have attached a word doc concerning the Shadow Party. It is over 40 pages long, but well worth the read to gain insight as to why we are where we are at in this country.
I think it is good enough to be passed to everyone you know and asked that they pass it on also.
USE YOUR OWN THOUGHT PROCESS AS TO WHAT YOU WISH TO DO, IT IS ONLY A SUGGESTION…
Part 1: Origins
"My family is more important to me than my party," declared Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, as he spoke from the podium of the Republican National Convention on September 1. "There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush." [1]
Many Democrats howled in outrage at Miller's "betrayal" - former President Jimmy Carter in particular. In an angry personal letter to the Georgia senator, Carter accused Miller of "unprecedented disloyalty" and declared, "You have betrayed our trust. [I]t's quite possible that your rabid speech damaged our party..." [2]
But nothing Miller said could possibly have damaged the Democratic Party more than its own leaders had done in making the war in Iraq a partisan issue and embracing the anti-war cause. In his anger, Carter had mistaken the symptom for the disease. Long before Zell Miller's démarche, Ronald Reagan -- a Roosevelt Democrat who re-registered as a Republican in 1962 -- followed a similar course, explaining, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me."[3]
The leftward drift of the Democratic Party accelerated through the Vietnam years, spurred by the anti-war candidacies of Bobby Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. When the congressional Democrats pulled the plug on aid to our allies in southeast Asia in the 1970s, a contingent of anti-Communist "Scoop" Jackson Democrats crossed the aisle in protest and became Republicans - an act for which they were labeled "neo-conservatives." Rank-and-file Democrats staged a silent but even more devastating walk-out after four years of Jimmy Carter's "blame America" Administration, casting their ballots by the millions for the Gipper.
The Democrats' current presidential aspirant John Kerry has ambitiously modeled his political career after John F. Kennedy’s. Yet their politics bear little resemblance. If Kennedy were alive today, Democrats would condemn his sweeping capital gains tax cuts as a sop to the rich. His militant anti-Communism would evoke charges of right-wing "paranoia." And the vow he made in his inaugural address to confront tyranny anywhere in the world would win him the label of "neo-conservative" imperialist among today’s Democrats. Instead of calling on Americans to "support any friend" and "oppose any foe" -- as Kennedy did in his famous address - many Democrats are busy sabotaging our war effort in Iraq, with speeches as strident as any that emanated from the New Left during the Vietnam era.
The devolution of the Democrats from the Cold War party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy to the progressive party of Edward Kennedy and John F. Kerry has long been in progress, and is not quite complete. But the Democrats' final transformation into a party of the left in the European mode may not be far off. Barely noticed by political observers, an activist juggernaut has seized control of the party’s national electoral apparatus, organized, financed and directed by the left.
This party within the party has no official name, but some journalists and commentators have begun referring to it as the Shadow Party, a term that we will use as well. It denotes a network of non-profit groups presently raising hundreds of millions of dollars for deployment on the campaign battlefield. This money pays for advertising, get-out-the-vote-drives, opposition research, dirty tricks and virtually every aspect of a modern electoral campaign. But it does so through independent groups with no formal connection to the Democratic Party.
Follow the Money
The Shadow Party emerged from the dense thicket of campaign finance reforms engineered by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold. Thanks to the soft-money ban enacted by the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002, the Democratic Party entered the current election cycle hard pressed to raise enough money legally to undertake a winning campaign. This created an imperative that found its inevitable loophole (as critics of McCain-Feingold always warned it would). Consequently, the driving force in the political war against George Bush is now a group of billionaires and millionaires operating through the veiled structures of the Shadow Party.
Under McCain-Feingold, political parties and candidates can only accept “hard money” contributions – that is, contributions given to a specific political party for a specific political campaign. Such contributions must be reported to the Federal Election Commission, and are limited to a $2,000 maximum per donor for each candidate, or $5,000 per donor if they are paid to a federally registered political action committee (PAC). Historically, Republicans have enjoyed a 2-1 advantage over Democrats in raising hard-money contributions from individual donors. Democrats have relied much more heavily on soft-money contributions from large institutions such as unions.
Soft money refers to political contributions, which for one reason or another have been exempted from the limits imposed by the FEC. Before McCain-Feingold outlawed such contributions, soft money donors could give as much money to political parties as they wished. Their contributions often numbered in the millions of dollars. McCain-Feingold deprived the Democrats of their soft money, but the Shadow Party has provided an alternate channel for collecting unlimited contributions. For example, government unions used to lavish multi-million-dollar contributions on the Democratic Party – money which the unions drew from their members, through mandatory dues. The unions still collect their membership dues, but, under McCain-Feingold, they may no longer pass that money along to the Democratic Party, at least not directly. The solution? They give it to the Shadow Party instead.
The Shadow Party uses various expedients to evade McCain-Feingold’s limits. First, it works through independent non-profit groups that ostensibly have no connection to the Democratic Party, either structurally or through informal coordination. The Shadow Party contains many types of non-profit groups, but most of its big fundraisers are “527 committees” – named after Section 527 of the IRS code – sometimes called “stealth PACS” because, unlike ordinary PACS (political action committees), they are not required to register with the Federal Election Commission nor to divulge their finances to the FEC (except in special circumstances).
Another expedient used by the Shadow Party is to claim that it is not engaged in electioneering at all. Most Shadow Party groups say they are soliciting funds not to defeat a particular candidate, but to promote “issues” and non-partisan get-out-the-vote drives. Of course their issue promotions have, in most cases, turned out to be savage attacks on the opposing candidates and their get-out-the-vote drives have used sophisticated demographic marketing techniques to target exclusively Democratic constituencies. All of this casts doubt on the Shadow Party’s claim to be aloof from the electoral struggle and therefore exempt from FEC regulation. However, a pliant Federal Elections Commission has conveniently declined to rule on the Shadow Party’s legality until after the election, when it will no longer matter.
Needless to say, McCain-Feingold also bars the Republican Party from raising soft money. However, Republicans never had a problem raising individual contributions for their candidates and never made a habit of raiding union treasuries for “soft money.” Thus Republicans have felt less urgency than Democrats to seek alternative fundraising methods, and they have proved slower in pursuing the 527 escape route from McCain-Feingold. Republicans have built no network of independent, non-profit groups comparable in numbers or scale to the Democrat Shadow Party.
No one knows who first coined the term “shadow party.” The term has become popular among journalists, but likely originated among the freelance fundraisers themselves. In the November 5, 2002 Washington Post, writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote of “shadow organizations” springing up on both sides of the political fence to circumvent McCain-Feingold’s soft money ban.[4] Lorraine Woellert of Business Week appears to have been the first journalist to apply the term “shadow party” specifically to the Democrat network of 527 groups, in a September 15, 2003 article titled, “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?”[5] Other journalists followed her example.
The Soros Factor
According to conventional wisdom the Shadow Party began taking form shortly after March 27, 2002 – the date President Bush signed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, popularly known as McCain-Feingold. However, the Shadow Party’s earliest origins predate the Reform Act by many years. The principal mover behind the Shadow Party is Wall Street billionaire and leftwinger George Soros. A New York hedge fund manager, global investment banker and currency trader, Soros has a personal net worth in the $7 billion range. Under his aegis, the Shadow Party has created a new power base for the left, independent of the mainstream party apparatus – a leverage point from which to tilt the party in an ever-more-radical direction.
Only Soros knows when he first conceived the idea of forming this network. However, clear hints of his intentions began to appear as early as the 2000 election. By that time, Soros had already baffled friend and foe alike with his increasingly strident attacks on capitalism – the very system which had elevated him from a penniless Hungarian refugee to one of the world’s wealthiest men. In his 1998 book The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Soros predicted an imminent collapse of the global financial system. Financiers like himself were largely to blame, he wrote, for they had allowed greed to overwhelm their humanity. “The (global capitalist) system is deeply flawed,” wrote Soros. “As long as capitalism remains triumphant, the pursuit of money overrides all other social considerations.” [6]
Soros offered no coherent solution to the problem. He simply continued his long-established pattern of pouring money into a hodge-podge of fashionable leftwing causes, such as promoting mass immigration into the United States; financing anti-gun lawsuits and lobbyists; demanding voting rights for felons; seeking the abolition of capital punishment; exacerbating Palestinian unrest; promoting abortion; feminism; population control; gay liberation; euthanasia; radical theories of education; marijuana legalization and global government.
In 2000, Soros stepped up his attack on the status quo – dramatically raising his profile in U.S. electoral politics in the process – by sponsoring the so-called “Shadow Conventions.” Organized by author, columnist, social climber and political gadfly Arianna Huffington, the Shadow Conventions were counter-cultural events that gave a spotlight to critics of the electoral mainstream, most from the far left. In an effort to lure news crews away from the national party conventions, Huffington held her “Shadow Conventions” at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles respectively.
The largest single donor to the Shadow Conventions was George Soros, who put up about one third of the cost, according to Time magazine.[7] Media commentators at the time played the Shadow Conventions for laughs. Yet these events conveyed a serious message; a comprehensive radical agenda which Soros evidently endorsed.
