MoveOn.org to Democratic Party: 'We bought it, we own it'

The political action committee of Moveon.org has issued a scathing email message in which he calls the leadership of the Democratic party, "professional losers", and further states: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back". He further accuses the outgoing DNC chairman as a tool of corporations.


I�m not surprised. A lot of internal factions, clamped down for the good of the party to try to get Kerry elected. Now that he has lost, the inevitable internal bloodshed will commence. To be fair the same would have happened to the Republicans if Bush had not been reelected. It remains to be seen which groups will ascend to power for the next presidential election in 2008. Just a bit of hypocrisy from MoveOn though don�t you think? I mean where does all their money come from?


[edit on 12/10/04 by FredT]

Originally posted by FredT
The political action committee of Moveon.org has issued a scathing email message in which he calls the leadership of the Democratic party, "professional losers", and further states: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back". He further accuses the outgoing DNC chairman as a tool of corporations.

As a member of MoveOn and a contributor to the MoveOn PAC, I received that email from Eli Pariser. The full paragraph in question reads as follows:

For years, the Party has been lead by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base. But we can't afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers. In the last year, grassroots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the Party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive. Now it's our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back.

Re: the outgoing chair:

Under outgoing DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, the Party cozied up to many of the same corporate donors that fund the Republicans -- drug companies, HMO's, media conglomerates, big banks, polluting industries. The result was watered down, play-it-safe politics that kept the money flowing but alienated traditional Democrats as well as reform-minded independents in search of vision and integrity. And so the Party lost ground.

Pariser goes on to explain the "we bought it, we own it" statement:

But in 2004, something incredible happened: hundreds of thousands of small contributors gave millions and millions of dollars and changed the way politics works forever. New we have an opportunity to birth a new Democratic Party -- a Party of the people that's funded by the people and that fights for the people.

As a Democrat, I'm *hoping* to see a little internal bloodshed. Bush Lite just isn't good enough; we need two *different* political parties, not just two sides of the same coin.

sandge,

good post, most of us did not see the inital email. As I said in my comments this was bound to happen. It remains to be seen which group is in power after the termoil. However, there is a bit of hypocracy in Moveon.org. Where did they get all of thier backing?

I think I know where you're going with this, FredT, but you're only partially correct. No one is denying that MoveOn has received rather generous ::cough:: millions ::cough:: from George Soros, but what often gets left out of the discussion is that MoveOn has motivated and enabled millions of people to become involved in the political process, through both contributions and activism.

Soros played no part in the creation of MoveOn; that honor belongs to a California couple (interesting side note: they're the ones who designed the "flying toaster" screensaver) in response to the Clinton impeachment proceedings. It was designed to be a simple online petition called "Censure and Move On," and they had no plans to do anything more. That changed when their email subscribers list rose to above 500,000 in just a few months.

MoveOn now has over 1.8 million contributing members, and they're not all Democrats. These people, after being shut out of the political process for years, now feel that they have a way to make their voices heard, and their $$ count.

What could be more American than that?