This is an arms race and it’s bad for democracy. Preparing for an onslaught of money from shadowy outsider groups on the Republican side – the Democrats have finally cajoled liberal donors into a big money bomb with their shadowy outsider groups. The Karl Rove run American Crossroads is set to raise and spend $300 million to impact the House, Senate and Presidential races this election. And while – liberals aren’t able to compete with that money advantage – instead of spending their money and competing in the war on advertisements…they’re sinking their money into targeted spending on social media, voter registration drives and focusing on key constituencies in certain states. They’re mostly leaving the ad war to the Obama campaign.
This is all thanks to a conservative Supreme Court that overturned 100 years of precedent and ruled that corporations are people and that Congress had very little authority to limit the speech i.e. money of corporations or people.
The NY Times has the story:
After months on the sidelines, major liberal donors including the financier George Soros are preparing to inject up to $100 million into independent groups to aid Democrats’ chances this fall. But instead of going head to head with the conservative “super PACs” and outside groups that have flooded the presidential and Congressional campaigns with negative advertising, the donors are focusing on grass-roots organizing, voter registration and Democratic turnout.
Organizations likely to be a part of the effort include Catalist, which creates voter lists for allied liberal groups; ProgressNow, a network of state-based Web sites for liberal opinion and activism; and the Latino Engagement Fund, a new group that works to register and turn out Latino voters for Democrats. Conservative independent groups are financing similar outreach to Latino voters: the American Action Network, which spent $26 million against Democratic candidates in 2010, last year unveiled theHispanic Leadership Network, which will seek to mobilize center-right Latino voters.
