The Politico asked me to write an essay on what advice I would give to the Democratic Presidential candidates.  It is running today and is below.  Would love your thoughts.

The Democratic Opportunity

Simon Rosenberg

April 11, 2007 07:32 PM EST

As we look to 2008, it is clear the two parties face a vastly different political landscape than anything we've seen in recent years. For the first time in a generation, the Republicans are in retreat, their brand damaged and ideology discredited. The Democrats won a resounding national victory in 2006 and, according to a recent Pew Center poll, they have opened up an extraordinary 15 percentage-point advantage in party identification.

It is now reasonable to speculate that if Democrats win the presidency in 2008, it could be the beginning of a sustained period of Democratic control of government, akin to their run in the middle of the past century. President Bush, meanwhile, is looking more like a 21st-century version of Herbert Hoover each day.

Thus the stakes in 2008 are very high. It is not just about the control of the White House, but whether Democrats can take advantage of a profound mishandling of government by the Republicans, and build the foundation for a 21st-century majority as strong as it had in the 20th.

To do so, Democrats will have to apply their values to a new set of realities that are making the new politics of this new century different from the last.

A New Governing Agenda That Tackles the Emerging Challenges of Our Time

When in power during the 20th century, Democrats succeeded by tackling the great challenges of that time. Abroad, we defeated fascism, were instrumental in the triumph over communist totalitarianism and constructed an international system based on FDR's vision of a United Nations, bringing unprecedented liberty and prosperity to the people of the world. At home, we rescued America from its greatest economic crisis, the Depression. We further created Social Security and Medicare, and spearheaded the civil rights, consumer, labor, women's and environmental movements that have helped make America not just great but good. And, when we last held presidential power, during the 1990s, progressives oversaw the greatest economic expansion in our history. It is a record to be proud of.

In the years ahead, our leaders will face a new set of tough 21st-century governing challenges. We must keep the world peaceful and our country safe, restore broad-based prosperity in a much more competitive age of globalization, invest in infrastructure and people to ensure future prosperity, address global climate change, modernize our health care system while guaranteeing that all Americans have access to health insurance, strive for energy independence while lowering our energy costs, manage the retirement of the baby boom, get our federal budget under control and solve the immigration challenge. These are no small set of challenges.

For Democrats, success in 2008 will require offering real solutions to these great challenges, something the current governing party has utterly failed to do.

A New Post-Broadcast Media and Communications Era

As FDR mastered early broadcast radio and JFK excelled on the new technology of his time, television, future success will depend on the mastery of an emergent post-broadcast communications environment. We are in the very early stages of a whole new era of political communications, which is more personal, iterative, participatory, fragmented, digital, networked -- and whose rate of change is accelerating.

In 2003, we saw how an unknown candidate, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, used these new 21st-century tools to leapfrog his competition among rival Democratic presidential candidates. In 2004, we saw the DNC use them to raise more money than the RNC for the first time in recent memory. And in 2006, we saw the early power of viral video help take down GOP senator George Allen in Virginia, giving Democrats control of the Senate.

The way the American people connect and communicate with one another is changing and, in response, we must radically alter our approach to media and political communications. For Democrats, success in 2008 will require replacing the 20th-century model of political communications, with a new spirit of experimentation and a new set of political tools.

The American People Themselves Have Changed

Since FDR built the Democratic Party's last great majority electoral coalition, the American people have changed a great deal. In recent decades, America has become increasingly suburban and exurban, Southern and Western, Hispanic and Asian, immigrant and Spanish-speaking, aging boomer and millennial, and more digital age in our orientation toward life and work than industrial age.

These new demographic realities have created a new 21st-century electoral majority strategy for Democrats, one that was used to win the Senate and House in 2006 and that has now produced 42 states with either a Democratic senator or governor. This new map starts with Democratic strengths in the Northeast, Midwest and Coastal West, and seeks to consolidate opportunities in the Inter-Mountain West, the Southwest, the Plains and parts of the South.

Democrats start the hunt for the presidency with much more strength at the Electoral College level than is widely understood, having what could be considered perhaps a high floor but low ceiling. The party has received 250 Electoral College votes or more in the past four national elections, a feat last accomplished in the FDR era.

While Ohio alone may give the Democrats the presidency in 2008, a great new Hispanic opening has emerged with what may be a permanent degradation of the Republican brand resulting from the terrible immigration debate in 2006. Exploiting this opening could flip Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada, and give the Democrats another 56 electoral votes. What is remarkable is that this new Electoral College strategy is essentially the same way Democrats won the Senate and House, creating for this old party a very new, achievable and durable way of holding power in this new century.

