Madfloridian's Dumpster Diving:
An article today has brought a lot of concern, though it really seems ok on the surface. But when you dig a little:
Democrats Form New Group for Fund-Raising and Ads"WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — Sensing both political danger and opportunity, a top Democratic operative and a group of major party donors have banded together to deliver a barrage of late advertising and on-the-ground action to secure Democratic victories in November.
The operative, Harold M. Ickes, a top aide to former President Bill Clinton and informal adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and a group of allies are soliciting money for a new organization called the September Fund.
......"Mr. Ickes has already contacted George Soros, the billionaire financier who gave Democratic committees more than $25 million in 2004. Among others on the fund’s list of potential donors are Steve Bing, a Hollywood producer; Linda Pritzker, a member of the family that owns Hyatt hotels; Herb and Marion Sandler, owners of a California savings and loan; and Ted Waitt, founder of the computer company Gateway....Leaders of the fund include Karen Ackerman, the political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Anna Burger, chairwoman of the Change to Win labor federation. Others involved are Gen. Wesley K. Clark, retired, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate; Nick Baldick, who managed the presidential campaign of former Senator John Edwards and the New York mayoral campaign of Fernando Ferrer; and Bill Lynch, a New York lobbyist and strategist...."
Sounds good, more money for the party. But MyDD takes a look at some of the connections to this group and why we might need to be concerned. Not to say it won't be nice to have more groups running ads...just saying we need to keep our eyes open.
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/9/14/19349/4940New 527 Ripoff Schemes from 'Top Democratic Strategists'
by Matt Stoller, Thu Sep 14, 2006 at 07:34:09 PM EST
Ok, so Harold Ickes is trying to raise $25 million for a new 527 to focus on field and advertising. Rahm Emanuel is hiring the Bob Shrum of field operations, Michael Whouley, to run his DCCC field plan. And another 527 with a presumed budget of $8-10 million is being run by former DNC bigwigs Martin Frost, Tony Coehlo, Joe Andrew, and Don Fowler.
Ok, let's look at what's going on here.
Ickes is tied into the Hillary Clinton axis and the Glover Park Group, which was busted today lobbying for the Dubai Ports deal.
Clinton aides had hand in Dubai dealIckes is behind the disastrous Datamart voterfile project, which is project managed by Laura Quinn, the person who screwed up Demzilla in 2004 under Terry McAuliffe and was somehow hired again to screw up another voterfile. Whouley has a massive telecom contract through his firm Dewey Square, which is tasked with passing the Stevens bill eviscerating net neutrality. He's been all over losing Presidential campaigns, most recently Kerry's in 2004. And he's not only in charge of the DCCC field plan, but he's also managed to convince donors to give him $3 million to map out yet another losing Presidential field strategy in 2008.
"Here's the full memo, in case you're curious. Carter Eskew was the chief strategist for the Gore campaign in 2000, and his colleagues at the Glover Park group include Joel Johnson, a top Clinton White House advisor on communications and policy, Joe Lockhart, who was Clinton's spokesman from 1998-2000, and Howard Wolfson, a key Hillary Clinton advisor. If you're looking for a more accessible sense of who these people are, it's the senior team type characters from the West Wing. They all went into lobbying after the Clinton show was canceled. This is a HUGE problem. The people who know how to run campaigns are not politicians, they are the people who run campaigns. The fact that this class of operative/consultant is working for corporate interests and not for Democratic gain means that there is little to no infrastructure that can effectively push for legislative and political victories. That infrastructure is too busy getting rich off of corporate payola. Had this infrastructure been focusing on winning for Democrats, we'd have a campaign ready to go based on the donut hole. It's not like we didn't know this was coming.
This machine is incredibly powerful, but it's vulnerable, and that's why DC is freaking out about the Lieberman challenge. How does this machine tie directly into Connecticut? Well, Carter Eskew is Lieberman's ad man."
And Howard Wolfson is working for the Lamont campaign, loaned by Hillary.
And Matt has a little more to say on the subject:
These are the people that are anonymous senior strategists leaking to the New York Times about how worried they are about Democrats taking a stand on this issue or that one (often with undisclosed financial conflicts of interest), or getting Adam Nagourney to write process pieces about Howard Dean's questionable stewardship of the DNC. These are the people that buy broadcast and waste buckets of cash paying off their media buyer and pollster friends/business partners. This is the all white mostly male circuit that is alienating minority Democratic influentials through their insular arrogance.
The Glover Park Group gave out misleading info on the Medicare drug bill, shamelessly.
This obvious and foreseeable political problem didn't stop Carter Eskew's lobby shop The Glover Park Group from passing around memos arguing Democrats shouldn't take on the Medicare prescription drug fiasco because of bad polling. Their corporate clients are of course various players in the health care industry. Here are the opening few sentences of the memo.
"After a thorough review of early public polling on the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, our analysis suggests that support for the program is solid. Five months into the program, enrolled seniors are satisfied with the program, found enrollment to be easy and think it's saving them money."
And we know that is a load of you know what about seniors being satisfied with the drug bill.
Dean is trying to change this. He intends to keep at it. He is trying to build the party structure in all the states, by using smaller donors who give monthly. If he succeeds it will move the power structure from DC and into the rest of the country. He may or he may not succeed. I am on board win or lose because the other options are not so good.
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