Ah, The Democrats!

I’m not an anthropologist (one of my professors in college, a sociologist, once defined an anthropologist as “a sociologist in a tent”), but if I were I think I would have a hard time finding a more fascinating and exotic tribe to study than the Democrats.

Even some Democrats are amazed from time to time at the antics of their own party. A good example is Mickey Kaus, apparently still a Democrat despite years of disagreeing with them on one thing or another, who has an interesting post today of the acquisition of the party by liberal interest groups. “If the old Democratic Party version of the Democratic Party was too beholden to liberal interest groups,” he writes, “the new America Votes version of the Democratic Party is liberal interest groups.” (His emphasis)

Kaus was referring to a new umbrella group that has been formed to co-ordinate the “soft money” collections and expenditures of 22 or so liberal interest groups who, according to a strong Wall Street Journal article Kaus cites, hope “to raise $200 million to mobilize voters and run ads slamming Republicans.” These groups, called “Section 527 non-profits” after the code provision that allows their fund-raising, have the blessing of the Democrats even though their purpose is to evade the limits on the parties imposed by McCain-Feingold, which the Democrats supported (at least in public).

Kaus himself seems uncharacteristically a bit muddled here. He doesn’t mind subverting McCain-Feingold. “It’s a free country,” he writes. “If people want to pool their money and run ads they should be able to pool their money and run ads.” (His emphasis again) But, of course, after McCain-Feingold the country is in fact no longer that free. If it were, “people could pool their money” and give it to the political party of their choice, something he almost recognizes in his next sentence when he observes::

If you’re worried about curbing the influence of money and restoring the interest-group-taming role of the now-pathetically-passe party, isn’t the solution to increase the sums actual, official, parties can raise and use in coordinated campaigns?

That might be something, but it is hardly a “solution.” A solution would seem to require recognizing that in “a free country” people “should be able to pool their money” and give it to a political party.

I think the high point of Kaus’s post, however, was a passage he quoted from an article in Variety:

Andy Spahn, who advises David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg on political affairs, said while many in Hollywood oppose Bush, these new organizations had not proven themselves yet. “It’s certainly more complicated for donors who understand giving to a presidential nominee or a national party committee,” he said. “It’s one thing to give $100,000 to be in the room with Bill Clinton. It’s another thing to give $100,000 to be in the room with a 527 committee.”

I find that observation both fascinating and revealing. An increasing amount of the Democrats’ Big Money is now coming from Hollywood, but the people at the top of this heap seem caught up in a cult of personality, more interested in proximity to a star than to promoting any policy agenda. If you really wanted to get rid of Bush, I would think that mixing and mingling — and contributing big bucks — in a room full of 527s would be a much better way of doing it than rubbing elbows, or other body parts, with Bill Clinton.

Although there are no doubt some star-struck Republicans, my hunch (I certainly don’t know from experience) is that Republican communities of interest (you know: polluters, militarists, white supremacists, evangelical demagogues, environmental rapists, etc.) who give as much to the Grand Old Party as Hollywood does to the Democrats for the most part don’t give a hoot about standing in the same room with George W. Bush.