Consolidation Cont'd.

A lot of people are concerned about Barack Obama's move to de-fund independent groups supporting his candidacy that would attack John McCain primarily in television ads. The reverberations have already claimed their first casualty - Progressive Media USA.

Progressive Media USA, the group organized to be the main soft-money advertising vehicle for Democrats in the fall, will dramatically scale back its efforts in deference to the wishes of the party's presumptive nominee.

"Progressive Media will not be running an independent ad campaign this year," David Brock, the head of the organization, confirmed in a statement obtained by The Fix this morning.

"Progressive Media was established to be an independent on-going progressive issue advocacy organization," Brock added. "We were not established for one issue, one candidate or one election cycle. But donors and potential donors are getting clear signals from the Obama camp through the news media and we recognize that reality."

I disagree with this effort by Obama. It's not like his ads have been setting the world on fire, so I don't know why we should expect them to be so amazing that nobody else should be able to throw in their two cents. I understand that the "change Washington" rhetoric demands that 527s get demonized, but plenty of outside groups have worked for Obama throughout the primary, particularly labor unions. Defining McCain is going to be a key strategy going into the fall, and while Obama's rhetoric has shown he can do that, from an advertising standpoint he's untested. There's no reason that you unilaterally disarm, and all this does is make it easier to criticize McCain when the inevitable conservative 527s come after you. I don't think that's a good enough trade-off.

Of course, this again gets to Obama consolidating power within the party, and this is the negative side effect of that. We need a vibrant movement outside of electoral politics to push progressive policy, and I'm not willing to give up that power to a President. I think that Obama's use of field and organizing to grow the Democratic base is laudable - his voter registration effort is the best thing to happen to the party in a long time. In fact, I was at the Los Angeles event in this video:



But that doesn't mean you cede everything to the guy. Outside groups can work TOGETHER with a President, and he has to understand that.