Third Force
The Shadow Conventions promoted the view that neither Democrats nor Republicans served the interests of the American people. Like the New Left of the 1960s and today’s Green Party, both of which dismiss the major parties as instruments of the “corporate ruling class,” Huffington declared that US politics needed a third force to break the deadlock. Among the issues highlighted at the Shadow Conventions were racism, special interest lobbies, marijuana legalization and the allegedly growing concentration of wealth – a radical hobgoblin since Karl Marx first raised its specter 150 years ago. Most speakers and delegates at the Shadow Convention hewed to a hard-left line, their views resonating with the “Free Mumia” chants that erupted periodically from the crowd and with Jesse Jackson’s incendiary charges that Republicans were racists. Huffington herself was a sometime conservative whose cult-like worship of Newt Gingrich had formerly evoked titters of amusement from media gossips. At the Shadow Conventions, she told reporters: “I have become radicalized.”
Not all the speakers were hucksters in the Jackson mold, however. Senator John McCain whose campaign finance crusade had put him at odds with both parties was one of the few mainstream politicians to accept Huffington’s invitation to speak. He made an impassioned plea for campaign finance reform, a crusade which – perhaps not coincidentally – George Soros had been a major force in pushing since 1995.
The Shadow Conventions were symbolic affairs. They represented no party and nominated no candidates for office. However, many of Soros’ activities during the 2000 campaign went beyond symbolism. It was during the 2000 election cycle that Soros first began experimenting with raising money through 527 committees. He assembled a team of wealthy Democrat donors to help him push two of his favorite issues – gun control and marijuana legalization. Soros collected contributions greatly exceeding the $5,000 limit allowed to federal PACs, but he evaded those limits by using 527 committees.
One of Soros’ committees was an anti-gun group called The Campaign for a Progressive Future, which sought to neutralize the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA) by targeting political candidates whom the NRA endorsed. Mainstream Democrats had backed off the gun control issue when candidate Al Gore learned that 40 percent of union households owned guns. However, Soros was no mainstream Democrat. He personally seeded The Campaign for a Progressive Future with $500,000.[8]
During the 2000 election, Soros’ Campaign for a Progressive Future funded political ads and direct mail campaigns in support of state initiatives favoring background checks at gun shows. Soros and his associates also funneled money into pro-marijuana initiatives, which appeared on the ballot in various states that year.[9] Donors to Soros’ stealth PACs during the 2000 election cycle included insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis and InfoSeek founder Steven Kirsch, both of whom would turn up later as major contributors to Soros’ Shadow Party during the 2004 campaign.
The Southampton Meeting
To the extent that the Shadow Party can be said to have an official launch date, July 17, 2003 probably fits the bill.[10] On that day, a team of political strategists, wealthy donors, leftwing labor leaders and other Democrat activists gathered at Soros’ Southampton beach house on Long Island. Aside from Soros, the most noteworthy attendee was Morton H. Halperin. Soros had hired Halperin in February 2002, to head the Washington office of his tax-exempt Open Society Institute – part of Soros’ global network of Open Society institutes and foundations located in more than 50 countries around the world. Given Halperin’s history, the appointment revealed much about Soros’ political goals.
Halperin has a long and controversial track record in the world of Washington intrigue, dating back to the Johnson Administration. Journalists sympathetic to Halperin’s leftwing sentiments give him high marks for blowing the whistle on the Vietnam War, but his activism helped undermine America’s war effort and contributed to the Communist victory.
The Johnson Defense Department placed Halperin in charge of compiling a secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, based on classified documents. This secret history later emerged into public view as the so-called “Pentagon Papers.” Halperin and his deputy Leslie Gelb assigned much of the writing to leftwing opponents of the war, such as Daniel Ellsberg who, despite his background as a former Marine and a military analyst for the Rand Corporation, was already evolving into a New Left radical. In his memoir, Secrets, Ellsberg admits to concluding, as early as 1967, that, “we were not fighting on the wrong side; we were the wrong side” in the Vietnam War. [11] Evidently Ellsberg had come to view Ho Chi Minh’s Communist regime as the wave of the future.
With Halperin’s tacit encouragement – and perhaps active collusion – Ellsberg stole the secret history and released it to The New York Times, which published the documents as “The Pentagon Papers” in June 1971.[12] This was a violation of the Espionage Act, which forbids the removal of classified documents from government buildings. Not surprisingly, “The Pentagon Papers” echoed Halperin’s long-standing position that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, and ridiculed Presidents Kennedy and Johnson for stubbornly refusing to heed those of their advisors who shared this opinion. It marked a turning point in America’s failed effort to keep Indo-China from falling to the Communists. The government dropped its case against Ellsberg as Nixon’s power collapsed during the Watergate intrigues.
Halperin went on to become the director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1984 to 1992 and head of its "National Security Archives." From this position, he waged open war against U.S. intelligence services, through the courts and the press, seeking to strip the government of virtually any power to investigate, monitor or obstruct subversive elements and their activities.[13] It did not take long for Halperin to go the next logical step and argue for abolishing America’s intelligence services altogether. “Using secret intelligence agencies to defend a constitutional republic is akin to the ancient medical practice of employing leeches to take blood from feverish patients. The intent is therapeutic, but in the long run the cure is more deadly than the disease,” Halperin wrote in his 1976 book, The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies.[14]
In a March 21, 1987 article in The Nation, Halperin expanded on this theme and, like Ellsberg, took the position that America was the real villain in the Cold War. He wrote, “Secrecy does not serve national security. Covert operations are incompatible with constitutional government and should be abolished.”[15] This was a call for unilateral disarming of our intelligence services to match the universal disarmament of our military which has long been a staple of the radical agenda.
Evidently, Soros wishes Halperin to continue his war on America’s intelligence services. According to an Open Society Institute press release, one of Halperin’s principal assignments on the Soros team is to battle “post-September 11 policies that threaten the civil liberties of Americans.” [16]
The Plan
No one has published a full list of the attendees at Soros’ July 17 meeting in Southampton, at which Soros laid out his plan to defeat President Bush.[17] However, a partial list is available in accounts that appeared in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. These include an impressive array of former Clinton administration officials, among them Halperin. Prior to working for Soros, Halperin had served eight years under Clinton, first as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and finally as Director of Policy Planning for the Clinton State Department.
The guests at Soros’ beach house also included Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta; Jeremy Rosner, former special advisor to Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright; Robert Boorstin, a former advisor to Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; and Steven Rosenthal, a leftwing union leader who served the Clinton White House as an advisor on union affairs to Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, and Ellen Malcolm, founder and president of the pro-abortion lobby Emily’s List, also attended the meeting, as did such prominent Democrat donors as auto insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis; founder and CEO of RealNetworks Rob Glaser; Taco Bell heir Rob McKay; and Benson & Hedges tobacco heirs Lewis and Dorothy Cullman.
Months earlier, Soros had hired two political analysts to probe Bush’s defenses. They were Tom Novick, a lobbyist for the Western States Center – a group of radical environmentalists in Oregon – and Democrat media strategist Mark Steitz, president of TSD Communications in Washington DC, whose clients have included the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996. Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal reports that both Novick and Steitz were present at the Southampton meeting, to brief the team in person.
Working independently, the two analysts had reached similar conclusions. Both agreed that Bush could be beaten. Voter turnout was the key. The analysts proposed massive get-out-the-vote drives among likely Democrat voters in seventeen “swing” or “battleground” states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.
“By morning,” reports Cummings, “the outlines of a new organization began to emerge, and Mr. Soros pledged $10 million to get it started.” The name of that organization was America Coming Together (ACT) – a grassroots activist group designed to coordinate the Shadow Party’s get-out-the-vote drive. ACT would dispatch thousands of activists – some paid, some volunteers – to knock on doors and work phone banks, combining the manpower of leftwing unions, environmentalists, abortion-rights activists and minority race warriors from civil rights organizations.
ACT was not exactly new. A group of Democrat activists had been trying for months to get it off the ground. But, until George Soros stepped in, ACT had languished for lack of donors. Laura Blumenfeld of The Washington Post describes the scene at the July 17 meeting at Soros’ beach house: “Standing on the back deck, the evening sun angling into their eyes, Soros took aside Steve Rosenthal, CEO of the liberal activist group America Coming Together (ACT), and Ellen Malcolm, its president. … Soros told them he would give ACT $10 million. …Before coffee the next morning, his friend Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corp., had pledged $10 million to ACT. Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks, promised $2 million. Rob McKay, president of the McKay Family Foundation, gave $1 million and benefactors Lewis and Dorothy Cullman committed $500,000. Soros also promised up to $3 million to Podesta's new think tank, the Center for American Progress,” which would function as the policy brains of the new network.[18]
The Shadow Party had been born. Three weeks later, on August 8, The New York Times announced the official roll-out of America Coming Together (ACT), describing it as a political action committee led by Ellen Malcolm and Steven Rosenthal.
