Soros, Lewis and Other Big Donors Abandon Democrats For Progressives and Weed
By: Jane Hamsher Thursday September 30, 2010 9:29 am
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/30/soros-lewis-other-big-donors-abandon-democrats-for-progressives-weed/Translation: Gay men, pro-choice women and environmentalists are probably the three biggest issue-based donor groups for the Democratic Party, and all three are absolutely ripshit at the way the Democrats have squandered their majorities. They’re also furious at the veal pen outfits that collaborated with the Democrats and gave them cover for their actions and have cut them off, too. Guess that weekly invite to the Common Purpose meeting turned out not to be such a hot ticket after all.Labor unions are still promising to spend large sums of money backing Democrats. But they are not keeping up at this point with the flood of money going to Republican-leaning organizations.So, let’s see if I have this straight. After the unions put hundreds of millions into getting Obama elected, and they get played on EFCA, the Democrats lay the blame off on ConservaDem Senators like Blanche Lincoln. So the unions spend $10 million trying to send a message to Lincoln, working within the Democratic party to support a primary opponent.
When Lincoln wins, “senior White House officials” are instantly calling journalists to taunt the unions as “absolute idiots” who “just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise.” Which creates huge problems for unions at the local level when it comes to putting money into political races in the future because members are always dubious about such outlays to begin with.
Then Robert Menendez, head of the DSCC, sends out a memo cheering Lincoln’s victory over “special interests in Washington” — the unions. Chuck Schumer goes on to the floor of the Senate and applauds Lincoln for “fighting Wall Street with one hand, and unions with the other.” Nonetheless, Menendez says he expects labor’s “support, you know, financially” in “all of our races across the country.”
The Democrats could have passed legislation that would have doubled union membership by now. They didn’t.What could possibly have gone wrong with this scenario? I have no idea.
Big donors from Wall Street, including hedge fund executives and investment bankers, are also angry at the administration.
Sucking up to our Wall Street overlords while dog whistling to your base is not as easy as the GOP makes it look. It also appears, however, that Republicans have outmaneuvered their Democratic counterparts since the Citizens United decision. They have taken advantage of Democratic broadsides against the ruling, which have inevitably had an effect on the attitudes of Democratic donors.
Mr. Obama devoted one of his weekly radio addresses this month to the effect he said untamed special interests were having on the midterm election. “We can see for ourselves how destructive to our democracy this can become,” he said. “We see it in the flood of deceptive attack ads sponsored by special interests using front groups with misleading names.”
Several Democratic strategists said the White House’s denunciations had made entreaties to prospective donors trickier.So, the President is out there saying that the post-Citizens United IE’s are “politics at its worst,” and that the decision “gave special interests the power to spend without limit — and without public disclosure — to run ads in order to influence elections.” Why wouldn’t big Democratic donors want to jump right in and have that thrown at them? I dunno. You tell me.Belatedly, some additional Democratic third-party efforts are shaping up. An organization called Commonsense Ten is emerging as a conduit for large checks directed toward Senate races and recently went up on the air with television advertisements in Missouri and Washington State.“Belatedly.” Yeah, because nobody could’ve seen this coming.
Over all, though, the group is talking about spending, along with its partner organizations, about $5 million, with commitments from donors so far for about half of that.
In contrast, American Crossroads and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, the biggest Republican-oriented group involved in Senate races, has said it is well on its way to raising $50 million for this election.What if someone had had the foresight to anticipate the impact of the highly unpopular Citizens United decision, and used their party’s majorities in Congress to pass legislation that would have made it difficult for big corporations to hide political money in the Chamber of Commerce or Karl Rove’s $50 million independent expenditure operation without disclosure? What if there was a party that had gone to the mat trying to control corporate influence over politics rather than trying to exploit it, and given themselves at the very least a solid campaign issue for 2010?
The bigger problem for the Democrats, however, is not that Lewis and Soros are sitting it out — it’s that Lewis and Soros are considered “lead donors.” Where they go, other donors follow. If they decide to sit it out, so will others.
The complaints that Soros and Lewis have are the same ones expressed by all those hippies that Robert Gibbs, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been punching. It’s a malaise felt by the entire progressive base, who can’t be spurred into action by being told to “buck up.”
I’ll tell you one thing, though. As pissed off as people are, it’s going to be nothing compared to the rage that will be unleashed if the Catfood Commission’s recommendations to cut Social Security benefits gets passed — and Alice Rivlin says the “stars are aligned” for it to happen. They could snap the spine of the Democratic party completely with that one.http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/30/soros-lewis-other-big-donors-abandon-democrats-
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