Pretty soon, Susan and I may see some kind of windfall from the grand poobahs.
At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades.
The money will be channeled through a new partnership called the Democracy Alliance…
Why are they doing this?
(Rob) Stein, who closely examined the finances of institutions on the right and left over the past two years, contends that there is a huge financial imbalance favoring conservatives that he puts at $295 million vs. $75 million.
In 2003, the 19 progressive organizations with budgets exceeding $1 million spent a total of $75 million, he said. In contrast, the 24 national think tanks on the right had $170 million in spending, along with state-based policy centers’ $50 million and campus-based conservative policy organizations’ $75 million to $100 million, according to Stein.
No wonder we’re getting our asses kicked. But what about the bloggers?
In addition, the number of liberal bloggers on the Web has been growing at a fast pace, and their blogs have become both central forums for debate over party strategies and hugely successful vehicles for campaign fundraising, including raising through online contributions more than two thirds of the $750,000 used in the surprisingly competitive House campaign of Democrat Paul Hackett in Ohio. (Simon) Rosenberg has created the
New Politics Institute, an organization that works with bloggers.
Winter is coming. Will these guys help pay the heating bill?
But seriously, we are getting organized. Chris Bowers is doing some great things on the local netroots front. Markos and Joe Trippi are thinking nationally. And now some real cash is coming to help pay the bartabs.
If they actually fund research into new ideas and policy proposals — this is a very good thing and way overdue.
“New” ideas and policy proposals? Compared to?
The same-o/same-o wrapped in fancy new wrappers.
would’ve prevented us ever losing in the first place. Well, maybe not to Reagan, but after Iran-Contra and the S&L Crime, pretty much from then onwards.
This money should go 5 times as far as Republican money, dollar for dollar. After all:
I was having a day dream about winning the lottery. I do this every now and then just to check my priorities. I had a new expenditure category in the top five — creating a foundation that would pay Booman and Susan Hu $100K a year each to do what you do.
Man, I hope you guys do get a windfall from someone who has more than dream money.
is long since pledged to the teams who are scooping up glacial cores before they all melt away.
After that, grassroots progressive politics is next up–and given the odds, the glaciers will probably be gone by the time I win, so consider yourself first.
Stupid lottery!
The GOP finds a new way to launder money (via CapitolBuzz):
should save their money for some Abrams tanks?
Mr. BooMan,
Are poobahs like sugar daddies?
poo-bah:
1. Or: pooh-bah / Poo-Bah / Grand Poo-Bah , an important and influencial person, one who holds a high office or the highest office.
SYNONYMS: big cheese ; big boss, grand vizier; head honcho.
2. Pooh-Bah or Lord-High-Everything-Else, a character in W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s opera The Mikado (1885).
Better take Susan’s version. Maybe they’ll throw in an apartment and a couple of mink coats.
This is so nice. I really hope it happpens. You guys sooo deserve any help they can give you.
What kansas said. You deserve the support – in small packages of large denomination, unmarked bills. [Rant below has nothing to do with you two 🙂 ].
Oh come on, Murray Waas…. he’s getting rather dry and circular in his comments on Air America.
Clearly the past two elections were lost because of the lack of support for the candidates, and the emphasis on “anyone but Bush”, by the Democratic Party-at-large (which includes the “progressive majority”).
To answer Gluckstern: what it takes to win is unity, and support at ground level – most assuredly not another ivory tower construction project. Become f*cking clueful. Do you people really believe we lost after the party spend nearly 800 million dollars because the electorate is confused??? That a 3% difference somehow translates to a need for f*cking THINK TANKS????
I’ll grant their cojones in even bringing this mirage to the public. P.T. Barnum would be proud.
I’d feel ever so much better if these idiots would put their money into a simple “progressive portal”, based on the concept of an “internetwork”. What they seek is a means to create cohesion. What they are creating is another small pond to house the big fish.
Be careful what you wish for.
they would pay my bartab.
Seriously, I’m half-joking here. I’m small potatoes.
But if they put their money into helping us counter the NOISE, that is all we need.
Our ideas are still good. We are just being sandblasted off the stage of public discourse.