Soros next summoned California software developer Wes Boyd to meet him in New York on September 17. Boyd was best known among computer users for his “Flying Toasters” screen saver. The political world knew him as founder of the radical Web site MoveOn.org, the Internet force behind Howard Dean’s anti-war presidential campaign. Boyd had launched the Web site during the Clinton impeachment trial in 1998, offering a petition to censure the President and “move on” to more important matters. Hundreds of thousands of readers responded, and Boyd quickly began milking his growing membership for political contributions. His Web site raised millions for Democrat candidates in three national elections – two mid-terms and one presidential race. When they met in New York, Soros offered Boyd a deal. He and his associate Peter Lewis would donate $1 to MoveOn.org for every $2 Boyd could raise from his members, up to $5 million total from Soros and Lewis combined. Boyd accepted.[19]
By November 2003, the Shadow Party was ready to go public. As Cummings notes in the Wall Street Journal, Soros calculated that the best way to launch his network would be to issue a public statement, calling attention to the record-breaking contributions he had pledged to the Shadow Party. Such an announcement would “stimulate other giving” from Democrat donors still sitting on the fence, Soros thought.[20]
He chose The Washington Post to carry his message. Soros sat down with reporter Laura Blumenfeld and issued his now-famous call for regime change in the USA. “America under Bush is a danger to the world,” Soros declared in that November 11, 2003 interview. Toppling Bush, he said, “is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.” Would Soros spend his entire $7-billion fortune to defeat Bush, Blumenfeld asked? “If someone guaranteed it,” Soros replied.
Part 1 NOTES:
[1] “Text of Zell Miller’s Speech at RNC,” The Associated Press, 1 September 2004
[2] “Carter to Miller: `You Have Betrayed Our Trust,’” Cox News Service, 7 September 2004
[3] “The Life of Ronald Wilson Reagan: 1911-2004,” The Washington Times, 7 June 2004, A12
[4] Thomas B. Edsall, “Campaign Money Finds New Conduits As Law Takes Effect: Shadow Organizations to Raise `Soft Money,’” The Washington Post, 5 November 2002, A02
[5] Lorraine Woellert, “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?” Business Week, 15 September 2003, 62
[6] George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism (New York: PublicAffairs, 1998), 102
[7] Andrew Ferguson, “The Arianna Sideshow,” Time Magazine, 31 July 2000, 22
[8] Barry Massey, “Ads in New Mexico Paid For By `Stealth PACS,’” Associated Press, 4 November 2000
[9] Aimee Welch, “When Voters Are the Legislators,” Insight on the News, 11 December 2000, 22
[10] Jeanne Cummings, “Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004
[11] Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002)
[12] Ellsberg, Secrets, 2002; Seymour M. Hersh, “Kissinger and Nixon in the White House,” The Atlantic, May 1982
[13] Morton H. Halperin and Jeanne M. Woods, “Ending the Cold War at Home,” Foreign Policy, Winter 1990–1991, 136.
[14] Morton H. Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage and Christine Marwick, The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies (Washington, DC: Center for National Security Studies, 1976), 5
[15] Morton Halperin, “The Case Against Covert Action,” The Nation, 21 March 1987, 345
[16] Andrea Pringle, “George Soros Opens Washington Office: Wants Open Society Institute to Have Added Impact on Policy” (press release), Open Society Institute, Washington DC, 10 June 2002
[17] Jeanne Cummings, “Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004
[18] Laura Blumenfeld, “Soros’s Deep Pockets vs. Bush,” Washington Post, 11 November 2003, A03
[19] Blumenfeld, “Soros’s Deep Pockets vs. Bush”; Michelle Goldberg, “MoveOn Moves Up,” Salon.com, December 1, 2003
[20] Cummings, The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004
The Shadow Party: Part II
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11084
Thursday, October 07, 2004
George Soros is an exacting taskmaster. In return for his money, he demands productivity. What he requires of employees and business associates in the investment world, Soros also demands from the political operatives he funds. “Mr. Soros isn't just writing checks and watching,” notes Wall Street Journal reporter Jeanne Cummings. “He is also imposing a business model on the notoriously unruly world of politics. He demands objective evidence of progress, and assigned an aide to monitor the groups he supports. He studies private polls to track the impact of an anti-Bush advertising campaign, and he is delivering his money in installments, giving him leverage if performance falters.”[1]
By early 2004, the Shadow Party’s infrastructure had assumed a coherent shape, under Soros’ guidance. At its heart lay seven ostensibly “independent” non-profit groups which constitute the network’s administrative core. Let us call them the Seven Sisters. In chronological order, based upon their launch dates, they are:
1. MoveOn.org
Launched September 22, 1998
2. Center for American Progress (CAP)
Launched July 7, 2003
3. America Votes
Launched July 15, 2003
4. America Coming Together (ACT)
Launched July 17, 2003
5. The Media Fund
Launched November 5, 2003
6. Joint Victory Campaign 2004
Launched November 5, 2003
7. The Thunder Road Group LLC
Launched early 2004
With the exception of MoveOn.org – based in Berkeley, California – all Seven Sisters maintain headquarters in Washington DC. Testifying to the close links between these groups are their interlocking finances, Boards of Directors and corporate officers. In some cases, they even share office space.
For example, two of the Seven Sisters – The Media Fund and Joint Victory Campaign 2004 – share an office in Suite #1100 at 1120 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Three other groups – America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes and The Thunder Road Group – lease offices in the Motion Picture Association Building at 888 16th Street, NW. It is tempting to consider that the clustering of these three groups in a building owned by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) may not be coincidental. The MPAA has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Democratic Party; many high-ranking Democrats have slipped comfortably from government jobs into glamorous posts in the MPAA’s upper management.
In March 2004, for instance, Dan Glickman succeeded Jack Valenti as MPAA president. Valenti was a Democrat lobbyist and former aide to President Lyndon Johnson. Glickman was formerly a Democratic Congressman from Kansas, who later served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton White House. Now, as MPAA president, Glickman holds what is arguably the most powerful position in Hollywood.
The Shadow Party draws much of its funding from the entertainment world. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Jane Fonda is the fourth largest donor to Democrat 527 groups and Hollywood producer Stephen L. Bing takes third place. The top four Shadow Party donors are as follows:
Top Four Shadow Party Contributions to Democrat 527s Contributors (August 2000 – August 2004)
=====================================================
George and Susan W. Soros $24,170,000.00
Peter B. Lewis $23,147,220.00
Stephen L. Bing $15,382,555.00
Jane Fonda $13,085,750.00
Courtesy The Center for Public Integrity
_______________________________________________________________
Below is a brief overview of the Seven Sisters and their function in the Shadow Party network. The profiles appear in chronological order, according to their launch dates.
MoveOn.orgLaunched September 22, 1998
“It feels so bourgeois!” exclaimed a man who had just made the first campaign contribution of his life. Recorded by LA Weekly writer Brendan Bernhard, this man’s outburst bespeaks a mass phenomenon for which MoveOn.org can largely take credit. [2]
More than a Web site, MoveOn.org is a movement cleverly tailored to lure the young, the Net-savvy and the self-consciously fashionable into supporting mainstream Democrats such as John Kerry – the sort of candidate whom today’s digital hipsters would normally dismiss as a square. MoveOn’s peculiar contribution to the Shadow Party is its ability to draw into the political process America’s ever-growing hordes of self-absorbed cyber-existentialists – “tech-savvy progressives,” in the words of Salon.com writer Michelle Goldberg – and convince them that a vote for the Democrats is a blow against middle-class conformity. MoveOn is the Joe Camel of the Shadow Party, playing to the deepseated antipathy that bohemians of every age group harbor toward all things normal, wholesome, traditional and adult.
Regarding MoveOn’s success at harnessing popular entertainment to the Democrat cause, whether in the form of rock-concert fundraisers or Bush-bashing ads with an MTV edge, the LA Weekly’s Bernhard concludes, “[I]t's all part of a giant, perhaps unprecedented effort by the country's intellectual and artistic communities to unseat the conspicuously unintellectual, inartistic man in the Oval Office.”
High-tech entrepreneur Wesley Boyd and his wife Joan Blades created MoveOn. Their software company Berkeley Systems Inc. of Berkeley, California made a fortune in the early ‘90s with its “After Dark” screensaver, featuring the famous animated “flying toasters.” When the screensaver market peaked in 1994, Berkeley Systems rolled out a successful line of CD-ROM computer games.[3] Company sales had reached $30 million annually by the time Boyd sold Berkeley Systems in 1997 for $13.8 million.[4]
Idle, wealthy and still full of fight, Boyd and Blades sought new challenges. Angered by the Clinton impeachment, the couple wrote a one-sentence petition and e-mailed it to friends, who then e-mailed it to others in chain-letter fashion. It said, “Censure the president and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.” At the same time, Boyd and Blades launched a Web site enabling people to sign their petition electronically. To their astonishment, 100,000 supporters registered in the first week.