What's Next

So how are Democrats doing so far in mastering this new politics of the 21st century? Well, after years of failed conservative government, Democrats have put big issues -- restoring broad-based prosperity, fixing Iraq and global climate change and energy independence -- on the agenda. Our presidential candidates have already embraced powerful new tools like viral video and social networking. Our party's emerging leaders -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and DNC Chairman Dean -- look like 21st-century America and hail from the regions critical to locking in this 21st-century electoral majority.

Our new primary calendar includes states from the fastest-growing regions of the country, the South and West, which will allow African-Americans and Hispanics to participate in our primary process as never before. Our 2008 convention is in Denver, at the epicenter of the most important new strategic opening in this election, the Southwest, and will be chaired in part by the compelling Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, a member of a new generation of Hispanic leaders.

There is much at stake in 2008. Only one political party, the Democrats, built a sustained majority coalition in the 20th century. The historic failures of the Bush era have made it possible for Democrats to imagine replicating this success in our new century. And while a great deal of attention will go into winning the 2008 elections, it is critical for us to also be looking ahead at a much more strategic level and recognize that by mastering this new politics of the new century, we may be taking the critical early steps in building a majority coalition as robust and durable as the one FDR built more than 70 years ago.

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There is so much energy and passion on the progressive side of politics these days.   I think this period will be seen as a time of dramatic reinvention of the progressive movement.  A time when entrepreneurs, bloggers, regular old people and elected leaders re-imagined what progressive politics could become, and went out and made it happen.  It is as if a whole industry is being born right in front of our eyes.  

Consider for a moment that our largest think tank, CAP, our most influential advocacy organzation, MoveOn, our most influential and widely read blog, DailyKos and our most exciting new candidate, Barack Obama all are very new to the scene.  And in each case these new players are not just influential but are reinventing the very form and space in which they are operating, making them all very 21st century versions of what had come before.  

And the list keeps going.  Huffington Post.  Media Matters.  America Votes.  Air America. Dozens of other blogs.  Brave New Films.  PoliticsTV.  Drinking Liberally.  Democracy Journal.  The Blue Fund...

Remarkably, it feels as if this pace of innovation, the velocity if you will, is accelerating.  Look at MoveOn's Presidential TownHall.  The way the Presidentials are using internet videos, the explosion of politics on social networking sites and YouTube.  Hillary's innovative Hillcasts. That the Democratic Presidential candidates outraised their Republican opponents by 50% - 50%!!!!! - in the first quarter.  The way all the states are moving up their primaries.  All of this is being driven by this incredible rise of energy and passion in our politics right now.  People see this as a consequential time, a time to stand and be counted.  They want to get in the game - give, blog or read a blog, sign up on Facebook, watch a video on YouTube, volunteer locally, vote.  

Perhaps the most dramatic example of this new era of passion on our side is what is happening with Barack Obama's campaign.  It took Howard Dean, using the new tools of his day, 6 months to sign up 160,000 people on his web site.   Obama had 100,000 donate to his campaign in just ten weeks, and perhaps as many as another 500,000 people sign up on various social networking sites.  It is reasonable to assume that by the end of the 2nd quarter he will have a million people in his network, and perhaps 2-3 million by year's end.   Having this many people participating in a political campaign requires a re-imagining of what a political campaign is.  These folks are looking for assignments.  They aren't content with sitting on the sidelines.  How do you run a campaign every day where you have millions of people on your team and not just 200 people in a headquarters?

We are about to find out.  

As we are living in the moment it may be hard to see the transformation that is happening all around us.  But there should be no question any longer that progressives are undergoing a period of dramatic and powerful reinvention, one fueled by the new politics of the early 21st century, but more than anything else one fueled by this powerful sense in the American people that this is a time to stand up and be counted, a time to fight for the country we love and the values we hold dear.  I for one am happy to have so many people joining this battle to create an America of the 21st century as great, and good, as the America of the 20th.  

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Was it all political? Were Rove and co trying to put political operatives into these 8 positions to help their 2008 electoral chances? It certainly seems from all the stories that this was all about politics, and about better using these powerful offices as they did in New Jersey in 2006, to go after the Democrats and weaken their position in the 2008 elections.

So assuming this was all political, and not based on performance, lets take a look at what could be driving these picks.

