Comments on: Hey, Funders. Opportunity’s Knocking

By: lisadawn82

lisadawn82 — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 11:16:40 +0000

A suggestion to everyone who has donated through the efforts of Howie Klein and this blog. When you get the fundraising appeals from candidates you donated to through Act Blue, send them some additional $$’s and a message that the blogosphere has made this additional donation possible. We have to remind these folks who loves them. And when big money people see these politicians paying attention to blogs like this and Kos then the big $$’s boys and girls will start taking you seriously.

I totally agree. I guess we’ve got to ‘Show them the money’ before they listen.

By: cal

cal — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:03:47 +0000

There was a comment above (comment number 5) about George Soros not wanting to get into the media business. That reminds me of Warren Buffett. Clinton calls him a good Democrat.

So Buffett gives his money to Bill Gates to spend. A billion something a year.

He should have bought CBS or CNN or ABC.

His or Gates’ philantropic goals are best acheived through an activist government. The best way to get activist government is by electing serious liberal (yes, that’s right liberal) Democrats. The best route to electing Democrats is with a media that tells the whole story, that connects the dots.

By: readerOfTeaLeaves

readerOfTeaLeaves — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 08:53:34 +0000

Jennifer, not all seeds germinate, but you are clearly out there planting them.

I live in a very wired region, yet I’m surprised at the very smart folks that I know for whom ‘blogging’ is still a new and mostly-untried concept. I would follow up on an earlier commenter’s point that it might be smart to provide a Personal Blog Assistant for “X” number of hours for some of these people to get them up to speed.

It sounds like you were there as an ambassador, and what they needed was a private blog tutor. It would be interesting to see what happens if you meet them again six months from now — it sounds as if they were more focused on the experience of being wooed, but lack the background to hear what you have to say.

BTW, having donated time toward developing explanations about Net Neutrality (for zero payment, and only b/c it’s related to my line of work), I find it collassally irritating to hear that Mr Online Auction Guy congratulates himself on NN efforts. That kind of arrogance certainly doesn’t surprise me, but it irritates me.

It’s typical of funders (and people in general) to miss the significance of newly emerging technologies. It doesn’t surprise me that they have erroneous concepts about blogs and their political impacts. It also doesn’t surprise me that they are operating under the Republican meme that the Dem’s are “incoherent.” Coherence happens over time, and the Dems are really beginning to crystalize the elements that will result in greater coherence in coming months.

By: Margot

Margot — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 07:43:09 +0000

Dear Jennifer,
Could you please kick Democracy Alliance Gal’s ass for me?
Thank you. My arthritis is bothering me, otherwise I would do it myself.
Who ARE these people? Why are they so clueless? Why are they in charge of anything??
I wouldn’t let them manage a Kmart Garden Center in winter. In Ohio.

By: sandra y

sandra y — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 01:19:29 +0000

I just want to say this in black and white:
I can’t believe that these rich people can be that stupid.
Increasingly I have begun to suspect that they are all corrupt– the Democrats who don’t know what Democrats stand for –and who continue to operate as if the Republicans are in the majority, ignoring the opinion polls for the past two and more years that say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
They must be either stupid or corrupt and more and more I see that it must be the later. I mean really money-paid corrupt, they have really thrown the elections and given the country to the Republicans because they have been paid to do so, or they fear financial retaliation by corporations and right wing operatives.
The only excuse for them being so stupid is if you might say that they are living in a bubble with the government in Washington.
But if they are out in the world and successful in business how can they think that time stopped ten years ago? How can they not see that times have changed? That network television is a total wasteland? That life has moved on somewhere else? That the Democratic consultants who work for the corporations are the ones who have sold out our Democratic values and therefore they can’t remember what those values were!
I really think that they must have made their pact with the devil, and they are throwing away money just like George Bush throws away our taxes in order to destroy our government, because they want to, they are committed to keeping the Republicans in power.
No other interpretation makes sense to me.
Why haven’t they acted to keep our elections honest for instance? Nothing. Tone deaf. Nada. Look at that equipment, seriously. Look at them delivering two machines to Democratic precincts in 2004. Clear that the Democrats had to take action after that, right? To make sure the precinct-based election apparatus was overseen, to return it to honesty, right? What could be more obvious than that? And nothing. No Democratic Party action. No attempt to examine the technology. No action to make the polls accessible to everyone. The opposite happened. The Republicans continued to cut and cull and devastate the voting rolls and the voting process and the Democrats did not lift a finger as a Party — even after they SAW 2004.
So groups of activists, citizens like us, started going to hearings, testifying, suing, testing the voting equipment, presenting reports–for several years in the dark.
Now we are getting some respect for keeping at it. Where is the Democratic Party? Where are the big money donors? Don’t they want honest elections? Apparently not. Either that or they are too lazy and just hope the problems will go away. We all know that in these past two years the problems have gotten worse.
Now it’s interesting that we all showed up — all of the millions of us who know what we stand for–
And they must really be shocked.
There are really some people out here who are alive. The “big” guys are committed to keeping the hatches battened down on all of us.
Sorry, but the more I see the stupidity out there, the more I am sure it is a front for working hard to keep the Republicans in power.
Just look at the DLC. I’m sure Marshall Wittmann was placed there by Karl Rove. Nothing else explains his existence. And if the DLC are really Republican operatives — which I truly believe, then these rich Dems are certainly close to them.
But I don’t think they will win. I think we will, hands down.
No one can keep the clock from running. And then it’s a matter of values. Clear as a bell!