Boyd and Blades realized they were onto something. They launched MoveOn.org on September 22, 1998. One month later, on October 23, they rolled out MoveOn PAC, a federal political action committee designed to siphon political contributions from MoveOn’s fast-growing membership. MoveOn PAC raised millions of dollars for Democrat candidates in the elections of 1998, 2000 and 2002. Today, MoveOn boasts an e-mail list of more than 2.2 million members in the USA and over 800,000 abroad.[5] The lean-and-mean operation rents no office space. Its ten full-time staffers work from home, staying in touch via e-mail, instant messaging and weekly conference calls.[6]
MoveOn’s fundraising feats have impressed Beltway strategists. On April 17, 2004, MoveOn held a national “Bake Sale for Democracy,” in which members conducted more than 1,000 bake sales around the country, raising $750,000 in a single day for MoveOn’s anti-Bush campaign.[7] When a Republican redistricting plan threatened Democrat incumbents in the Texas state senate in May 2003, an appeal from MoveOn brought in $1 million in contributions in two days, to support the beleaguered Democrats.[8]
In 2002, Boyd and Blades hired 32-year-old Zack Exley as MoveOn’s organizing director. A computer programmer and Web designer by trade, Exley had gained national attention during the 2000 campaign when he launched GWBush.com, a Web site featuring doctored photographs portraying candidate Bush as a dope fiend. Exley was a hardened activist of the extreme Left. Trained by the AFL-CIO, he had worked as an undercover union organizer for five years, and also done a stint training activists for the Ruckus Society, an anarchist group whose violent tactics first caught the public eye during the 1999 riots against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.[9] Exley brought a ruthless edge to MoveOn’s fundraising and propaganda drives which soon aroused the admiration of mainstream Democrats.
In May 2003, the Howard Dean presidential campaign hired Exley away from MoveOn for two weeks in order to turbocharge Dean’s Web operations. Exley finally left MoveOn for good in April 2004 to become Director of Online Communications and Online Organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.
In the meantime, George Soros had incorporated MoveOn into his Shadow Party. Following the September 17, 2003 meeting between Soros and Boyd mentioned in Part 1, Soros and his associates poured nearly $6.2 million into MoveOn over a period of six months, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The contributions include $2.5 million from George Soros personally; $2.5 million from Peter B. Lewis of Progressive Insurance; $971,427 from Peter Bing of Shangri-La Entertainment; $100,000 from Benson & Hedges tobacco heir Lewis Cullman; and $101,000 from Soros’ 34-year-old son Jonathan T. Soros, an attorney and financier recently promoted to deputy manager of Soros Fund Management LLC.
Jonathan Soros has become personally involved with MoveOn.org’s activities. In December 2003, he collaborated with techno-rocker Moby to organize “Bush in 30 Seconds,” an online contest for the best 30-second anti-Bush TV ad. MoveOn agreed to air the winning commercial on national television. Among the 1,500-odd submissions to the contest were two ads juxtaposing footage of George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler. MoveOn posted these ads on its site. Under pressure from Jewish groups and Republicans, MoveOn pulled the Hitler ads and apologized for them. [10]
Despite such gaffes, MoveOn need not worry about its media image. Major networks and newspapers pour forth an endless flood of free publicity for the group. Calculated in terms of equivalent advertising fees, the millions MoveOn raises in political contributions doubtless pales in value beside the worshipful profiles and saccharine coverage which major media never tire of bestowing upon Boyd and Blades’ Web site and political campaigns.
Part 2a Notes
[1] Jeanne Cummings, “Soros Has a Hunch Bush Can Be Beat,” The Wall Street Journal, 5 February 2004
[2] Brendan Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot,” LA Weekly, August 6, 2004, 22
[3] Steve Ginsberg, “Expanding the House that `Jack’ Built,” San Francisco Business Times, January 26, 1996, 7
[4] Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot” ; Chris Taylor and Karen Tumulty, “MoveOn’s Big Moment,” Time Magazine, November 24, 2003, 32
[5] Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot”
[6] Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot” ; Chris Taylor and Karen Tumulty, “MoveOn’s Big Moment”
[7] Bernhard, “Tempest in a Teapot”
[8] Chris Taylor and Karen Tumulty, “MoveOn’s Big Moment”
[9] Lowell Ponte, “Zack Exley: Kerry’s Toxic Web Spider,” FrontPageMagazine.com, August 31, 2004
[10] Renuka Rayasam, “Piqued? Make an Anti-Bush TV Spot,” The Austin American Statesman, October 30, 2003, A11; “RNC Attacks Bush-Hitler Ad,” WorldNetDaily.com, January 4, 2004; “2nd Bush-Hitler Ad Posted,” WorldNetDaily.com, January 5, 2004
Part II Continued
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11083
Center for American Progress (CAP) Launched July 7, 2003
The Center for American Progress (CAP) is widely understood to be what one inside source called, “the official Hillary Clinton think tank” – a platform designed to highlight Hillary’s policies and to enhance her prestige as a potential presidential candidate.[1]
Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: “The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor. … Halperin, who heads the office of Soros’ Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders.” [2]
Soros and Halperin then recruited Harold Ickes – chief fundraiser and former deputy chief of staff for the Clinton White House – to help organize the Center. It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute, but has operated under the name Center for American Progress (CAP) since September 1, 2003.
The official purpose of the Center was to provide the left with something it supposedly lacked – a think tank of its own. Where was the left’s Heritage Foundation, asked Soros and Halperin? Of course, the left had plenty of think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute, the Economic Policy Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Progressive Policy Institute – not to mention the Kennedy School for Government at Harvard and numerous similar academic institutions firmly under leftist control. But Shadow Party leaders seemed to be looking for something different – something that no existing institution on the left offered.
Regarding the alleged need for CAP, Hillary Clinton told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine on October 12, 2003, “We need some new intellectual capital. There has to be some thought given as to how we build the 21st-century policies that reflect the Democratic Party’s values.”[3] Expanding on this theme, Hillary subsequently told The Nation’s Dreyfuss, “We’ve had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The center is a welcome effort to fill that void.”[4]
Soros and Hillary seemed to understand the need for the new Center, even if they did not always succeed in explaining it to others. They found fault with every existing leftwing think tank. Even Bill Clinton’s personal favorite, the Progressive Policy Institute, was too moderate, too middle-of-the-road for their purpose. But what was their purpose?
Hillary Clinton tries to minimize the depth of her involvement with CAP – as indeed she does habitually in all matters concerning the Shadow Party. Beltway insiders are not fooled, however. Persistent press leaks confirm that Hillary calls the shots at CAP – not John Podesta. “It’s the official Hillary Clinton think tank,” an inside source confided to Christian Bourge of United Press International.[5]
Many ideological purists on the Left dismiss the Center as a platform for Hillary’s presidential ambitions. No doubt, they are right. Dreyfuss notes the abundance of Clintonites on the Center’s staff, among them Clinton’s national security speechwriter Robert Boorstin; Democratic Leadership Council staffer and former head of Clinton’s National Economic Council Gene Sperling; former senior advisor to Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget Matt Miller; and so on. Dreyfuss writes: “[T]he center’s kickoff conference on national security in October [2003], co-organized with The American Prospect and the Century Foundation, looked like a Clinton reunion, featuring Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary; William Perry, his Defense Secretary; Sandy Berger, his National Security Adviser; Richard Holbrooke and Susan Rice, both Clinton-era Assistant Secretaries of State; Rodney Slater, his Transportation Secretary; and Carol Browner, his EPA administrator, who serves on the center’s board of directors.” Hillary Clinton also attended the event, notes Dreyfuss.
“In looking at Podesta’s center,” Dreyfuss muses, “there’s no escaping the imprint of the Clintons. It’s not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile – or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton.”[6]
“Rapid Response”
Another of CAP’s missions is to carry out “rapid response” to what it calls conservative “attacks” in the media. CAP’s Web site promises that it will soon be capable of “responding effectively and rapidly to conservative proposals and rhetoric with a thoughtful critique and clear alternatives.” To this end, CAP offers a stable of talking heads – coiffed, credentialed and fully briefed – ready to appear at a moment’s notice on national talk shows to interrupt, side track, browbeat and otherwise prevent conservative commentators from getting their message out. Notable among CAP’s line-up of talking heads are The Nation’s Eric Alterman – who claims expertise on the subjects of media and democracy – and Morton H. Halperin, who offers to speak on national security.
CAP helped launch Media Matters for America, a 501(c)(03) public charity better known for its Web site MediaMatters.org, which opened for business on May 3, 2004. Inasmuch as Media Matters aspires to serve as a media watchdog, monitoring “rightwing” journalists for errors and ethical violations, it is odd, to say the least, that David Brock has been appointed its President and CEO. Brock is a former conservative journalist who defected to the Left amidst an outpouring of dramatic public apologies and confessions that he had built his career on lies, writing political hit pieces filled with flimsy evidence and outright fabrications. Even so, whatever Brock lacks in credibility, he more than makes up for in the quality of his schmoozing. Brock told The New York Times that he conferred with Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle and former Vice President Al Gore before launching his Web site.[7]
The New York Times, which generously provided a 1,041-word feature article to announce Brock’s grand opening, reports that, “Mr. Brock's project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress…. [CAP president John] Podesta has loaned office space in the past to Mr. Brock and introduced him to potential donors.” Brock received $2 million for the start-up. His donors include friend-of-Hillary Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of the fashion company Esprit; former cable TV mogul Leo Hindery Jr.; and San Francisco philanthropist James C. Hormel, an enthusiastic promoter of the “gay lifestyle” whom Clinton appointed ambassador to Luxembourg in the 1990s.[8]
In its short life, Media Matters has already acquired a reputation for zombie-like partisanship and reckless disregard for the truth. Brock and his team seem to sleepwalk through their work, rubberstamping, with mind-numbing monotony, virtually every conservative utterance that finds its way into major media as a “lie,” a “smear,” a “slander,” or a factual “error.”
