Fox and Loudness, MAGA Doesn't Play In The Battlegrounds, Upcoming Events/Appearances

Our Monday newsletter.

Fox “News” and Loudness - We’ve been talking about this Fox revelations a lot this past week, and do believe it is a before and after moment in our politics. See my initial post; this reflection on a Washington Post article which features our insights; a Politico article which I am quoted in; and a new Steve Benen MaddowBlog post which keeps the conversation moving forward.

A central reason I am coming to Substack is to find new and more effective ways to reach people, create community, do our work together and win. As we work to counter the right’s info superiority it is critical we invest forward, not backward, into the emergent media ecosystem, into Substack communities and in the many grassroots groups which have sprung up across the country in recent years; in influencers and creator economy strategies well suited to how politicians already do their work; in more video, video, video; and new organizations like MeidasTouch, Courier Newsroom, Deep State Radio, Resolute Square and Future Majority. We have to lessen our dependency on broadcast, top-down one way media, and move with certainty into an age where media and information are networked and amplified. See this great Daily Beast story on how one freshman Member of Congress, Rep. Jeff Jackson of NC, is leading the way.

Having this conversation and helping lead our family into this new communications age, to get louder and more effective, is going to be one of the most important things we do in this new substack community.

A Few Things for Your Calendar:

Tues, March 21st 1pm ET - A New Presentation of “With Democrats Things Get Better” - My monthly showing, new and fresh each time. If you haven’t watched this try to make time. It’s some of my most important work. Learn more, RSVP here.

Tues, March 28th 1pm ET - My monthly live political briefing. You can watch on my YouTube channel or RSVP here for Zoom.

and…

Tues, March 14th, 730pm ET - The Rise of a Pro-Democracy Coalition: A Conversation Between Bill Kristol and Simon Rosenberg, Moderated by Robert Hubbell. Learn more, RSVP here.

Tues, March 16th, 1245pm ET - Field Team 6’s Register Democrats Summit. Learn more, RSVP here.

Looking Ahead to 2024 and MAGA’s Ongoing Problems in the Battleground - In our big post-election analysis we talk about how there were two elections in 2022 - a bluer one inside the battlegrounds, a redder one outside. That the GOP has had three consecutive tough elections in the most important battleground states in the country remains a big problem for them as their two leading candidate, DeSantis and Trump, are both 100% MAGA. I talk about all this in this new interview with Ari Hawkins of Politico:

THREE QUESTIONS WITH… Nightly spoke with Simon Rosenberg, a veteran of two Democratic presidential campaigns and a political strategist with NDN, also known as New Democrat Network, a soon-to-shut-down liberal advocacy and research group that he has led since the 1990s.

You were among the few political strategists who continuously expressed skepticism about the idea of a “red wave” in 2022. Are there any similar forces that you see shaping the 2024 election cycle that will affect Biden’s reelection campaign? 

Part of the reason that so many people got the election wrong in 2022, is that they overly discounted the ugliness of MAGA. In the 2018 and 2020 elections, there was an overwhelming vote against MAGA in those two elections, and the Republicans ran towards those politics in 2021, which I felt was a huge error. Usually when a party fails politically they run towards a new politics and not a politics that didn’t work.

Where Republicans have to be worried in 2024 is that the presidential battleground has now voted against MAGA in three consecutive elections. There’s muscle memory in now understanding the dangers of MAGA and the two leading Republican candidates right now, look and feel very MAGA.

For DeSantis and Trump, whoever of the two win the nomination, are going to be entering far more hostile terrain than DeSantis has faced in Florida for example, or Trump did in 2016, because there’s now been three elections in the battleground where Democrats have done well and Republicans haven’t.

Which Republican candidate would be easiest — and most difficult — for Biden to run against in the 2024 race?

I don’t think we have any way of knowing that right now. I think it depends on how the candidates in the Republican primary perform. Certainly, I think there’s still a lot of big questions about DeSantis and his ability at the national level. I think he’s run too far right in a way that it would be difficult to present himself as anything other than a MAGA candidate, which won’t be helpful in the battleground.

We’re favored to win the presidential race in 2024, because the basic dynamic in 2022, which is that basically, we’ve done a good enough job and they’re still a little but too crazy — could still be the basic dynamic in 2024. There will be a sense that, ‘hey, the Democrats, Joe Biden, did a good job. You know, why get rid of them?’ And then you look at the Republicans and they still feel a little bit too crazy. That’s the likely scenario today, but of course, that could change.

If Biden doesn’t run for a second term, will the party immediately coalesce around Vice President Kamala Harris or will there be a contested nomination?

If Joe Biden doesn’t run, Vice President Harris will be the front runner for the Democratic nomination, but there will be a contested and vigorous primary.