While Republicans contemplate how to improve their party’s political performance at the Republican National Committee (RNC) winter meeting, which opens today, Democrats are already taking politics to a new level, creating parallel organizations to advocate for President Barack Obama’s agenda and using their political clout to rearrange private business relationships to their liking. American politics has never seen anything like it.
Politico reports today that major donors–including billionaire George Soros (above), bailout beneficiary Citi and others–were approached by Obama campaign veterans to donate millions to Organizng for America, the president’s new 501(c)4 non-profit advocacy group. Under the tax code, 501(c)4 groups do not have to disclose their donors–a provision, ironically, that President Obama spent years campaigning against.
They justify the contradiction by insisting their money is for “good government,”, while money raised by conservative groups is “poision,” according to Obama bundler Alan Solow, quoted by Politico. Still, the organizers maintain the pretense of involving small donors rather than highlighting the large checks that fund existing groups such as Media Matters and Center for American Progress to the tune of $60 million per year, combined.
In addition to Organizing for America, the left has already welcomed another new left-wing organization, the Democracy Initiative, which brings several activist and lobby groups together to agitate for their policy priorities. The Democracy Initiative builds on previous efforts, such as Health Care for America now, which worked with the Obama administration in 2009 to organize demonstrations in support of his heath reform law.
Mother Jones reported earlier this month that the idea for the Democracy Initiative had grown out of conversations between Greenpeace’s Phil Radford, the NAACP’s Ben Jealous, and the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune. They agreed to campaign for “three goals: getting big money out of politics, expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, and rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation.”
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