent of their ad budget for the Internet.

SIMON ROSENBERG, PRESIDENT, NDN: It's too low, it should be higher, but politics tends to lag behind the commercial advertising trends.

GERSH: Control is a concern. No campaign wants to see the candidate's banner ad pop up next to something obscene. Even so, this campaign has proven the power of online social networks to raise voter interest and money.

ROSENBERG: It's exciting because what it's doing, more than anything else, is allowing average people to play a meaningful role in the life of their democracy. That's a healthy thing.

""Economic Choices 2008"-The TV Ad Boom," Nightly Business Report, June 24, 2008

Obama had been to 30 states to campaign for fellow Democrats in 2006, and developed a keen sense of the country's mood, analysts said. Clinton, who was obliged to concentrate on her own reelection in New York, traveled to only 14 states to campaign for fellow Democrats in 2006, and did not pick up on the direction the country was headed politically, they said.

"They didn't understand how much politics has changed since the 1990s. They were slow to use the Internet and the new media. Their understanding of the new coalition was imperfect," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network and a veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.

"Her first steps set stage for fall," The Boston Globe, June 4, 2008

Ever since the internet propelled Howard Dean's campaign to national importance in 2004, observers have expected the web would soon play a pivotal role in electing a president. As Obama makes history by becoming the first African-American presumptive presidential nominee, his campaign is also the first to fulfill that long-anticipated internet promise. With an enormous internet-driven donor base of 1.5 million people, more than 500,000 of whom have accounts on Obama's social networking website, Obama is the first internet candidate to win mainstream success. His online supporters have created more than 30,000 events to promote his candidacy, some of which are still underway in the last primary states of Montana and South Dakota.

"It's impossible to imagine Barack Obama's rise without the modern methods that his campaign used to organize itself, particularly around the internet," says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the non-profit think tank the New Democratic Network. "This really was the most successful campaign of the 21st century."

"This is what happens is when you have a charismatic candidate, and you organize on a scale not seen before," he adds. "Literally, the size and scale of this is unprecedented in American political history, and it wouldn't have been possible without the money, and passion, and support of millions of American people."