By: jomama

jomama — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 17:23:56 +0000

Demicans, Republicrats and Libertoonians…what choice?

And all vying for The Same Ol’ Bag that they’ve been hustling since Christ was a corporal:

More power.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, “It’s the system, stupid.”

I estimate fewer than 1 in a thousand see it.

By: Enoch Root

Enoch Root — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 16:17:46 +0000

From the Powell Memo: “Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who — thanks largely to the media — has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans.”

Hehe. Nader: Uberprogressive, right about everything in 2000, shunned by progressives in 2001.

By: kaleidescope

kaleidescope — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 15:17:38 +0000

Jeez. It’s a little harsh on the left to call these primadonnas “the moneyed left”. Left? Is Joe Lieberman part of “the left”? I wouldn’t even call Ned Lamont part of the left.

What you were dealing with were people with dough who are nuts. I call them donuts. Generally they hate people like us because we — as collective small donor funders — are an alternative to them. That was part of what was behind the hostility Howard Dean faced — he’d raised money from us.

Big donor fundraising is an art and it ain’t for me. The few times I tried it I wound up just hating these people, who in the grand scheme of things have politics that are o.k. They’re just rich and used to having their asses kissed. I’ve never found them particularly clued in or even all that interested about the things they appear to support. Sometimes it seems like just an image thing. On the other hand, how would you like to have people constantly hitting you up for money?

I pity the people who have to go make nice with and flatter ignorant primadonnas. I prefer to stick up corporations and make them pay. Then you don’t have to make nice. The only ignorant primadonnas I have to flatter are judges.

By: plum

plum — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 14:09:30 +0000

The reason Democracy Arsenal Gal worries that Dems don’t stand for anything is because she doesn’t stand for anything.

Projection, people. It’s a right-wing thing.

By: Jeffrey Feldman

Jeffrey Feldman — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 11:27:22 +0000

Well said.

I think this is also about leadership and habits. In other words, I don’t think that the only reason we all see your points and (mostly likely) agree is simply because we understand the arguments or see the ideas. It’s also because we are now politically built of a new set of habits. In order to bring the “big” folks in your narrative into the story, we will also need to bring them into our habits.

Why not give these guys the blog equivalent of personal trainers? Send them a person everyday who sits with them for an hour and walks them through the basics of how to participate in the blogs–sets up their profile, logs them on, shows them the sites, helps them participate in a comment thread, post a diary. And we could do this for them from now until 2008. A blog personal trainier program for potential Liberal/Progressive/Democratic philanthropists.

Habits. That’s the key. Miraculously, we have changed our habits–but they have not changed theirs. But we can help them along.

Would they be open to a blog personal trainer? Some might not be, but it only takes one to succeed and the rest will follow.

If the NPI has access to these folks, maybe they can also pitch this idea at the next lunch.

(And excuse my ignorance, but…what are “Jimmy Choos”? Boots?)