When people talk about the progressive “netroots” the first thing that comes to mind are the plethora of local and national blogs that have grown to challenge the legacy media’s diminishing control over the political narrative. But in fact it is much, much more than that, and one of the most exciting and important netroots developments of the past few years has been the growth of ActBlue, an online fundraising clearinghouse that is beginning to enable the financial power of the people to challenge the entrenched power of corporate America.
The US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that money is speech, and in that context, the special interests of the ultra-wealthy have long spoken louder than the interests of the average Joe, but by democratizing fundraising, introducing efficiencies and creating new grassroots opportunities that flip the traditional top-down model on its head, ActBlue has begun a process that could eventually free candidates from the financial stranglehold of corporate sponsors. The fact is that money, and the media it buys, be it television, radio, direct mail or other, is the primary means by which candidates communicate their message to voters; no realistically achievable amount of doorbelling or coffee klatches can win a congressional district on its own, and no candidate can be expected to compete for votes without securing at least a somewhat level financial playing field. ActBlue provides a tool that doesn’t just enable progressive campaigns to tap into the aggregate resources of the public at large, it enables the people to organize ourselves in support of the candidates we prefer, as opposed to merely those candidates the political establishment would prefer we be limited to choose from.
During the 2006 cycle ActBlue showed its potential, enabling the national progressive netroots community to funnel its collective resources into a handful of high-profile local races… but that is nothing compared to what we have seen so far heading into 2008. In 2005 candidates raised $1,684,797 on ActBlue from 23,816 individual contributors. In 2007 those totals leaped tenfold to $16,872,127 from 169,287 contributors. And were only just now entering the heart of the fundraising season.
Locally, the impact and influence of this populist tool can be easily discerned from ActBlue’s list of Top Ten Candidates in 2007:
| Candidate | Race | Contributors | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Edwards | President | 53,433 | ||
| Tim Johnson | SD-Sen | 5583 | ||
| Donna Edwards | MD-04 | 5582 | ||
| Darcy Burner | WA-08 | 4189 | ||
| Dennis Kucinich | President | 3126 | ||
| Rick Noriega | TX-Sen | 3081 | ||
| Eric Massa | NY-29 | 2577 | ||
| Mark Pera | IL-03 | 2290 | ||
| Charlie Brown | CA-04 | 2067 | ||
| Joseph Sestak Jr | PA-07 | 2067 |
While the roughly $140,000 Darcy Burner raised via ActBlue in 2007 accounts for only 16% of her $858,125 total, it played a crucial role in her achieving an early TKO of her primary opponent, and has provided the difference between trailing incumbent Dave Reichert in cash-on-hand versus her surprising lead. Sure, it would take double-max contributions from only 30 Republican fat cats for Reichert to counter the efforts of Burner’s 4189 ActBlue donors, but there are many, many more of us than there are of them, and that is what really puts the fear of God into the political establishment on both sides of the aisle. Burner raised less than $32 per ActBlue donor (compared to an ActBlue average of $119 per contribution in 2007,) tapping into a much broader pool of potential donors than heretofore possible in local races, and virtually eliminating the financial advantages of incumbency: nearly 90% of Burner’s 2007 money came from individual contributions, while about half of Reichert’s money came from PACs and committee transfers.
It would be an overstatement to claim that ActBlue has changed the nature of political fundraising, but it sure does appear to be in the process. (At least for the Democrats. Republicans can’t seem to put together a comparable service.) And candidates like Burner sure do appear to be at the forefront of these changes.
The P.I. had a nice article about the power of incumbency in the U.S. House of Representatives. It noted that it is harder to unseat a member of the House than it is a Senator. The incumbent has name recognition, can insert themselves into the news media frequently, and have continuous fund-raising ability. In contrast, a house challenger get’s little notice from the news media.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ess22.html
In the end, the incumbent can play the same card Reichart played in 2006: right before the election, run TV ads portraying the challenger as inexperienced and implying that they are a “dangerous choice”, uging voters to stick with the “safe choice” (the name you already know – the incumbent). Sadly, those types of ads seem to me to be the equivilent of “Vote for me – I haven’t been indicted (yet)”.
That’s what makes the Burner’s achievement in 2006 so impressive. She came awfully close to knocking off what should have been a shoe-in for the Republicans, forcing them to feed a lot of money and effort into a race which should have been a safe seat for them. Of course, the anti-Republican backlash in 2006 helped a lot.
But this time around (2008) nobody’s going to shrug off Burner as a political novice with no chance of winning, especially with the district tilting blue. The Republicans are going to have a real fight on their hands, and I’m sure they already know it. Expect Reichart to begin a “press release” assault over the next few months with him “co-sponsoring” one bill or another, just to get his name in the papers. But with the Republican party no longer being in charge in Congress, it won’t be so easy for him – all those bills will end up dead in committee.
Puddy and Piper support the use of torture by President Bush. Puddy and Piper are dupes and hate America. This guest column at the Seattle Times makes the point well.
“Democracies don’t torture.”
Some excerpts:
“The practice of torture by the U.S. government, resulting in numerous deaths and the anguish and suffering of many more, has been extensively documented. Several civic organizations, including the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, in which I participate, are crying out, “This is not America! Torture goes against our fundamental moral beliefs.””
“There have been modest attempts in Congress and the courts to limit the practice of torture.
When it comes to the American public, however, the jury is still out. Are Americans so far down the road of mass-manipulated opinion formation that we are no longer able to see through the tricks of language employed by the administration and its lawyers? Will mere repetition of the mantra of necessity continue to seduce us into silence?”
Yesterday Puddy and Piper’s President was talking about honoring Dr. King by practicing compassion, etc It’s not hard to guess what Dr. King would be saying about George W. Bush these days.
