There is a new elephant walking the political path to the graveyard: the Democratic Alliance. The headline, and part of the story:
The group has a goal of raising $200 million — a sum that would inevitably come in part at the expense of more traditional Democratic groups, although alliance officials say donors have committed to maintaining past contribution levels.
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The alliance is the brainchild of longtime Democratic strategist Rob Stein, who spent years studying conservative groups — in particular their success in sustaining GOP politicians and achieving many of their policy goals. Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, is working with Stein and is a leading promoter of his effort.
Two. Hundred. Million. Dollars. To think, analyze, publish, and promote. P.T. Barnum would be proud. Guess we should all drop what we’re doing and get in line:
||Ivory towers are brittle||
I’ve read a seemingly unending stream of punditry, bullshit-disguised-as-academic-analysis, historical (hysterical) perspectives, and navel-gazing since November ’04. Written before, the difference between academia and the real world: “It’s safer in there, it’s freer out here.” Well said.
Once more for the reality impaired “rich liberals”: the democratic side of the last presidential election spent a phenomenal 800+ million dollars to come in second behind an idiot savant from Texas. And one of your many, many, many solutions? Hire the academics to THINK our way to victory in ’06 and beyond.
Restraint is paramount. Will. Not. Laugh. Til. I. Puke. Of all the blatantly self-serving, egotistical, blind-deaf-and-dumb, morally reprehensible actions the “loyal opposition” has taken in the past few months, this one rises to the top of the stinking pile of steaming bullshit flung far and wide by those who woefully cannot find their asses with both hands.
Seen on a t-shirt: When the chips are down, the buffalo is empty. Indeed. As is the Donkey.
I cannot even fathom that much cash. It is a mathematical abstract, a nine-digit number having no bearing on my reality. It is, however, a real number attached to a bankrupt concept being touted as an “answer to the Republican” think tanks that have sprouted like weeds over the last thirty years.
I’m sorry, but at what point did these f*cking idiots agree that the best way to further the interests of the Democratic Party is to slide into an elephant suit? Just f*cking WHAT???. “Become one with the gray beast?” Fine. Spend the money, it’s obvious you need to do something with it, and it is, after all, your hard-earned cash. But remember what Marx wrote (Groucho, not Karl):
Prescient: he’s described the type of analysis we can look forward to from the “stink tanks”.
I started to write a few suggestions, then realized “pragmatic” was not in their vocabulary. For a minute there I confused this group with people who actually give a shit.
[Off on Sunday errands. CYA in awhile].
Running through my (somewhat twisted) brain: image of Howard Dean, looking like – actually being – a weary traveller in biz class on another journey to ask real people what they need from the Democratic Party.
At least one “chief” putting his money where his mouth is.
I’m not sure what your point is.
$200 million is not big money.
$200 million (reading your post, that’s over 5 years) is $40 million a year.
That may seem like a lot to a single person, but sheesh, this isn’t a small lottery winning we’re talking about here, but the income for a small business with a goal of influence 300 million Americans (or 100 million potential voters).
So what can you get for $40 million? Well, assuming they are non-profits and aren’t paying corporate taxes, they still have commercial building rent, utilities, computers, furniture, etc. If you haven’t started a business or watched one start up, you’d be shocked at how expensive that really is.
Then you need to staff it. The more staff you have, the more of the rest you need. You want to hire people actually capable of turning out salable policy and initiatives and the studies to back them up — ones that have coast to coast appeal. Such people don’t come cheap. Those people need support staff to keep productivity high. Its not unreasonable to assume an average salary of $100,000K (more for top dogs, less for support staff). Just 10 people cost 1 million a year, before benefits, building, overhead, travel, etc.
Everything I’ve read on this project suggest its not for winning the 2006 elections. Its for the long haul.
I’m a liberal.
Lets be serious here, tho. Too often our side focuses on winning, and we skip over the part where we’ll build large, lasting support for our wins.
From abortion to the environment to economics we’ve actually got the right positions. We’re losing ground to incessant attacks from the Republicans. But of those three examples, which one do we have the momentum on?
The environment.
Sure, we’re losing under Bush rulings. But look at our lasting gains — everyone recycles (younger more than older). We’re reaching broad alliances with traditional non-Democratic allies like hunters to preserve more wilderness and forests and wetlands. Being environmental isn’t ridiculous, its mainstream. Is the mainstream as far along as the activists? Nope. But they never are. It takes education campaigns to get the mainstream to follow the leaders.
And that is done through — research, studies, good press, national awareness campaigns, and influencing popular culture.
The Republicans have a vast network of think tanks set up to convert their greedy personal goals into salable social policy.
Its about time we got in the game.
I understand the concern that this will cut into election fund raising. But then, we had record breaking quantities of money spent last election cycle, and got little to show for it.
Newt’s Republican Revolution didn’t succeed because he spent more money on candidate ads. We won’t win by advertising what we have. We’ve got to sell a concept of the Democratic party, then find candidates who’ll run as champions/spokespeople for that concept.
It’s time we as a party started investing strategically — tactical just isn’t working for us.
Tactical is winning 2006. Strategic is winning thru 2020.
The Republicans haven’t changed much since the Nixon days.
Its not unreasonable to assume an average salary of $100,000K (more for top dogs, less for support staff). Just 10 people cost 1 million a year, before benefits, building, overhead, travel, etc.
