The Democrats’ Conspiracy Woes ( Great read )

Six weeks before the 2004 election, The New York Times ran a puff-piece profile of George Soros that, even by Times standards, was jaw-dropping.

For the privilege of sharing Dover sole at the great man’s Southampton estate, Katharine Seeyle brought the following news to her readers:

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has given $18 million to Democratic advocacy groups to defeat President Bush, is preparing to spend millions more because he fears that Senator John Kerry might lose...

“America has gone off the rails,” he lamented in the interview over a lunch of Dover sole at his home in suburban New York. “I’ve been accused of messianic fantasies, and I’ll own up to them...”

In the last 25 years, Mr. Soros, 74, has given hundreds of millions dollars to philanthropies overseas . . .

Such ambitions have given Mr. Soros the status of a whipping boy for Republicans...

Despite his contributions, Mr. Soros said he thought money in politics should be reduced... [He] said he saw no contradiction between that and the millions he is giving this year.

As Byron York documents in The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy¸ the 2004 election cycle witnessed one of the most remarkable developments of recent political history—the near-complete dependence of a major political party on a single wealthy donor. By most estimates, Soros spent $27 million trying to elect John Kerry. Not since Mark Hanna has a single individual had such an enormous behind-the-scenes role in a Presidential campaign. Yet the press barely blinked an eye.

Soros’ major channels of influence were MoveOn and America Coming Together—the first, a “virtual community” that had sputtered along for years, the second, a brainchild of more traditional Democratic constituencies.

MoveOn was an e-mail chain formed during the Clinton impeachment (the original title was “Censure and Move On”). The founders, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, were a San Francisco couple who had built and sold an Internet company for $24 million. Sitting in a Berkeley cafe one afternoon stewing over the Clinton embarrassment, they suddenly discovered everybody in the place agreed with them. Voila! A political “flash mob” was born. Post-9/11 the organization picked up Eli Pariser, a prolific peace activist, and morphed into an anti-war group. Still, MoveOn made few ripples until Soros invested.

America Coming Together had more traditional roots, founded at a Washington dinner party by Ellen Malcolm of Emily’s List, Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, Harold Ickes, the Clinton White House aide, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, and Andrew Stern and Gina Glanz of the Service Employees Union. The idea was to extend union-style get-out-the-vote techniques to the population at large. In 2003, the group visited Southampton and came away with $10 million (eventually $25 million). Soros also brought in Peter Lewis ($23 million), Stephen Bing ($12 million), Linda Pritzker ($5 million), and together ACT and MoveOn ended up spending $400 million.

York can’t tell us much about Soros—the grand philanthropist wouldn’t grant an interview. But he does doggedly pursue everyone else and manages to interview many people who knew he wasn’t going to treat them kindly. All that emerges about Soros is that he is amazingly inarticulate—punctuating bland observations with “um, um, um, um”—and that his understanding of America revolves around a single metaphor concerning an Internet company whose stock is about to tank. Making billions on the international currency markets obviously requires a very narrow focus.

The only other significant snapshot comes from a 1994 New Republic profile by Michael Lewis, who had accompanied Soros to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. After watching him meet with the presidents of Moldova and Bulgaria in one day, Lewis commented on how much influence the philanthropist seemed to have. Soros suggested Lewis “write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.”

As Katharine Seeyle put it, “Now he has set his sights on the United States.”

Soros’ methods were extraordinarily cynical—in fact York is much too kind, refraining from criticism but continually laying out contradictions as if any reasonable individual could see them. Soros’ strategy was to sweep everybody else’s money off the table to make room for his own. First, he spent years supporting the McCain-Feingold campaign reform to prevent “the rich” from contributing soft money to political parties. Next, the reformers slipped in the inevitable loophole (Section 527) that allowed wealthy individuals to give unlimited amounts to “educational organizations.” The “527s” immediately became parties’ new center of gravity—at least for those already highly dependent on wealthy contributors.

Conservatives were nearly hypnotized. Everyone in politics knows the Democrats have become the party of the rich. Of people who gave $200 or less in 2002, 64 percent gave to Republicans. Among those who gave $1 million or more, 92 percent gave to Democrats.