The 4 in the Southwest - The immigration debate has significantly weakened the Republican brand with Hispanics, making the greatest new threat to their 2008 chances the four heavily Hispanic states in the Southwest, AZ, CO, NM and NV. If you take the Gore/Kerry states and add these four, all of which have been won by Democrats in recent years, Democrats win the Presidency. Looking to 2008 Republicans will have to defend there weakened position in these 4 states with everything they have - and amazingly, 4 of the 8 fired US Attorneys came from these critical battleground states. We also know of the remarkable efforts by Senators Dominici and Rep. Wilson in NM to use the post for shortterm partisan gain in 2006.

Carol Lam - A year ago the greatest threat to the Republican Majority were not the Democrats, but career prosecutors in DoJ's Office of Public Integrity and US Attorneys who were taking down errant GOPers for their historic and rampant corruption and betrayal of the public trust. No prosecutor had done more to damage the Republicans than the San Diego US Attorney, Carol Lam, who secured the longest jail sentence for a sitting US Congressman in history, was moving against the #3 in the CIA and reportedly was also looking at what may end up being the greatest of all the corruption scandals, Cong. Jerry Lewis's handling of the earmark process (something he has already spent more than a $1m defending against). Lam was a huge threat to the GOP and needed to be removed. She was.

Arkansas - Perhaps the most brazen move. The White House actually tried to put a Rove political deputy in as US Attorney in the home state of the Clintons, and what could be a pivotal battleground in 2008.

San Francisco - Speaker Pelosi.

Washington - Punishment for not moving more aggressively on the 2006 Guberatorial recount. Sends a signal to the remaining 90 plus US Attorneys and career prosecutors in DC.

Michigan - Not sure. Perhaps a diversity pick. A core 2008 battleground nonetheless with Romney as possible GOP nominee.

Given the "rules don't apply to us" worldview of the Bush era, it is not a great leap to believe that the White House decided to use these slots to stack the deck for 2008, remove their greatest prosecutorial threat, and punish folks who had not played ball in using these offices for partisan means. Given how highly political all this was, and that Rove had already in 2002 helped remove a US Attorney in Guam who was going after Jack Abramoff, it is not believable that Rove, the political boss of this era, was not directly involved, if not supervising the whole campaign.

No wonder Bush doesnt want his team to testify under oath.

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US politics 2007 is being driven by one central force - the ongoing and deepening repudiation of the Bush Era, its politics and ideology.  It is as if we have to struggle, each day, to toss off the language, the arguments, the reality of this disapointing era, as Bush and his team desperately try to stop the ongoing assault on their governing construct and world view. 

Look at what has happened in recent weeks, and how the media is handling it all.  A majority of Congress, including prominent Republicans, rebuke the President on Iraq.  The Post frontpages a story about how our vets aren't getting the medical treatment they deserve.  The Times runs yet another story about how Iran isn't going away, and that any plan that we may have for the future of the Middle East must involve them. The Administration cuts a deal with another one of his Axes of Evil, North Korea, and then is pummled by the right, particularly by their own former UN Ambassador.  Today Russert destroyed Tony Snow on the inept stage management of the this week's version of its "Iran is the enemy" campaign, and on the same show, Senator Hagel, a likely Republican Presidential candidate, suggests all this Iran talk is a diversion to keep people's attention from the troubles in Iraq and the Iraq votes this week.  Libby's defense is that Bush and his team scapegoated him to save Rove.  A recent NIE rejected the Administration's assertion that Iran was driving the violence in Iraq, and a Pentagon Inspector General report concluded that Doug Feith, a leader of the neocon faction inside the Administration, created an alternative intelligence process in the runup to the Iraq War that systemically, well, how should we say? Lied.....

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Jonathan Singer's post this am about why progressives should be excited about our opportunities this year is a good one. Let me add some thoughts.

The President starts dropping just a few weeks after an ineffective State of the Union. In some polls he dips below 40 percent, truly dangerous territory. It seems like their years of bad governance has finally caught up with them, that the American people are focusing more on deeds, not words. But can the ruthless pols running the GOP these days turn this thing around and snatch a victory from what could be a near-certain defeat?

Looking at how the year is likely to unfold, it is very hard to see how they turn this thing around.

There is a lot of talk these days about how to best clean up Washington.  The answer seems obvious - make a very public example of those who have broken the law, showing that even powerful players in Washington are not above the law.  Our message to the American people should be a simple one - we will do whatever it takes to find the lawbreakers who have betrayed the public trust and bring them to justice.   We should put the bad guys in jail.