War on Rush Limbaugh Among Brock’s high-priority projects is a campaign to pressure Congress and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to ban Rush Limbaugh from American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) – thus depriving our troops in Iraq of one of the few radio programs they are allowed to hear that wholeheartedly supports them and the cause for which they fight. Only one hour of Limbaugh’s three-hour show is broadcast on one of AFRTS’s thirteen radio channels, five days per week – constituting less than one percent of the network’s total weekly programming. [9] Nevertheless, that is one percent too many for the Shadow Party and its operatives.
Shortly after Media Matters began its campaign, Democrat Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa obligingly proposed an amendment to the 2005 Defense Authorization Act mandating “political balance” on AFRTS. The Senate approved Harkin’s amendment unanimously on June 16. It stops short of banning Limbaugh outright, but the amendment effectively requires AFRTS to balance Limbaugh with more leftwing commentary. Given the fact that one of the network’s two news channels currently airs National Public Radio 24 hours per day, seven days per week, it is hard to imagine how AFRTS can broadcast more leftwing commentary than it already does.[10] Even so, Senator Harkin complained in a June 17 Senate speech, “[T]here is no commentary on the service that would even begin to balance the extreme right-wing views that Rush Limbaugh routinely expresses on his program.” [11]
In the interests of full disclosure, it should be mentioned that both co-authors of this article have been targets of stunningly mendacious hatchet jobs on Mr. Brock’s Web site.
Pat 2b Notes
[1] Christian Bourge, “Liberal Think Tank Debuts,” United Press International, July 7, 2003
[2] Robert Dreyfuss, “An Idea Factory for the Democrats,” The Nation, March 1, 2004, 18
[3] Matt Bai, “Notion Building,” The New York Times Magazine, October 12, 2003, 82
[4] Dreyfuss, “An Idea Factory for the Democrats”
[5] Bourge, “Liberal Think Tank Debuts”
[6] Dreyfuss, “An Idea Factory for the Democrats”
[7] Jim Rutenberg, “New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right,” The New York Times, 3 May 2004, 21
[8] Rutenberg, “New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right”
[9] Hans Nichols, “Limbaugh Stirs Democrats’ Angst Over Forces Radio,” The Hill, 14 September 2004, 6; Suzanne Gamboa, “Liberals Want More Antidote for Limbaugh on American Forces Radio,” The Associated Press, 28 June 2004; Jake Thompson, “Limbaugh Protests Harkin Move,” Omaha World-Herald, 19 June 2004, 04A;
[10] Nichols, “Limbaugh Stirs Democrats’ Angst Over Forces Radio” The Hill; “Harkin Leads Senate in Unanimous Vote Demanding Political Balance on American Forces Radio and Television Service,” US Newswire, 16 June 2004
[11] “Statement of Senator Tom Harkin on American Forces Radio,” harkin.senate.gov, 17 June 2004 http://harkin.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=222737
Part II Continued 2
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11082
America VotesLaunched July 15, 2003 America Votes is an umbrella group encompassing a national coalition of grassroots, get-out-the-vote organizations. It was formed on July 15, 2003 to help coordinate the activities of the growing number of non-profit groups that now constitute the Shadow Party. According to its Web site, America Votes now commands the political loyalty of “more than 20 million Americans in every state in the country,” through its 33 member organizations.
The McCain-Feingold soft money ban took effect on November 6, 2002. Shortly thereafter, Democrat operative Gina Glantz called a meeting at the Washington restaurant BeDuCi’s. Glantz was then an official for the leftwing government union SEIU. She later became a key strategist for the Howard Dean campaign. According to The Wall Street Journal, attendees at Glantz’s meeting included Clinton operative Harold Ickes; SEIU president Andrew Stern; Steven Rosenthal; Ellen Malcolm and Carl Pope. Glantz argued that the proliferating Democrat 527 committees needed a central command structure – an “umbrella group” – to avoid duplicating efforts and wasting money. Everyone liked her idea, but no donors stepped forward. Glantz’s idea for an umbrella group languished for the next eight months. [1]
In describing the genesis of America Votes, The Texas Monthly lists a cast of characters similar to those who attended Glantz’s meeting – but with one puzzling addition: Jim Jordan. When the Shadow Party launched America Votes, Jordan was still John Kerry’s campaign manager. He was not fired from that job until November 9 – nearly four months later. If indeed Jordan helped launch America Votes while working as Kerry’s campaign manager, he violated FEC regulations, which bar coordination between campaign officials and independent political committees.[2]
The Texas Monthly further reports that the group decided to appoint Cecile Richards – then deputy chief of staff for minority leader Nancy Pelosi – to head America Votes. “We wanted to find a way to bring progressive groups together for the election. … It was a monster coalition, and we universally agreed that Cecile was the best person to coordinate it,” said Ellen Malcolm. Richards’ primary job would be to keep the organization’s thousands of activists from duplicating efforts and stepping on each others’ toes. “With America Votes, we really have a way now to settle who is in which neighborhoods, who is taking which precincts,” Richards explains. “And the role of our state directors is to hold those folks accountable for what they said they'd do.” [3] Member organizations of the America Votes coalition are listed below:
1. ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)
2. ACT (America Coming Together)
3. AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations)
4. AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees)
5. AFT (American Federation of Teachers)
6. ATLA (Association of Trial Lawyers of America)
7. Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
8. Clean Water Action
9. Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund
10. Democracy for America
11. EMILY’S List
12. Environment 2004
13. The Human Rights Campaign
14. League of Conservation Voters
15. The Media Fund
16. The Million Mom March
17. MoveOn.org Voter Fund
18. Moving America Forward
19. Music for America
20. NAACP – National Voter Fund
21. NARAL Pro-Choice America
22. National Education Association
23. National Jewish Democratic Council
24. National Treasury Employees Union
25. Partnership for America’s Families
26. People for the American Way (PFAW)
27. Planned Parenthood Action Fund
28. Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
29. Sierra Club
30. USAction
31. Voices for Working Families
32. Young Voter Alliance
33. 21st Century Democrats
Cecile Richards has a personal as well as an ideological ax to grind against President George W. Bush. She is the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards, whom Bush soundly defeated in 1994, ending her political career.
Like many of Bush’s harshest critics, Cecile Richards harbors a deep antipathy toward the so-called “Christian Right.” After her mother’s 1994 defeat, Richards founded the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization aimed at countering the political influence of conservative Christians, especially on school boards. Richards subsequently moved to Washington, DC, where she served as organizing director of the AFL-CIO, then as a pro-abortion activist for the Turner Foundation and Planned Parenthood, and finally as deputy chief of staff for Democrat minority whip Nancy Pelosi, soon to become minority leader. Richards held that post for eighteen months, before joining America Votes.
George Soros’ son, Jonathan T. Soros, has donated $250,000 to America Votes. Several of the organization’s top donors, such as Rob McKay and Robert Glaser, are also close Soros associates. America Coming Together Launched July 17, 2003
Only two days after the team from BeDuCi’s restaurant launched America Votes, George Soros held his much-publicized July 17 meeting in Southampton, where he and his associates pledged $23.5 million to America Coming Together (ACT) and $3 million to “the official Hillary Clinton think tank,” the Center for American Progress (CAP). IRS filings give July 17, 2003 as ACT’s official launch date. However, the public announcement did not come until August 8, 2003, when The Washington Post announced the roll-out of a new political action committee called America Coming Together (ACT), naming as its co-founders Ellen Malcolm and Steven Rosenthal.[4]
On the surface, ACT is simply one of 33 member organizations under the umbrella of Cecile Richards’ America Votes. However, ACT plays a special role among the affiliate groups. As Richard Holbrook explains in The Wall Street Journal, affiliates such as Planned Parenthood and the NAACP pay $50,000 apiece for the privilege of joining America Votes. What do they get in exchange for that money? Holbrook suggests that at least one important benefit is gaining access to ACT’s high-tech, get-out-the-vote system.
He relates an encounter between Rebecca Barson, an official at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and cyber-activist Rob O’Brien from ACT, whom Holbrook describes as a “tattooed young man sporting a black t-shirt and earring” with a laptop computer. Ms. Barson wants to canvass single, local young women, ages 18-30, who are registered Democrats and likely to respond to a pro-abortion message. Mr. O’Brien hits a few keys on his laptop and, voila, up pop the names of 812 local women answering Ms. Barson’s target profile to a “T,” their addresses marked by dots on a street map. From that point, Harwood explains, “it was up to Planned Parenthood – and a host of affiliated liberal organizations working with ACT to divide up the terrain – to reach the voters, assess their political inclinations and cajole supporters to vote on Nov. 2.”
