I have been saying that the Democrats are a gaggle of special interest groups with a list of issues. Mickey Kaus points out that the new financing arrangement reinforces that.
The Name of the Democrats (hint--it's not "Democrats"): As Jeanne Cummings' outstanding, worth-digging-up 12/2 Wall Street Journal piece makes clear, the new Democratic Party, for presidential purposes, isn't the Democratic Party. It's a just-formed group called America Votes, which plans to coordinate the various "independent" committees (many of the so-called "527" non-profits) that can still, after McCain-Feingold, gather unlimited "soft" donations and spend them on campaign ads and voter mobilization. ... If the old Democratic Party version of the Democratic Party was too beholden to liberal interest groups, the new America Votes version of the Democratic Party is liberal interest groups--"environmentalists, abortion-rights advocates, the NAACP, trial lawyers and others," reports Cummings. .. Some caveats: 1) It remains to be seen if such independent expenditures--which by law cannot be "coordinated" with a candidate's official campaign--will actually work. What if Howard Dean wants to move to the center and America Votes wants to bash Bush from the left? Campaigns work best if everyone is repeating the same "message," no? .... 2) If Dean is the candidate, he should have plenty of his own money, thanks to the Internet. Maybe American Votes won't really take over the Democratic Party's function until the non-presidential year of 2006, when its "soft" fundraising could overwhelm than the actual hard-money fundraising of the individual candidates. .... 3) Unlike Dick Morris, I don't lament this latest development as "subverting the purpose" of the McCain-Feingold legislation. Everyone knew this would happen when McCain-Feingold was being debated. America Votes and its affiliates are simply exploiting the obvious and constitutionally necessary avenue of political expression McCain-Feingold left open. It's a free country. If people want to pool their money and run ads they should be able to pool their money and run ads. ... 4) If you're worried about curbing the influence of money and restoring the interest-group-taming role of the now-pathetically-passe party, isn't the solution to increase the sums actual, official, parties can raise and use in coordinated campaigns? Then, if big uncoordinated campaigns, like the ones run by America Votes, turn out to be counterproductive, a new campaign finance ecology may emerge, in which "soft money" isn't all that important and parties are important. ... (Or maybe there's nothing wrong with a more fluid polity in which Harold Ickes' "independent" group is powerful one year and Donna Brazile's group is powerful the next year and Al From is hot the year after that. "Big money" would talk in such a system, but maybe not for long.) ...
Update: Variety's Gabriel Snyder suggests that America Votes and its component groups haven't attained first-mover dominance just yet.
Andy Spahn, who advises David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg on political affairs, said while many in Hollywood oppose Bush, these new organizations had not proven themselves yet. Complications for donors ``It's certainly more complicated for donors who understand giving to a presidential nominee or a national party committee,'' he said. ``It's one thing to give $100,000 to be in the room with Bill Clinton. It's another thing to give $100,000 to be in the room with a 527 committee.''
One solution to this marketing problem is pretty obvious: Get Bill Clinton to run the 527 committee! In fact, Snyder buries his lede in Graf 6, noting
At a similar pitch session in New York, held at the home of billionaire financier George Soros, who has pledged $10 million to the effort, Clinton himself made an appearance, a source said.
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