Weren’t the Democrats just slitting their own throats? Wouldn’t they have to compete for the nickel-and-dime contributions of ordinary Americans, where Republicans flatten them? What conservatives didn’t anticipate—obvious in retrospect—is that while liberal 527s flagrantly flouted the law, the Election Commission would punt the whole issue until after the election.

As a result, Democrats and Soros organizations rented adjacent hotel suites, played musical chairs with leaders, ran interlocking advertisements—but never “coordinated” campaigns. Republicans finally played catch-up (the Swift-Boat Veterans being the most prominent example) but Democratic 527s raised more than twice as much as their Republican counterparts—80 percent from donations of more than $250,000.

Yet in the end it didn’t work—and that’s the real story. The 2004 campaign is an amazing tale of the resilient intelligence of the American people. Despite all the millions poured into the campaign by Hollywood and New York uber-elites, no major shifts in public opinion took place.

Michael Moore turned popular entertainment into a campaign tool—ensuring that every Presidential campaign will now have its Fahrenheit 9/11. The press celebrated Moore’s propaganda as a nationwide success—although audiences were mostly in New York, Boston, California, and college towns. Ditto for Outfoxed, the limp-limbed “exposé” of the Fox Network, or Al Franken’s Air America. It turns out money can’t buy everything. As York concludes, “It’s a big country. You can stir excitement among 15 million people and still not reach outside your core constituency.”

In fact, the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy’s next battle will be within the Democratic Party. Still ravenous for influence, it is turning on the old guard. “Now it’s our party,” e-mailed MoveOn’s Eli Pariser to members after the election. “We bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.” When 20 Democratic Congressmen recently supported bankruptcy reform, MoveOn ran radio ads targeting them for primary challenges.

As York illustrates, the difference between the new-left activists and their conservative counterparts is that THE LIBERALS have no ideas to back their insurgency and remain tone-deaf to the attitudes of most Americans. Instead of building constituencies, they try to impose them. So far no one is buying. Still, if they shout loud enough, they may never know they’re in the minority.

If these guys ever got their acts together, they could be scary. I don't think that is going to happen, though. They are just moving on in the wrong direction.

3 posted on 05/18/2005 4:11:54 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)

Everyone in politics knows the Democrats have become the party of the rich. Of people who gave $200 or less in 2002, 64 percent gave to Republicans. Among those who gave $1 million or more, 92 percent gave to Democrats.

... Everyone in politics knows the Democrats have become the party of the rich. Of people who gave $200 or less in 2002, 64 percent gave to Republicans. Among those who gave $1 million or more, 92 percent gave to Democrats.
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This is what I have been saying to people here in WV, who still fear and mistrust Herbert Hoover! Good article on the strategy Soros used.

>>>"Sitting in a Berkley cafe they suddenly discovered everyone agreed with them">>>>>

What did they expect? Conservative dissent? Berkley is the center of the universe, ya know.

(Wouldn't you have loved to have been there?);9)

As Katharine Seeyle put it, “Now he has set his sights on the United States.”

Soros embodies everything that liberal Democrats say that they hate. He makes his living by trashing economies and investing in anticipation of the massive downturn. Apparently he does not think very much of we great unwashed and therefore we must be told what to do (or prepare for the gulags).

Amazing that such a disturbed individual with such masses of money is too insecure to get the therapy that he so desperately needs.

Instead, he turns his personal unhappiness into a mission to ensure that his unhappiness is less than anyone else's.

7 posted on 05/18/2005 4:41:24 AM PDT by saveliberty (Liberal= in need of therapy, but would rather ruin lives of those less fortunate to feel good)

very true... that only 2 million less people voted for the President in november is testament to that.

As York concludes, “It’s a big country. You can stir excitement among 15 million people and still not reach outside your core constituency.”

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This is aka: The Drop In The Bucket Theory. We experienced it most often at trade shows, where you would see someone writing orders like crazy for products you not only had never seen, you couldn't find it when you actually went looking for it in the marketplace. Yet, the manufacturers were selling millions of items.

Rich as they are, the trustafarians haven't yet been able to purchase America.

Is FR a "527"? I remember during the election that there were calls to shut down "political websites" and FR was mentioned.

Average Joe is a Republican

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