“This is the first time we’ve really done field work on this level,” Ms. Barson told the Wall Street Journal. “We would never be able to afford the voter file and mapping software on our own.” [5] It all sounds so exciting and cutting-edge – applying state-of-the-art splinter-group marketing techniques to a political campaign. But columnist Craige McMillan of WorldNetDaily.com sees a more sinister dynamic at work. Voter registration drives are considered non-partisan, and therefore permissible to 501(c)(3) non-profit groups such as Planned Parenthood. Thanks to ACT’s software, however, Democrat activists such as Ms. Barson can now go through the motions of pretending to carry out a non-partisan voter registration drive while in fact targeting only single Democrat women who, if they can be prodded to vote at all, will surely vote only for Kerry. “Is this your idea of nonpartisan activity by a public charity?” McMillan asks rhetorically.
In McMillan’s view, the transaction between Ms. Barson and her be-earringed young friend from ACT constitutes but the tip of a giant iceberg of corruption. When they fork over their $50,000 membership fees to America Votes, what those Democrat non-profit groups really appear to be purchasing is access to an orgy of what McMillan calls “illegal coordination” via “private cell-phone conversations, within encrypted e-mails, and on password-protected websites.” [6] In short, their fees buy access to the Shadow Party and its resources.
On its Web site, America Coming Together claims to be running, “the largest voter contact program in history.” ACT coordinates, facilitates and provides foot soldiers for the Shadow Party’s “ground war” – its grassroots voter mobilization drives, using manpower both from its own ranks and from its “partner” organizations in America Votes. ACT claims to employ over 1,400 full-time canvassers, as well as thousands of volunteers working from 55 offices throughout the battleground states. ACT’s Web site boasts that the voters it mobilizes “will derail the right-wing Republican agenda by defeating George W. Bush and electing Democrats up and down the ticket.”
In order to ensure that the voters it mobilizes will cast their ballots only for Democrats, ACT canvassers focus on “swing” voters (which it defines as “pre-retirement women” and “younger voters,” whom the ACT Web site describes as less likely to be politically informed than other demographic groups). It will also target what ACT calls “Democratic base voters” – such as African-Americans and Hispanics – “who vote Democratic but need extra contact to persuade them to vote.”
ACT and its affiliate groups use intrusive, high-pressure tactics to register and mobilize voters, both by phone and by door-to-door canvassing. Not only do its canvassers register voters, but they compile extensive personal dossiers on them – including such private information as their drivers’ license numbers, social security numbers, and favored candidates in the election – information which can be retrieved on demand through canvassers’ hand-held Palm Pilots. Follow-up is key to ACT’s get-out-the-vote strategy. According to ACT’s Web site, its canvassers extract firm “promises” from individual voters, then follow up to make sure that “promises are kept.”
ACT’s Web site does not explain precisely how its canvassers will enforce the “promises” they exact. However, the menacing demeanor of at least some ACT canvassers will no doubt prove motivating to many voters. On June 23, 2004, the Associated Press revealed that an undetermined number of ACT’s fulltime canvassers were felons, convicted for crimes that include burglary, assault and sex offenses.[7]
Part 2c Notes
[1] Jeanne Cummings, “A Hard Sell on 'Soft Money',” The Wall Street Journal, 2 December 2003; Michael Crowley, “Shadow Warriors ,” New York Magazine, 12 August 2004 http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/nationalinterest/9372/index.html
[2] S. C. Gwynne (with reporting by Michael Hardy), “The Daughter Also Rises,” The Texas Monthly, August 2004, 112
[3] S. C. Gwynne, “The Daughter Also Rises”
[4] Thomas B. Edsall, “Liberals Form Fund to Defeat President,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2004, A03
[5] John Harwood, “In Fallout from Campaign Law, Liberal Groups Work Together,” The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2004, A1
[6] Craige McMillan, “Making a List, Checking it Twice,” WorldNetDaily.com, July 29, 2004 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39699
[7] David A. Leib, “Political Group Paid Felons for Door-to-Door Voter Registration Drive,” Associated Press, June 23, 2004
Part II Continued
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11081
Joint Victory Campaign 2004 Launched November 5, 2003
Harold McEwan Ickes keeps a low profile. However, as the Shadow Party’s unofficial chief executive, his growing power is obvious to Washington insiders. “[H]e is the most important person in the Democratic Party today,” outside the official Kerry campaign, says Democrat strategist Howard Wolfson.[1]
Like most Shadow Party leaders, Ickes rose from the New Left. A Freedom Rider in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, Ickes subsequently traveled to the Dominican Republic, where he involved himself in a coup attempt by a junta of leftwing colonels in 1965.[2] He worked on the 1968 Eugene McCarthy campaign and the 1972 George McGovern campaign. Ickes met Bill Clinton in 1972, while both were working on Operation Pursestrings, a grassroots lobbying effort aimed at cutting off aid to South Vietnam. Ickes later spent fourteen years as a partner in the Mineola, Long Island law firm Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, notorious for the long list of violent, mob-run labor unions it has represented.[3]
Ickes left the firm to join the Clinton White House as deputy chief of staff from January 1994 through January 1997. One of his key duties in the White House was suppressing Clinton scandals and defusing federal investigations. “Whenever there was something that [Bill Clinton] thought required ruthlessness or vengeance or sharp elbows and sharp knees or, frankly, skulduggery, he would give it to Harold,” former Clinton advisor Dick Morris told Vanity Fair.[4]
Ickes’ true loyalty is to Hillary, however. The Boston Globe called him “a special favorite of the president's wife.”[5] During his stint at the White House, Ickes headed a secret unit for Hillary, dedicated to suppressing Clinton scandals. It operated, in effect, as a Counsel’s office within the White House Counsel’s office. In his book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, David Brock refers to Ickes’ special unit as the “Shadow Counsel’s Office.”[6] Its operatives included Mark Fabiani, Chris Lehane, Jane Sherburne and perhaps others. Ickes reported directly to Hillary Clinton on all matters related to the work of this special unit. In time, Ickes would graduate from running Hillary’s Shadow Counsel’s Office to running an entire Shadow Party.
Hillary recruited Ickes as chief campaign advisor for her 2000 Senate run. According to Ickes, he accepted the job after a four-hour meeting with Hillary on February 12, 1999 -- the same day that the U.S. Senate voted on Bill Clinton's impeachment. “I’m really doing this out of my friendship for Hillary, pure and simple,” Ickes told the Associated Press on June 17, 1999. “She called and there was no way I was going to say no to Hillary.” [7]
Harold Ickes formed the Joint Victory Campaign 2004 on November 5, 2003 – the same day that he also formed The Media Fund (see below). JVC 2004 is the chief fundraising entity for the Democrat Shadow Party. A 527 committee, it is run jointly by America Coming Together (ACT) and The Media Fund (TMF). JVC collects contributions for these two groups and divides the money between them, whence the funds are disbursed further down the line, as needed. In 2004 alone, JVC has channeled more than $53 million into the Shadow Party network – $38.4 million to The Media Fund (TMF) and $19.4 million to American Coming Together (ACT).
Since it is little more than a money conduit, JVC has attracted less press attention than its sister organizations ACT and the Media Fund. However, JVC did surface briefly in a February 5, 2004 Washington Post editorial questioning the shadowy nature of its financial transactions.[8] The editorial noted that a mysterious 527 committee calling itself the Sustainable World Corporation had suddenly sprung into existence in Houston, Texas on December 10, 2003. Seven days later, it donated $3.1 million to Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which then divided the money between ACT and the Media Fund. The Washington Post attempted to discover the source of the $3.1 million donation, but hit a brick wall. The editorial notes:
“Sustainable World Corp. lists only a post office box in Houston as its address. Directory assistance has no number for it. Searches of ordinary business databases come up empty. We tracked down Lewis Linn, the Houston accountant who is listed as its registered agent, and asked him about Sustainable World; he said he was bound by professional constraints to keep information about it confidential. Asked if he would check to see whether those behind Sustainable World would let him reveal their identity, Mr. Linn called back to say, `I've talked to my clients, and they wish to remain private.’” [9]
When the Post called Harold Ickes, it was lucky enough to catch him in a candid and forthcoming mood – which is not his usual posture toward the press. Though under no legal obligation to answer the Post’s question, Ickes generously explained that Houston investor Linda Pritzker of the Chicago Hyatt hotel family was the mystery benefactor behind Sustainable World Corporation. “It's nice that Mr. Ickes answered. But a system that permits these kinds of huge donations to be made under a cloak of anonymity is deeply troubling,” commented the Post. Janice Ann Enright – Ickes’ partner in the Washington lobbying firm The Ickes and Enright Group – also happens to act as Treasurer for the Joint Victory Campaign 2004.
The Media FundLaunched November 5, 2003
While Malcolm, Glantz and Rosenthal were cobbling together the coalition of labor unions, pro-abortion activists and environmentalists that would later emerge as America Votes, Ickes sought to organize what he informally called a “presidential media fund” or sometimes just “a media fund” – a 527 committee that would raise money for campaign advertising. Unable to think of a catchy moniker for his “media fund,” Ickes finally just settled on The Media Fund, launching it under that name on November 5, 2003.
