The Center for Responsive Politics recently published an analysis of the effects of last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision (which, as the Center summarizes, “allowed corporations and unions to use their general treasuries to pay for political advertisements that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate, also known as independent expenditures”). The conclusion: Citizens United “profoundly affects [the] political landscape.”
How so? Well, for one: “The percentage of spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections.” And while the entire slideshow, posted at the end of this post, is well worth a look, slide twelve of twelve, below, paints a vivid picture:
Expect to see more blue in the 2012 versions of these pie charts since, as Roll Call put it in a headline today, “Democrats Raising Money They Oppose.” Say what, you say? Roll Call explains:
Democrats have railed for more than a year against the landmark Supreme Court decision that unleashed unlimited and undisclosed corporate and union dollars in political campaigns, but now they’re preparing to collect and spend this same money.
Democratic operatives are racing to organize new groups to solicit and spend millions of dollars that the Citizens United ruling allowed, gearing up to play by the same rules as Republicans regardless of whether they like those rules.
They all insist that they don’t. But after watching Republicans take advantage of the new rules to spend unprecedented volumes of cash and win House and Senate seats across the map in the 2010 midterm elections, they say they can no longer stand back on moral grounds.
Hence, the formation of—to cite two of a few fledgling fundraising groups on the left—Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action, which, Roll Call writes, are
designed to mirror the operation spearheaded by Republican strategist Karl Rove, who in 2010 revolutionized a two-pronged fundraising approach to raise and spend as much money as possible: Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that can raise unlimited money without having to disclose the names of donors [like Priorities USA], and American Crossroads, a post-Citizens United breed of political action committee called a “super PAC” that can spend unlimited independent expenditures for or against candidates [like Priorities USA Action].
(Noted: The Huffington Post’s re-run of an AP report on Priorities is headlined “Priorities USA, Outside Fundraising Group, Launched by Democrats” and features a huge photo of “Democrats” Karl Rove.)
Politico was first with the details back on April 29th, the day Priorities officially announced itself, reporting that Priorities’ “leadership team includes [Bill] Burton, a former deputy [Obama] White House press secretary; Sean Sweeney, who was a senior adviser to former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and former Clinton political strategist Paul Begala.” And the initial funders?
Among the group’s first supporters are Ellen Malcolm, the wealthy founder of the pro-abortion rights group Emily’s List; Harold Ickes, a former Clinton adviser; Jon Youngdahl, a Service Employees International Union political strategist.
They also include Jay Dunn, a longtime party fundraiser; Greg Speed, a longtime progressive advocate and media consultant; and Rob McKay, a major Democratic donor who is head of the McKay Family Foundation.
The influential SEIU, one of the nation’s largest labor unions, also is among the first donors to the joint effort.
Hollywood producer Jeffrey Katzenberg donated to the effort and has agreed to help raise money for the committees.
The New York Times chimed in on A-1 (beneath the headline, “Now, Liberals Offer Donors A Cash Cloak”) that Priorities’ “entree into the early 2012 contest all but ensures that the presidential race will be awash in cash from undisclosed corporate and labor sources with huge stakes in Washington policy making.”
Democrats are, said The New York Times’s editorial page on Saturday, being “seduced by secret money.” From that editorial:
A political system built on secret, laundered money will inevitably lead toward an increased culture of influence and corruption. Democrats would attract more support as a principled party that refused to follow the Republicans down that dark alley.
Ms. Cox Barrett,
Here is yet again another biased, anti-Democrat offering from you. Of course, we all know that it has been the GOP that has jumped on the Citizens ruling to rake in multi-millions of anonymous campaign cash. And yet, here is yet another of your handwringing, tut-tutting pieces scolding the Democrats. You have a terrible habit of being accusatory towards Democrats while giving the GOP a pass on their much more egregious behavior.
You did the same thing with the photographer issue, tut-tutting the Obama Administration for not allowing photographers to disrupt every single meeting and speech with demands for access, I asked then, and I ask now, why not the smelling salts and fainting couch when the Republicans do this stuff?
Obviously, the Democrats must fight the campaign wars with the laws that we have, not the laws that we wish we had.
I'm beginning to believe that you have been hired as the token GOP operative to ward off the "liberal bias" bugaboo. Is it your job to manufacture accusations against the Democrats with snarky posts to ward off accusations of liberal bias? It certainly appears so.
