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Friday, April 25, 2008

Whither the progressive infrastructure?
Posted by Jill | 6:04 AM
For all the talk on the right of the invisible hand of George Soros running everything on the left, there's been precious little built by way of an infrastructure by which progressive policies and values can be developed and promoted.

Aside from corporate media, the right has think tanks galore, from the American Enterprise Institute to, yes, the Project for the New American Century. Every election cycle, there's a new right-wing group forming to advance Republican candidatres. This year it isn't even May yet and already Floyd Brown, who every four years seems to be able to amass an independent political committee to smear Democratic candidates to the advantage of Republicans, is at his old tricks. Where is the Floyd Brown of the left?

After the Randi Rhodes debacle at Air America, Mike Malloy went on a tear on his NovaM show about the history of the network, specifically a party he attended that was designed to woo rich liberals into investing in the network. When the time came to put their money where their mouths were, the wealthy liberals kept their wallets closed, leaving the project open to Evan Cohen and his Gang of Thieves, and later on to the Stephen Green, who bought the network so his bratty brother Mark, the George W. Bush of the left, would have a nice new toy to play with. And the network has never recovered. Now, Sheldon and Anita Drobny, who were forced out by the Republican moles who ended up running the thing, have NovaM, but growth is slow at best and the ability to bring in new talent is virtually nil for the moment after blowing the budget on Randi -- a move that was probably as necessary as the Mets trading the future for Johan Santana, but that in the same way puts the kibosh on other short-term growth.

When we're up against corporate-owned media, including the giant maw of News Corp., which is now getting ready to buy up yet another newspaper in New York (prompting the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday to overturn a Bush Administration regulatory decision that loosened media ownership restrictions in the 20 largest media markets), which makes damn sure that their talking heads toe the party line (see also: Stephanopoulos, George), for which no smear against a Democrat is too bogus to present as "alternative facts", and no truth about a Republican is too iron-clad to ignore, this kind of infrastructure becomes more important.

But it just doesn't seem to happen. Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest wrote this week about the closing of the Rockridge Institute:

This is how the conservatives have been so successful. They work year-round to convince people to identify as conservatives. (You've probably complained or heard people complain that that have managed to turn "liberal" into a bad word in people's minds.) When election time comes around it's as though all that their candidates have to do is point at the opponent and shout "liberal" to win. They ride a wave of nationally-advanced propaganda convincing people to support "tort reform" or "tax relief." This has been going on for years, so at election time everything is laid out for them on a silver platter, with the public prepared and primed.

Progressive candidates, on the other hand, are generally on their own, starting from scratch for each election. Their general campaign begins in the late summer or fall, they have to decide what "issues" to run on, they have to develop a message from scratch, by themselves, and then they have to reach their voters from scratch. And they have to do all of this on their own in just a few months. No wonder conservatives, even with their awful "you're on your own" philosophy, have managed to do so well and gain so much traction.

This is why building up a national progressive advocacy infrastructure would leverage all of those campaign donations and help us build a sustainable progressive majority. A few dollars to progressive advocacy organizations on any given TODAY builds long-term support for every progressive candidate on any given TOMORROW. It provides leverage -- lowering the need for massive election-cycle funding.

The demise of Rockridge Institute demonstrates that the Democratic Party donor base hasn't yet gotten that message. Instead, masses of money have to be raised for candidates at the very last minute -- for example a million dollars in one minute, the day before the big Pennsylvania primary. And almost all of that money will just literally go up in the air to pay for TV ads that leave nothing behind to show for the money. They don't build the brand, they don't tell people about the benefits of progressive ideas, they don't help other candidates... But almost nothing for the Rockridges and Speak Out California's and Commonweal Institutes.


When you think about the money that, say, Hillary Clinton has shoveled into the pockets of Mark Penn and the rest of her consultants, and when you look at Bob Shrum still being trotted out to opine after eight presidential losses and his pockets bulging with the booty of campaigns past, it's unfathomable that the Democratic Party still doesn't get the importance of this kind of infrastructure. And when you see the same old "Big State Only" tactics still infecting the party's strategy, you have to wonder why they even insult our intelligence by putting on this show that we actually have a choice.

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