One alternative is to grow your own:
$40 million in an educational trust to provide scholarships to students in exchange for 2 years post-grad work with a “liberal” think tank/org. Assuming they are granted $50k/year, 400 students would be working for democratic/liberal orgs during summers, and two years post-grad. Lower the total amount/year to 25k and double the student population. I think one could find 400-800 kids who’d jump at the chance to get an education in exchange for a two-year work commitment. Over the five year initial project term that’s 2-4 thousand trained workers. Much more likely would be a self-perpetuating trust fund creating a strategic resource.
Another is to invest that $40 million in solidifying and expanding the existing network of progressive/liberal orgs. Now scattered and split, it would be a technologically simple task to build a true liberal Portal, through which the exchange of information, as well as your “education campaign” – and fundraising – could take place. Funds requested, membership free. And as you say, that’s only year one.
Its about time we got in the game.
Perhaps the key point missed by those rich liberals: we are already deep in the game. “We the people” are involved all over the country.
Those with an even cursory understanding of how this medium works have already transformed those “million-dollar-babies” into a substantial information interchange constructed with a horizontal org chart. That is the waste of money, time, and effort on the part of those still attached to a system rendered useless by advancing changes in successfully applied technology.
Understand: there are no more pyramids, only plains. There are no more power-brokers in the “backroom” sense. There are distributed networks of people connected by concepts, and willing to put their money and time where their beliefs lie.
Those concepts are strategic, not tactical, and go far beyond 2020. To think and act for the future, liberals need to think in generational terms. Thusfar their vision only extends to the end of their noses.
I stand by what I’ve written.
Well, all pioneers are considered wishful thinkers.
If you think we’re horizontally organized already, and we have a machine to match the Republicans, I think you’re being too optimistic.
The blogosphere just aint that important. Oh yeah, we can beg and scream and sometimes, briefly, the news organizations will pay attention to us. Its a great support network for the grassroots, a great venue for getting real news (almost all of which is actually just recycled MSM news, with all the crap filtered out).
But its no replacement for stuff the DA is attempting to do.
They can author actual real studies into problems to support our polical solutions. We can post and freep polls. They can arrange high-level meetings with committee chairmen, leaders of industry, media moguls. We can arrange local demonstrations and pass around online polls.
We can reach a few hundred thousand devoted activists, and a few million interested internet readers.
They can form partnerships to push a message to 10’s of millions.
There is a role for both. But mistaking the level of involvement local meetups and blogging gives activists for the widespread reach and influence a dedicated professional body can achieve…
I wish you were right. If things were really that far along, we could win without a single cent of traditional political advertising. We could simply use the power of the internet to coordinate districtwide and national campaigns, and with a few simple tools (voter registration databases, street level maps) we could completely replace the fossilized Democratic Party precinct structure with a real GOTV effort where we volunteered to
So what if the Republicans are using churches as indoctrination centers. We’ll hit em up at the mall, at home, at the ballfield, everywhere.
If we were really as organized as you say, we could honestly win without spending a single cent on traditional political advertising (TV/radio).
We aren’t there yet. The traditional media matters. The traditional political influence means matter.
We can pioneer the new approach to politics, and play ball the old fashioned way.
As long as we have a population who’s not connected (older voters are also the most reliable), and we don’t have a means of influencing them that they trust, its foolish to put all our political eggs in the “new media” approach basket.
I agree with your basic point that all tools in the box are necessary, and that we aren’t there yet in terms of structural change. But there are a number of progressive/liberal think tanks already out there, a vast amount of underused resources (overlapping databases + fundraising sites), and money already spent to build a sophisticated, integrated network @ party headquarters.
This is not polyanna-ish nor pioneering. It is the world projected by Toffler though a 35-year-old lens, and it exists. In truth blogs are currently one of the least effective education tools (that “signal-to-noise” thing), yet one of the most effective communication tools. (A point not lost on the few electeds and party luminaries who use them as surrogates for the MSM).
Maybe it’s the carpenter in me. I start with the planning work done – blueprints – and using that “map” build/rebuild a structure. What DA is attempting to do is analagous to rebuilding a perfectly good framework because they don’t like the materials already in place.
Diaried before, the party has the tools, the will, and the money to create the definitive liberal/progressive portal. That is, a single-source contact point for education, communication, and directed fundraising (co-opted by AcBlue).
Liberals don’t need to create a new fund for think tanks so much as they need to coordinate those already in existence. [There are times I feel I’m living in a very bad re-make of “PCU”].
If I was a bettor, I’d put money on creating agreement for such a cohesive network within 90 days for less than $1 million (organization phase).
for khakis and a Lacoste shirt. And the new term for corporations in now “rich liberals”
This is the same shit the DLC has been doing for 20 years. Lobbying and bending the Democratic platform to submit to the will of corporations.
Like a carpet bagger going after the spoils, in the midst of the break up of the AFL CIO… Rosenberg allied with Comcast to lobby the FCC for a merger that would give Comcast close to 50% market share and in some metropolitian areas they would have 100% saturation rate.
If this is what Rosenbergs idea where the Democratic party should be going …I will look elsewhere. Not only did Rosenberg sign on to fuck over American (red or blue) but he dealt a stinging blow to the CWA who have been fighting Comcast tooth and nail because of their anti-union policies.
What is more dispicable about Rosenbergs decision is that he fucked over one of the remaining members of the AFL-CIO. A union that had decided to stay and not break off with Stern.
This shows that Stern was absolutely right to break from the AFL CIO they are no longer respected by the DCL/NDNers who are controling the party. This slap in the face along with the CAFTA debacle clearly shows where the DLC/NDN are heading the party…a party that allies and supports coporations only.
Rosenberg has no integrity he walked all over the unions for a few pieces of silver and under his guidance I see him walking all over women so he can eat out of the same trough as the fundi fascist… Rosenbergs motto: No ideology…just money.