The Media Fund (TMF) functions as an in-house advertising agency for the Shadow Party. TMF conceptualizes, produces and places political ads on television, radio, print and the Internet. “The Media Fund is the largest media buying organization supporting a progressive message,” says its Web site. Ickes explained to New York Magazine in a June 28, 2004 interview. “The goal of the Media Fund is to create, test, and then air ads that raise issues that we think are important in this election. … [However,] we are not in the business of electing or defeating candidates.” [10] Ickes had to add that last sentence for legal purposes. Such paper-thin disclaimers form the Shadow Party’s only bulwark against federal prosecution under the McCain-Feingold Act. Ickes’denial notwithstanding, electing and defeating candidates is of course The Media Fund’s sole purpose.
TMF – whose president is Erik Smith – has been extremely active in creating and airing attack ads against President Bush in battleground states. Drawing on top talent from Madison Avenue advertising firms, The Media Fund seeks to convince Americans that President Bush pursues what its Web site calls a “radical agenda” which has “given us a country less secure, a foreign policy in disarray, record job losses, deficits that mortgage our children's future, environmental policies that abandon common sense and attacks on civil liberties that undermine the very premise of our democracy.”
The Media Fund has received over $51.6 million in donations since its launch. Much of the money is hard to trace, however, since it was first laundered through Joint Victory Campaign 2004. Soros money has doubtless found its way into the mix. Soros has poured millions into Joint Victory Campaign 2004, as have close Soros associates Peter B. Lewis and Stephen Bing.
The Thunder Road GroupLaunched early 2004
Launched in early 2004, The Thunder Road Group was the last of the Seven Sisters to appear, but arguably the most vital of the lot. The Boston Globe called Thunder Road the “nerve center” of the Shadow Party – its unofficial headquarters. “[The Thunder Road Group] is an operation unlike any other in politics, devising strategy, message, and public relations services for the 527s,” writes Brian C. Mooney of The Globe.[11]
A soup-to-nuts political consultancy, Thunder Road combines the roles of strategic planning, polling, opposition research (dirt-digging), covert operations (dirty tricks) and public relations. It coordinates strategy for The Media Fund, America Coming Together and America Votes. Its founder Jim Jordan is frequently quoted in the press as a spokesman for other Seven Sister groups.
Jordan is an attorney long active in Washington as a Democrat spin doctor. Among other high-profile assignments, Jordan handled press relations for the Senate committee investigating DNC fundraising in 1997 and for the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment. Riding the whirlwind of Clinton-era scandals charged Jordan with a zest for what he calls “intense political, hand-to-hand combat.” [12]
Jordan attained his highest public profile when he served for nearly a year as John Kerry’s campaign manager, from December 2002 to November 2003. But, as Kerry’s poll numbers sank, so did Jordan’s power in the campaign. Kerry fired Jordan suddenly on the night of November 9, accepting resignations the following day from other top staffers loyal to Jordan. It was a full-fledged purge. As Jordan’s team left, Kennedy loyalists moved in. Mary Beth Cahill, Stephanie Cutter, Bob Shrum and other well-known operatives of Senator Ted Kennedy quickly siezed control of the campaign. New York Times pundit William Safire credits Jeanne Shaheen, national chairwoman of Kerry’s campaign, with masterminding the putsch. On November 12, 2003, Safire wrote:
“The Kennedyization of the Kerry campaign was carried out by Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor. She prevailed on the candidate to fire his longtime manager, Jim Jordan, and replace him with Mary Beth Cahill, Ted Kennedy’s chief of staff. Cahill has impeccable far-left credentials, from Emily’s List fund-raising to Representative Barney Frank’s staff. She is an ideological soulmate of the superb writer and Kennedy Boston braintruster Robert Shrum…”[13]
Jordan did not remain long out of work. Less than a month passed before Harold Ickes and Ellen R. Malcolm recruited Jordan to handle publicity and strategy for the Shadow Party – in particular, for The Media Fund, ACT and America Votes. In order to handle the growing volume of work pouring in from his newfound friends, Jordan launched his own company in early 2004. He named it Thunder Road after a Bruce Springsteen song whose lyrics declare, “It's a town full of losers, and I'm pulling out of here to win.”
A July 27, 2004 article in The Hill reports that Jordan had collected about $1.7 million in consulting fees and was drawing an $85,000 salary at that time.[14] But what exactly was Jordan doing for that money? He is no mere press secretary. Jordan freely acknowledges that his group engages in “opposition research” – the favored euphemism for dirt-digging among political strategists. Some reports indicate that Jordan’s covert operations go beyond the garden variety of Washington smear-mongering. For instance, the American Spectator reported on April 9, 2004 that Jordan may have helped stage-manage the media circus that disrupted the work of the 9-11 Commission, nearly bringing the investigation to a standstill.[15]
Even before Condoleeza Rice made her opening statement to the Commission, Thunder Road operatives began bombarding reporters with e-mails attempting to discredit her. The e-mails continued for three hours straight, while Rice testified. More seriously, the American Spectator reports that a staffer for America Coming Together said, “We’d heard that [former National Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard] Clarke had some help with writing his testimony and in prepping for the questioning. … The rumor is that he ended up getting some help from Kerry’s people, but indirectly through Thunder Road.”
Richard Clarke’s testimony to the Commission later turned out to be rife with contradictions and misinformation, as the Commission’s final report makes clear. If indeed the Thunder Road Group helped prepare that testimony, then it helped obstruct an investigation of grave importance to America’s national security.
Since Jordan’s firing, a new shake-up at Kerry headquarters appears to have put Clinton operatives back in the driver’s seat. Mike McCurry, Joe Lockhart, James Carville, Paul Begala, and other Clinton loyalists now seem to be calling the shots at Team Kerry. What this portends for the Shadow Party is hard to discern. Some commentators have questioned whether Kerry’s new handlers necessarily have the Massachusetts senator’s best interests at heart. Given the Shadow Party’s evident commitment to running Hillary for president – quite possibly in 2008 – a Kerry administration would only get in the way. Certainly, the Shadow Party has a wide range of options at its disposal for subtly undermining Kerry, even while pretending to help him. Only time will tell whether it chooses to exercise those options.
Part 2d Notes
[1] Crowley, “Shadow Warriors ”http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/nationalinterest/9372/index.html
[2] John Aloysius Farrell, “The President’s Get-It-Done Guy,” October 15, 1995, 14
[3] Micah Morrison, “Who is Harold Ickes?” Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2000
[4] Judy Bachrach, Seduced and Abandoned, Vanity Fair, September 1997
[5] John Aloysius Farrell, “The President’s Get-It-Done Guy,” October 15, 1995, 14
[6] David Brock, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 406-07
[7] Marc Humbert, “Ickes, a Tenacious Operative, Mrs. Clinton’s `Oak Tree’ in New York,” The Associated Press State & Local Wire, June 17, 1999
[8] “Unsustainable Secrecy,” The Washington Post, February 5, 2004, A20
[9] “Unsustainable Secrecy,” The Washington Post, February 5, 2004, A20
[10] Crowley, “Shadow Warriors ”http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/nationalinterest/9372/index.html
[11] Brian C. Mooney, “Kerry’s Ex-Manager Spurs Anti-Bush Effort,” The Boston Globe, 26 July 2004, A1
[12] John Mercurio and John Bresnahan, “Who’s Who at the Party Campaign Committees?” Roll Call, 13 September 1999
[13] William Safire, “Never Love a Stranger,” The New York Times, 12 November 2003
[14] Alexander Bolton, “Parties’ Loss is 527s Gain,” The Hill, July 27, 2004
[15] The Prowler, “The Collusion is Complete,” The American Spectator, 9 April 2004
The Shadow Party: Part III
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11035
Monday, October 11, 2004
At the Shadow Party’s "Take Back America" conference in Washington on June 3, 2004, following a glowing introduction from Hillary Clinton, George Soros stepped to the podium to explain to the audience that when it came to electoral politics in the USA, he was a newcomer. Only his outrage over Bush’s invasion of Iraq had stirred him to get involved in the partisan struggle. "[I]t is the first time that I feel that I need to stand up and do something, and become really engaged in the electoral process in this country," Soros said.[1]
This was far from the truth, however. Whatever reasons Soros had for entering party politics, they clearly pre-dated the war in Iraq or George W. Bush. Soros has been neck-deep in Democrat intrigue since at least 1994. Three weeks after Republicans swept Congress in the mid-term elections that year, Soros dtated in a November 30, 1994 speech that he wished to "do something about… the distortion of our electoral process by the excessive use of TV advertising." [2] Evidently, Soros realized that the most efficient way to control political advertising would be to control the flow of "soft money" earmarked for the political parties. Within eight months of Soros’ speech, Democrat Senator Russ Feingold obligingly rose on the Senate floor to denounce soft money abuses, thus setting in motion the political steamroller that would ultimately flatten all opposition and give us the McCain-Feingold Act of March 27, 2002.