#1 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 12 May 2011 at 09:07 AM
I think your embed of the slide show went a bit awry.
Try taking out the webpage code (eg: <HTML lang=eng> ) you've got in between your iframe tags. It's messed up on Chrome, firefox, and safari on os x.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 12 May 2011 at 09:43 AM
And there was a better take on this study here:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/05/06/two-pictures-say-it-all/
The DLC dems abandoned the unions long ago and accept money from the banks, telecoms, pharmaceuticals, etc... to push the policies beneficial to their funders to the degree that they can competently.
The republicans push those policies without regard to competence.
The major difference between DLC dems and republicans is that democrats tend to govern competently. That's no small difference, but people don't expect to replace incompetent conservatives with competent ones.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 12 May 2011 at 10:01 AM
@Thimbles. Embed problem fixed. Thanks.
@James,
You should read more of my posts (not just the ones that make you mad). I've been writing for the past year or so about the press coverage of money in politics in the post-Citizens United environment. Republican fundraising successes (anonymous and otherwise, Citizens United-enabled and otherwise) and election-influencing efforts have certainly not escaped my notice. I've written about coverage of the Crossroads Groups, the Kochs, Romney's PACs, Gingrich's fundraising, the rise of the 501(c)s, Target Corp.'s contributions, etc. Have a look, if you like http://www.cjr.org/author/liz-cox-barrett-1/index.php?page=5
And my criticisms in this post, "A Photo of History Being Made (Up)?" were focused on the photogs and news orgs for not making it 100% clear to the public when the photos we see are reenactments (and the circumstances thereof) and for not, as I quoted Al Tompkins, "insist[ing] on and press[ing] for access to document these historic moments." It was (unwelcome) news to me that, as I quoted a veteran NYT photog saying, WH still photogs have "never, never, never, ever been allowed to cover a live presidential address to the nation" (as in, not just Obama admin) and that these reenactments are apparently not unusual.
#4 Posted by Liz Cox Barrett, CJR on Thu 12 May 2011 at 11:03 AM
To be clear, @James, I do think the Obama administration should allow still photogs access to live presidential addresses. (Tut-tut! Scold!) People who know more than I do about photography seem to say it could now be done without significant noise/disruption. Media criticism being my gig, my focus in that post was on the news media going along with these reenactments and not sufficiently communicating to the public what we are seeing.
#5 Posted by Liz Cox Barrett, CJR on Thu 12 May 2011 at 11:26 AM
Ms. Cox Barrett,
thank you for weighing in to clarify and defend your posts that admittedly annoyed me. I'll just say that I still contend that your framing in those two posts was highly biased, and the snarky tone was off-putting. (And I *do* read most of your posts.)
What really irritates me is this journo-wide tut-tutting of actions by the Democrats when this kind of story was almost never written about the prior administration -- in fact, the political press corps from 2001-2009 were little more than docile, cheer-leading stenographers. And it is almost never written with this kind of tone about the GOP.
Meanwhile, you and others snipe and carp over the most insignificant acts of the Obama administration, always, always implying dishonesty and wrongdoing and bad motivation. And yet, in almost every case the GOP hasve 1) done it first and worse and 2) escaped the finger-wagging aspect.
Look at your sub-hed. "Democrats get their Priorities in order for 2012." You made this snarky post about the Democrats, when they have spoken out against Citizens United and have adopted the new rules in self-defense after the Republicans ran with it bigtime last year to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to remarkable success.
And I'll note that both Thimbles and I were ridiculed (by Ryan Chittum) in these very threads for suggesting there might be a facet of illegality to these anonymous donations to Chamber of Commerce.
And also. I contend that there should be exactly zero concern, let alone snark and insinuations of wrong-doing, about the photogs' access to live presidential addresses. It's preposterous -- 53 million people watched it live, the video is ubiquitous online. In fact, Reuters wisely used a screen shot instead of a ginned up re-enactment still shot.
Of all the issues that professional photographers have to be concerned about -- and some of these are life-and-death issues -- this kind of whining about non-issues doesn't help their cause. And it doesn't garner sympathy when media critics such as yourself write snarky, off-putting posts defending this kind of petty concern.
Anyway, thanks for responding. I appreciate it.
#6 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 12 May 2011 at 05:52 PM