The $80 million they contribute will be used to finance what the Washington Post called "a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades."

Stung by the failure of their big-bucks giving in 2004 to help John Kerry and his party win elections, a group of 70 super-rich leftists first met last April in Scottsdale, Ariz., at a meeting set up by billionaire Marxist George Soros (George Soros Holds Secret Meeting, Makes 5-Year Plan) where they sought to create a strategy to assure that their political contributions to Democrats would be used effectively to produce positive results.

At this latest gathering, the group, reportedly now grown to about 80, decided to channel the funds they contribute through something called the "Democracy Alliance," an outfit set up at the April meeting.

According to the Washington Post, this is the latest attempt to deal with the Democrats' loss of the House and the Senate in 1994 and the White House in 2000. Today's Post reported that "many influential Democratic contributors were left angry and despairing over the party's poor showing in last year's elections, and are looking for what they hope will be more effective ways to invest their support."

While some liberal groups, such as the George Soros-backed "America Coming Together" (ACT), are floundering, with Soros cutting off his support to ACT, the Post says that the new group of contributors is seeking to help in the job of reinvigorating the left. They hope to raise a staggering $200 million.

Alliance chairman Steven Gluckstern, a retired investment banker, told the Post that President Bush's victory over Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., last year after millions of dollars had been poured into pro-Democratic "527" groups caused many contributors to think that a dramatically new approach is needed.

"It wasn't only the failure to win, it was the question 'What does it take to win?' " Gluckstern said. "Among the lessons learned was that to bring back the progressive majority in this country is not just a periodic election investment strategy."

The Post explained that the Democracy Alliance will act as a financial clearing house whose staff members and board of directors will put together a lineup of groups that they believe will develop and promote ideas on the left. Each partner must agree to give $200,000 or more a year for at least five years to alliance-endorsed groups to fulfill the million-dollar obligation.

As NewsMax.com reported in April, the alliance is the brainchild of longtime Democratic strategist Rob Stein, who has long studied conservative groups with emphasis on their success in sustaining GOP politicians and achieving many of their policy goals. Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, is working with Stein and is a leading promoter of his effort.

Rosenberg said liberals and Democrats now face a conservative information-age Tammany Hall, a 21st century political machine, "that is simply better than what we have on our side."

"The infrastructure we have was built for a different time and mission. It was built around the congressional majority we had for 60 years in the 20th century, the labor movement and the urban-ethnic city machines," he added.

Organizers of the alliance told the Post they want to foster the growth of liberal or left-leaning institutions equipped to take on prominent think tanks on the right, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, as well as such training centers as the Leadership Institute and the Young America's Foundation.

"There never has been an organized or coordinated look at connecting the dots of the progressive movement," said San Francisco businessman Mark Buell, who the Post said is with his wife, Esprit de Corps founder Susie T. Buell, a major Democratic donor. Buell, an alliance board member, said: "For 40 years, we had a voice somewhere, the White House, Congress, the Senate. For the first time, we find ourselves without a voice."

"To be effective in the 21st century in promoting your beliefs, it is necessary to have a financially secure institutional infrastructure that has the capacity to promote consistently and coherently a set of ideas, policies and messages," Stein said. "We understand that it's very hard to promote a belief system and to be operationally high performing if you don't have multi-year funding."

Soros, the Post reported, has assumed only a modest role in the Democracy Alliance.

Stein contends that there is a huge financial imbalance favoring conservatives that he puts at $295 million vs. $75 million.

In 2003, the 19 progressive organizations with budgets exceeding $1 million spent a total of $75 million, Stein told the Post, adding that in contrast, the 24 national think tanks on the right had $170 million in spending, along with state-based policy centers' $50 million and campus-based conservative policy organizations' $75 million to $100 million, according to Stein.

Liberal groups have been disproportionately dependent on one-year foundation grants for specific projects, Stein said, while the money flowing to conservative groups has often involved donors' long-term commitments with no strings attached. Stein noted that of 200 major conservative donors, about half sit on the boards of the think tanks they give to, increasing the strength of their commitment.

The group seems to have missed the message the voters have been sending: It isn't the Democrats' failure to get their Marxist message across; it's that the voters have shown they just don't want to hear it.

Editor's note:
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