Few Americans realize that it was George Soros who bankrolled the seven-year lobbying effort without which McCain-Feingold never would have seen the light of day. As a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, "Combine… the $1.7 million that Mr. Soros gave the Center for Public Integrity, the $1.3 million he gave Public Campaign, the $300,000 to Democracy 21, the $625,000 to Common Cause, and the $275,000 to Public Citizen – and you can be forgiven for believing Mr. Soros got campaign finance passed all by himself." [3]
But to what end did he do it? Why did Soros spend seven years and millions of dollars pushing a soft-money ban through Congress, only to turn around in 2004 and mount an equally ambitious effort – through the Shadow Party – to circumvent that ban and bankroll the John Kerry campaign? Many critics have accused Soros of "hypocrisy" for playing both sides of the McCain-Feingold fence. However, his actions may not be as contradictory as they appear.
By pushing McCain-Feingold through Congress, Soros cut off the Democrats’ soft-money supply. By forming the Shadow Party, Soros offered the Democrats an alternate money spigot – one which he personally controlled. As a result the Democrats are heavily – perhaps even irretrievably – dependent on Soros. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that McCain-Feingold, from its very inception, was a Soros power play to gain control of the Democratic Party.
With Ted Kennedy well into his 72nd year, and the Kennedy clan in overall decline, no dynasty of comparable wealth or ambition has stepped forward to lead the Democrats. George Soros may well aspire to fill the vacuum that the Kennedys have left. At age 74, his thoughts have turned more and more to dynasty building. Soros has five children; three by his first wife Annaliese and two by his second wife Susan. Since September, Soros has effectively placed his two eldest sons in charge of his financial empire. Robert Daniel Soros, 41, and Jonathan T. Soros, 34, now handle the day-to-day investment decisions of Soros Fund Management, as chief investment officer and deputy chairman respectively.[4]
Robert and Jonathan have also followed their father into politics. As mentioned in Part 2, Jonathan Soros is a MoveOn.org activist, a financial sponsor of MoveOn, and a contributor to other Shadow Party groups as well. His brother Robert is focusing, for the time being, on state-level politics. Robert and his wife Melissa gave $100,000 to the New York State Democratic Campaign Committee in 2004. "I live in New York and understand the importance of state government," Robert explained to the New York Post.[5]
If indeed the Soros family means to rule the Democrats – perhaps even more comprehensively than the Kennedys once did – they have found a power base for their ambitions among the party’s left wing. A cover story for The New York Times Magazine of July 25, 2004 – on the very eve of the Democratic Convention’s opening ceremonies in Boston – provided a glimpse of the tidal force now sweeping the destinies of Democrats and their Party in its wake. Written by Matt Bai, the story bore the title, "Wiring the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy," but it might just as well have been called, "The Democratic Party is Dead – Long Live the Shadow Party!" For that was the clear message its contents conveyed.[6] "As Democrats converge on Boston this week to hold their party convention and formally anoint Kerry as their nominee, all the talk will be of resurgence, unity and a new sense of purpose. Don't be fooled," Bai warned. According to Bai, the unspoken question haunting the convention would be, "in the era after big government," what "is the party’s reason for being?"
With the Democratic Convention’s opening ceremonies only 24 hours away, Bai urged readers to, "be sure to take a long, last look. The Democratic Party of the machine age, so long dominant in American politics, could be holding its own Irish wake near Boston's North End. The power is already shifting -- not just within the party, but away from it altogether."
The independence of Soros’ Shadow Party has proved a double-edged sword for Democrats. On the one hand, it allows Democrats to circumvent the law, by delegating what amounts to a new form of "soft-money" fundraising to an outside agency. On the other hand, Democrats today have become so dependent on that outside agency that some Shadow Party operatives have begun to question whether they even need the Democrats any longer. Why not break off and form their own party, they ask? In his article, Bai regaled his readers with a dismal recitation of figures documenting the collapse of Democrat power. He wrote:
"Since the 1950's, when nearly half of all voters called themselves Democrats, nearly one in six Democrats has left the party, according to a University of Michigan study, while Republican membership has held close to steady.… [T]he Democratic Party has seen an exodus of the white working-class men who were once their most reliable voters. In the suburbs… the percentage of white men supporting the party has plummeted 16 points just since Bill Clinton left office. …[Democrats] have spent most of the last decade in the minority, and during that time they have never enjoyed a majority of more than a single vote.”
Bai summed up the damage thus: "… Thirty years ago, Democrats could claim outright control of 37 state legislatures, compared with only 4 for Republicans; Democrats now control just 17." Democratic strategist Pat Caddell, a participant in the Soros-Huffington Shadow Convention, agreed: "The deterioration is steady, and it's spreading like a cancer. So much for thinking that if we could just go back to the glorious 90's, the party would be fine. The 90's were our worst decade since the 1920's."
What To Do?
According to Bai, the last best hope for "progressive" politics in America lies in what he calls the "vast leftwing conspiracy," by which he means the network of independent, non-profit issue groups controlled by Soros, Ickes and their allies: the Shadow Party. "This is like post-Yugoslavia. We used to have a strongman called the party. After McCain-Feingold, we dissolved the power of Tito," exulted Soros supporter Andrew Stern, a former SDS and anti-Vietnam war activist, now president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which has spent $65 million to beat Bush. Shadow Party co-founder Harold Ickes extolled the hip, youthful spirit that MoveOn.org’s online activists have brought to political organizing on the left. He told Bai:
" ‘When you go out and talk to them, people are much more interested in something like MoveOn.org than in the Democratic Party. It has cachet. There is no cachet in the Democratic Party. MoveOn raised a million dollars for a bunch of Texas state senators, man. Plus their bake sale. If they continue with their cachet and really interest people and focus their people on candidates -- boy, that's a lot of leverage. No party can do that. And what the political ramifications of that are –‘Ickes's voice trailed off. He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ "
Bai’s article shined a spotlight on what he called "next-generation liberals" – rising Young Turks of the Shadow Party like Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Rappaport and Jonathan Soros. According to Bai, these young leftists "have come to view progressive politics as a market in need of entrepreneurship, served poorly by a giant monopoly – the Democratic Party." The solution? "People like Andy Rappaport and Jonathan Soros might succeed in revitalizing progressive politics -- while at the same time destroying what we now call the Democratic Party."
SEIU leader Andrew Stern agrees with Bai. Despite the $64 million he has poured into the Kerry campaign, Stern seems oddly apathetic toward the party Kerry represents. "There is an incredible opportunity to have the infrastructure for a third party," he told Bai. "Anyone who could mobilize these groups would have the Democratic Party infrastructure, and they wouldn't need the Democratic Party." It would be a radical dream come true.
What exactly would a third party – guided by George Soros and his radicals – envision and seek to accomplish that today’s Democrats cannot or will not do? The possibilities are endless. In the past, Bai explains, contributions to the Democratic Party simply vanished down a black hole, to be spent as Party leaders saw fit. The 527s allow "ideological donors" such as George and Jonathan Soros to apply their money to specific projects which enable them to shape Party goals and strategy – or even to by-pass the Party altogether.
New Democrat Network president Simon Rosenberg told Bai that independent 527s would be free to attack ideological foes with a forcefulness mainstream Democrats would never dare display. Insurgents such as Rosenberg are looking for a "more defiant kind of politics," which confronts head-on the "sharp ideological divide between them and the Rush Limbaugh right," notes Bai.
In the final analysis, the movers and shakers of the Shadow Party may or may not decide to break off and go it alone, forming a Progressive Party to the left of the Democrats as Henry Wallace and the Communist Party did in 1948 (Wallace lost and the Progressive Party disintegrated after a pitiful showing in the 1952 elections). The defiant statements to Matt Bai, on the other hand, might be merely shots across the bow – warnings to Democrat moderates to take the Shadow Party and its leftwing agenda seriously, or risk a devastating party split. Either way, the Shadow Party emerges a winner and is here to stay. Barring a change in the campaign funding laws, its power will continue to grow, whether as part of a coalition that includes the Democratic Party or not. Already, Shadow Party control of Democrat fundraising has given Soros and his minions influence over the party’s platform , strategy and candidate. Should John Kerry take the White House in this election, the Shadow Party will have a throne in the West Wing.
Part 3 Notes:
[1] Comments by George Soros, Take Back America Conference, Federal News Service, Washington DC, 3 June 2004
[2] Speech by George Soros, Alexander Ming Fisher Lecture Series, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, 30 November 1994
[3] “The Soros Agenda: Free Speech for Billionaires Only,” Wall Street Journal, 30 December 2003; In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook indicated that the $275,000 Soros gave to Public Citizen was earmarked for projects other than campaign finance reform (Joan Claybrook, “Clarifying Soros Funding,” Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2004) http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004498
[4] Riva D. Atlas, “2 Soros Sons Get More Control of the Business,” The New York Times, 6 October 2004, C1
[5] Fredric U. Dicker, “Soros Jr.’s Splurge – Tycoon’s Son Spends Liberally on N.Y. Dems,” New York Post, 10 August 2004, 6
[6] Matt Bai, “Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy,” The New York Times Magazine, 25 July 2004, 30
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