The Democrats suck in may many ways. they are corporate owned just like the Republicans. To hear Hillary last night call for universal health care was gag inducing. She, like Bush and the new Medicare benefits he passed, will design a program that’s first priority will be benefiting her corporate masters. Ditto for Obama.
Now the Democrats want to give the telecoms immunity for violating the law and spying on us. (yes, puddy and piper, I know: if I don’t have anything to hide I shouldn’t mind) The one and only thing the Democrats have going for them is they are not Republicans! Yet every bad thing that Bush has done he has been enabled by the Democrats. the Iraq war. The Patriot Act. the Military Commissions act, etc
off topic:
Sorry- the bush adminstration pushed, lied, cherry-picked intelligence, used 9/11 and bullied using the Presidency to get us in Iraq – Democrats would have never done that. Yes – some democrats did not stand up enough (Hilary and Edwards included) – but thye would not have pushed this as President, period.
Please – enough of the Naderite language. Nader kept telling us there was no difference between bush and Gore – both were the coporate candidates. 8 years of Gore instead of Bush:
No Iraq war
A coherent energy policy not driven by big oil
and EPA, Interior, FDA and other dpts. that actually pay attention to science instead of politics
@5 read @4 completely, think for a minute, and then start to type.
@5 here is a story about the Bushies violating the law. Let’s see what the spineless Democrats do about it. Oh they’ll holler a bit but then they’ll fold. And that that is how they enable the Bushies’ crimes.
“President Bush’s White House early on scrapped a custom archiving system that the Clinton administration had adopted under a federal court order. From 2001 to 2003, the Bush White House also recorded over computer backup tapes that provided a last line of defense for preserving e-mails, even though a similar practice landed the Clinton administration in legal trouble.
As a result, several years’ worth of electronic communication may have been lost, potentially including e-mails documenting administration actions in the run-up to the Iraq war.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....02070.html
@5 And how is it that the Democrats can continue to enable Bush’s crimes and corruption? Because no matter how spineless they are in the face of all this illegal behavior by the Bushies, they still have the support of people like you. You don’t hold them to a higher standard so they don’t have to achieve a higher standard. I loathe the Republicans, but I see damn little to admire about the Democrat Party as a whole.
Puddy. You claim to be black; this is for you: you should move to South Carolina, a truly Republican State where they just love black people like you.
“On Saturday, in a cold, steady rain, voters turned out for the Republican primary. Nearly all of them — close to 100 percent — were white. At a dinner here Saturday night, I was reminded ruefully by one of the guests: “It used to be the Democratic Party that was the white man’s party in South Carolina. Now it’s the G.O.P. The black people vote next Saturday.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01.....ef=opinion
This is for you Piper Scott:
torture
November 5, 2007, 5:48 pm
Generals Agree: Waterboarding Is Torture
By The Editorial Board
President Bush’s nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, has had trouble deciding that waterboarding — a method of interrogation that is designed to make a prisoner believe that he is drowning — is torture.
It isn’t a trick question.
Two retired generals and two retired admirals have written a letter (pdf) to Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stating that “waterboarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances. To suggest otherwise — or even to give credence to such a suggestion — represents both an affront to the law and to the core values of our nation.”
And this part is for you @5 correctnotright
“The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Mr. Mukasey’s nomination tomorrow. With Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, declaring their intention to vote for Mr. Mukasey, the nomination is expected to be sent to the full Senate with an favorable committee report.”
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes......sq=torture
Republican values Giulianni style:
In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: “GOTCHA!”
That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.
They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci’s decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for The Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.
Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.
“Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower,” the mayor told reporters at the time. “Maybe he’s dishonest enough to lie about police officers.”
Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. “It really damaged me,” said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. “I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01.....ref=slogin
@11 More from that story and there is much more than this.
“At 7 p.m. on May 17, Mr. Giuliani’s press secretary dialed reporters and served up a hotter story: A former youth commissioner under Mr. Dinkins, Richard L. Murphy, had ladled millions of dollars to supporters of the former mayor. And someone had destroyed Department of Youth Services records and hard drives and stolen computers in an apparent effort to obscure what had happened to that money.
“My immediate goal is to get rid of the stealing, to get rid of the corruption,” Mr. Giuliani told The Daily News.
None of it was true. In 1995, the Department of Investigation found no politically motivated contracts and no theft by senior officials. But Mr. Murphy’s professional life was wrecked.”
Mr. Giuliani’s war with the nonprofit group Housing Works was more operatic. Housing Works runs nationally respected programs for the homeless, the mentally ill and people who are infected with H.I.V. But it weds that service to a 1960s straight-from-the-rice-paddies guerrilla ethos.
The group’s members marched on City Hall, staged sit-ins, and delighted in singling out city officials for opprobrium. Mr. Giuliani, who considered doing away with the Division of AIDS Services, became their favorite mayor in effigy.
Mr. Giuliani responded in kind.His police commanders stationed snipers atop City Hall and sent helicopters whirling overhead when 100 or so unarmed Housing Works protesters marched nearby in 1998. A year earlier, his officials systematically killed $6 million worth of contracts with the group, saying it had mismanaged funds.
Housing Works sued the city and discovered that officials had rescored a federal evaluation form to ensure that the group lost a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Martin Oesterreich, the city’s homeless commissioner, denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that his job might have been forfeited if Housing Works had obtained that contract
Republicans win elections for two reasons.
1) They are ruthless amoral knife fighters.
20 The Democrats are spineless.
Nice post but where’e your ActBlue link on your blog site.
Darcy and other’s still need help this year.
# Off topic but this is important says:
Lucy that’s four names today!
Correctnotright: Looks like Lucy agrees with me. See post #6. Memorize it. Inculcate it.
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