Remember back in 2006, when a desperate/frantic George Allen campaign started attacking Jim Webb over – are you sitting down for this one?!? – receiving donations from readers of Daily Kos? Need any smelling salts? I know, it’s shocking (not!) that Democratic activists would give to Democratic candidates, just as it’s shocking (not!) that Republican activists would give to Republican candidates. It’s also shocking that Democratic and Republican activists read Democratic and Republican blogs. Totally crazy, this world of the intertubes and Teh Google and stuff. You’ve gotta forgive George Allen, though, as back when he was growing up in
the Confederacy Southern California, there was no internet (Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet – har har har), let alone a way for Allen to research the French Tunisian origins of the word “macaca.” If only there’d been an internet back in the 1950s and 1960s, who knows, all of history might have turned out differently! LOL
Seriously, though, the Allen campaign is now trying to distract people from Tim Kaine’s huge fundraising totals in the second quarter, that they’ve resorted to attacking a successful fundraising technical tool, ActBlue — “the online clearing house for Democratic action.” Thus, according to the geniuses at Camp Allen, “liberal special interests have begun lining up to support and fund Chairman Kaine’s campaign, including more than half a million dollars from the liberal website ActBlue alone.”
This is utterly laughable on a number of levels. First of all, Tim Kaine’s some sort of hard-core liberal? I know that will be news to almost anyone in Virginia, certainly to readers of Blue Virginia. But there you have it. Second, ActBlue’s a “liberal website,” as opposed to a highly effective technical mechanism for Democrats to raise and give money? That’s such a ridiculous “attack,” even our friends at Bearing Drift can barely contain themselves.
Indeed, special interests can and will fund Kaine’s campaign, but is targeting ActBlue the right idea?
Around the Bearing Drift water-cooler this morning, we openly wondered whether the Allen response is a bit misguided, considering ActBlue’s role is to be a medium for online giving from individual donors. It’s not, exactly, a special interest group, such as MoveOn.org or the Sierra Club. It’s a tool for liberal donors – an idea we certainly should also use for conservatives.
That’s right, ActBlue is something Republicans have been trying to emulate for years now, without much success. For Democrats, though, it’s a great tool for online giving to Democratic candidates — $192,676,847 raised online since 2004. No wonder why most Republicans want to emulate ActBlue, and why George Allen fears it so much. Anyway, my guess is that Allen’s attacks against ActBlue, and specifically his attempts to claim that Tim Kaine – he of the estate tax repeal, etc. – is some sort of uber liberal, will work about as well as Allen’s attacks on Jim Webb in 2006 for taking money from Daily Kos readers. In other words, it won’t work at all. But let the Allen people waste their time, energy, and money trying – who am I to stop them? 🙂
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