I guess that’s my point: in order to counter the noise – raise the signal levels – as well as build the network forward, I think this “progressive movement” needs to leverage assets. Funding directed to the blogosphere creates a multiplier effect once this medium begins to settle in. (Diary on how to use the blogs as a feedback loop.)
Tag, you’re it. You are a writer. You (and others) read, research, and write the kinds of stories that contain the information not available – especially not interactively – from the “other” think tanks out there. Front-page writers here are more analogous to lecturers in the sense that the information is interactive, we’re allowed to ask questions, and the research is presented as part of the articles.
I submit the only component lacking in this medium is a “portal” of sorts. You know how it works online: wide audience, highly viewed sites linking to smaller, focused sites linking back to the main. None of which remotely resembles a cubicled academic environment producing fee-for-information papers for wonks.
I would fund the bloggers, and initiate a project leading to a portal. Virtually all the components are in place. The DA is culturally out of touch, and their stated goals would be met far more efficiently, with a vastly larger effect by putting their money where the people are.
Not to dash Susan and Boo’s dreams of riches, but…
part of the power of the blogosphere is that it is real.
Its an interactive medium where there is a give and take, and a certain equality amongst the participants.
Most importantly, it is organic — real people.
It’s really amazing to me that one could propose funding bloggers, and yet decry paying Armstrong Williams $250K to promote something he already believed in.
Funded blogging is nothing more than cut-rate shilling. Sure, the Republicans found true believers make the best shills (see Faux News).
Its already a gray line when frontpagers at other sites post about taking meetings with the Democratic leadership, where they do a little give “the blogosphere thinks these issues are important, Mr Senator” and a little take “we in the Party believe this and this are important issues that need more discussion — the points we’d like to get across to you are … “.
But folding the blogs into yet another paid arm of the Party would be, well, missing the point of why the blogs caught on.
As to the idea of feeder blogs, aggregator blogs, etc —
We aren’t big enough. Too large of a segment of our voting population simply isn’t interested in getting online at all, let alone reading about politics online.
Hell, they don’t read about politics offline either.
Word of mouth, “common knowledge”, church/community, billboards, TV. For many voters, those are their only sources of information.
Those are the voters who swing elections. Doesn’t matter how perfect you get the message online, if you can’t get the message to those voters, you lose.
Don’t give so much credit to our wonderful blog-power for the close election in 2004. Hell, there were three candidates running:
The last two combined weren’t as many as Bush alone. And that’s not counting the fourth group “all politics is corrupt, why bother”.
If your strategy relies primarily on the blogs, you don’t even get all of groups 2 and 3, let alone enough to carry an election.
The Republicans have a strong party, with very weak candidates. But voters trust the party to control the candidates. Its the McDonalds of elections — uniform product, same everywhere.
The Democrats have a weak party, a weak brand. Sometimes they get strong candidates (OH-2, Barack Obama, etc). But the candidates are just restaurants. Each stands more on his or her own than they do on a company/franchise reputation.
Spend the big bucks to fix that. Its beyond the grassroots’ power.
We’ll manage the blogosphere well enough without party “help”.
as an example:
The entire right wing noise machine is made up of people being financed by people like Rev. Moon and Mellon-Scaife. The think tanks create ‘scholars’ who are then recycled through the cable news and op-ed pages as ‘experts’.
It’s a free country, and there is no way to prevent this from happening. The left is merely being outspent, and thus, outperformed.
Disclosure is critical for credibility. I don’t receive any money from any groups. But it’s easy to see how someone could adopt this site and sponser it with ads year-round. From that to a stipend is really just a semantic difference.
The key is that the readers deserve to know if someone is a major sponser, because they need that information to properly judge my independence and honesty in reporting.
We don’t know anything about the private finances of Tom Friedman or Robert Novak. We don’t know what business opportunities have been made available to them. But it would be nice if we did know. Unfortunately, there is always a way to buy influence and slant coverage.
As for bloggers, I see our job as being an independent voice that is a counter to mainstream media. The less we have to rely on big sponsers the better, because it helps maintain our independence. It’s the same principle we are using to get more progressive candidates: lots of small donations, instead a few big ones.
So, there are concerns. If the Democratic Party comes to us because of our influence, we have to maintain that influnce without being co-opted into the traditional power structure.
