Air America was formed specifically to be a counter to what many Liberals view as an overwhelming bias towards the Right in talk radio. So far, AA has not only failed in its core mission to reach listeners and get the Liberal word out, but they’ve also embroiled themselves in a scandal that will probably pound the final nail in their coffin.
America Coming Together was supposed to be a way for the Left to invigorate itself, soliciting donations and encouraging voter turnout to defeat the Republicans at the last election. The organization performed brilliantly and met all of the stated goals beyond expectations. Voter turnout was the greatest this country has ever seen in raw numbers. The only problem is that the Democrats lost anyway. ACT is currently in the initial stages of shutdown, and it appears that no one will try and save the organization.
Now the Liberals are trying a new strategy. A group calling itself The Democracy Alliance has recently been formed, and they’ve garnered the support of several rich Liberal donors. According to the news item linked to above, it would appear that DA is going to have at least $80 million donated to it over the next 5 years. The goal of the organization is to increase that to $200 million, which is exactly the same amount that ACT managed to raise during the last Presidential campaign.
The reason they need all this money, the organizers say, is because the Republicans have more money than the Democrats. They specifically need to set up Liberal think tanks in order to counter the influence that Republicans have over public policy through their own Right-leaning think tanks. Sort of closing the think tank gap, as it were.
To be frank, I have no idea how much money is spent to promote either ideology. I would have to say, however, that it seems that the Democrats would have an advantage over the Republicans. For one thing, the Democrats always take pride in their grass roots initiatives, such as the Million Mom March.
(It’s true that MMM failed, like so many efforts by the Democrats to get people fired up about their ideas. But it’s a good example of how they seem to be able to whip up huge demonstrations and public displays of support with very little trouble or preparation time.)
Media coverage is also consistently favorable towards Liberal ideals while any idea that smacks of the Right is treated with mild hostility at the very least. Something tells me that no one bothered to ask how much it would cost if America enjoyed a truly non-partisan press and the Dems had to pay a PR firm for their positive exposure.
In this article at NRO, Byron York discusses the role that America Coming Together played in the last Presidential election. York says that the main idea behind the formation of ACT was a perception by the Democrats that they needed to get more money in order to counter Republican advantages. All they had to do was spend more, get the message out, and the voters will come to the polls and pull the handle for their side. Except, of course, that it didn’t happen that way.
The Left has been doing the same thing for the past 30 years. The same old talking points, the same old causes, the same strategies for winning elections. They don’t seem to realize that the world has moved on. They’re losing elections and becoming ever more insignificant, not because there’s a problem with their skills at organizing, but because the majority of Americans are rejecting their message. Forming new groups so they can solicit more donations from rich Liberals, and endlessly repackaging the same ideology, won’t change that.
I wonder how things are going to turn out for DA. Either it will fold in a year or two like ACT just did, or else the wealthy donors will keep it going for awhile after they come to the realization that changing the acronym won’t make a difference.
“The Left has been doing the same thing for the past 30 years.” In that time they won three presidential elections, but seem not have learned any lessons from those successes. Carter was an evangelical Christian from the South who ran against Washington corruption. Clinton ran as a New Democrat promising to end welfare as we know it and a middle class tax cut. When they try to find the center, the sometimes hit the target. The problem is, they don’t like the center and it doesn’t like them, at least it doesn’t like undiluted Blue State liberalism. We’ll see if Hillary can move toward the center sufficiently to carry the day.
In the meantime, I hope the donors who support these causes bleed themselves financially until there is nothing left.
I think the fundamental problem here is the Left’s inherently elitist, centralized, top down view of the way that America works. They believe that the majority of Americans are sheep, with no insight or opinions of value whose only role in politics is to herded by one elite group or the other. Leftist believe that the problem now is that the Rightwing elite has to much influence over the mindless masses so the Left needs to counteract that with Air America, think-tanks and the like.
Wholly, missing from any Leftist discourse is the least hint that they are actually listening to ordinary people to find out what they think. Instead, they are obsessed with their perceived need to explain to ordinary people how brilliant Leftist are. They think the problem is that most people just don’t understand and, like a visitor to a foreign land, if they just shout loudly enough everyone will get the point. Missing entirely from their world view is the idea that ordinary people might have a better grasp on day-to-day practical problems than do Leftist intellectuals.
The Left treats everyone except a narrow elite as idiots. That doesn’t play in Pretoria.
As with communism, it’s not the ideology that’s bad, it’s just that the “right” people aren’t in place. (Isn’t that the new mantra 15-ish years after The Wall fell?)
But with The Democracy Alliance, the “right” people will be in place, it will work, we’ll all live in peace, harmony and sustainability.
This looks like another ill-fated attempt at an Orwellian (or, now, Lakoffian) reframing of the issues. By simply renaming things, voters will be moved. From the link, an example:
Trial lawyers like vice presidential nominee John Edwards should instead be called “public protection attorneys” That sort of nonsense is viewed as genius, apparently. They really do think people are sheep. And as dumb as a sack of hammers to boot.
All that brilliance, and not a one seems to have figured out the true source of their wealth, the largesse of which will fund this advertising campaign. Makes me wonder why Nigerian e-mail scams haven’t figured out a better schtick: create a leftist-sounding organization, and just ask for the money.
Dear Friend,
I am Professor Mobutu of the Peoples Harvest Abundant Life Co-op in Angutando Nigeria. We are turning native lands over to the small rural farmer, and paying fair wages to create fair trade opportunities. Since taking the lands back from the Western colonialists, our people are starving. Please help with your donation.
Has it occered to them that aside from general suckitude, they are not succeeding because the media really IS generally quite liberal so that there is no reason to tune in?
The Democrats have this to take comfort in. No matter how messed up they are or seem to be,there is always the Bush chaos that will turn voters their way. The war in Iraq, based on lies, is now a full-blown civil war,with the clear winner Iran. Iran will soon have nukes. Iran ships arms to Iraq; Syria is conduit for Insurgents (aka killers)…and we, under the president, tell them that they should stop doing that.