It’s going to be a struggle. And I think we are beginning to see the first fault lines at some of the bigger blogs.
I told ya on your diary last night, and I’ll tell ya again here — I just don’t think you get it, rba.
Internetwork? More Grassroots?
That’d be nice, sure. But that’s not going to reach 100 million potential voters the way the traditional organizations can.
But rather than repeat myself, I’ll give you a more direct point to chew on:
Everyone knows what Republicans stand for:
(the fact none of it is true or relevant has no relation to the fact that “everyone knows” it)
Why does “everyone know” this? Is it because of the power of grassroots, internet, the blogs?
Or is it because every single “trusted source” says it? Is it because even critics of the Republicans have to speak to these talking points of conventional wisdom.
So, what exactly does the Democratic Party stand for?
Again, that’s not truth, that’s “common knowledge”.
Repeat yourself on the blogs as much as you like, you aren’t going to change that perception. They help — they raise campaign funds, and they steer the MSM to some stories.
We need to rewrite Democratic Party “common knowledge
That’s gonna take some serious investment in the “old analog” infrastructure. Academic studies, research reports, hard evidence. We need coherent salable policies that positively affect many aspects of society and the economy in a way that meshes in a mutually beneficial arrangement. We need the data behind it, and we need to influence the decision makers.
Don’t underestimate the usefulness of “ivory tower” think tanks in pulling off such a job. After all, both the Republicans and the Tobacco industry used theirs to push destructive agendas for decades. It took “good” ivory towers to refute tobacco’s. Word of mouth that “smoking is bad” didn’t motivate folks near as much as all that “ivory tower” research.
Relying solely on protests and blogging and grassroots to fight the Republicans is shortsighted. Just because its an area we have an advantage in doesn’t mean its the answer to every problem we face.
We should seek synergy with the Democratic Alliance, not bitch and moan because it isn’t what we ourselves already do now.
We need to rewrite Democratic Party “common knowledge
So what you’re saying is:
Interesting concept. Short-sighted, intellectually bankrupt, but interesting.
I’m not the one who doesn’t “get it”. I’ve spent the last twelve years watching entrenched power brokers clinging to that luddite-built raft – the same one DA wants to jump into now. In the end they will be isolated and adrift, having failed to realize the cultural changes going on around them.
Going forward the org chart is flat. DA is a pyramid all the way to it’s pointed little head.
Intellectually bankrupt is putting stupid words in someone else’s mouth.
That list above is your strawman, which you love to beat so mercilessly. It has nothing to do with my position.
Rule #1… don’t be a prick…
Your responses:
I told ya on your diary last night, and I’ll tell ya again here — I just don’t think you get it, rba.
We should seek synergy with the Democratic Alliance, not bitch and moan because it isn’t what we ourselves already do now.
Intellectually bankrupt is putting stupid words in someone else’s mouth.
You and I disagree vehemently on the DA, and that shows. What is also clear is that I haven’t communicated the concepts I support very well. But I think this is uncalled for:
Rule #1… don’t be a prick….
Rather than start a flame war, let’s just say I disagree with your characterization. Don’t like/agree with my comments? Use the little rate button and add a zero. Much more effective than name-calling.
I have already written a diaryon what I think of this. If this were used to fight the GOP fine… but I already see it’s influence stifling dissent and debate on the left… that is not good.
The Democratic Party is a party of ideology as is the GOP. This is very dangerous game to say that we are not and meanwhile sell bits and pieces of the party to corporations.
Boo, if you need money that badly, I personally would prefer you advertise Pie Ads instead, at least your voice and the voice of this blog would be free from the DLC/NDN ideology-less rhetoric… which is like telling an army to go to war… with no weapons.
it’s a dangerous thing. Personally, I will never adopt NDN policies, and would never accept money with conditions about how I cover anything.
Well put, Parker.
A liberal think-tank could be useful.
A liberal clearinghouse could be useful.
A liberal coordination organization could be useful.
I hope we get them, someday.
I’d read various articles that described the Democratic Alliance as being each of those. I looked forward to it.
Too bad this is now sounding like one of those “right concept, wrong implementation” mistakes. Like:
My poor Democratic party.
At least the Republicans sold out. We just rent out.