No politicians, no governments. We have the internets. We don’t need you anymore. Get a real job.

As to the donors who fund the think tanks, and the like, they are not putting that funding forth out of charity. That money is spent to influence/manipulate the political agenda to achieve a profitable economic environment. The billionaires are investing in these groups out of greed, not a political ideology. And, the people who work for them are intellectual whores. Or, perhaps in some cases, they are actual idealogues, but most would work for any position that paid the bills.

On the other hand, I think this whole debate is poorly framed. It is not an issue of progressives vs conservatives. The issue is really one of class warfare. The next time some one accuses you of class warfare, don’t deny it. Tell them, “Damn right, it’s class warfare! And, my side is losing.” That is the issue that non-billionaire progressives need to recognize, and then quit whining about a lack of patronage on the part of billionaires, and instead figure out how we, with numbers and votes, can defeat the de facto oligarchy that runs our country…And, soon, if not already, the entire planet.

The problem, outside of the stupid amounts of money that lobbyists pump into the political system, is that the Democratic Party is not very whole. And a fair portion of it isn’t much better than those across the aisle. Though an attempt by progressives to gain control of the Democratic Party is the only one that made much tactical sense, it made no strategic sense because it’s just too easy for the progressive movement to be used and thrown away.

It’s hard to argue that it didn’t happen in the ‘08 election, but what are progs gonna do, vote third party next time around? I’d argue that the Bush years should have been spent developing a progressive party…not with any intent to win a national election necessarily but built to win up to the Representative level and force the Dems to adopt progressive platforms. (as opposed to talking them up and then ignoring them once the votes are counted)

And Russ is correct, imo. Though Obama’s approval numbers are still good, i’d bet that he’s already lost his margin of victory. I know that unless he starts walking the walk, i won’t be voting for him in ‘12…not even if he’s running against Palin. This was the Dems last chance with me, and the only light i see at the end of the tunnel looks like an oncoming train.

Tragically, against my strongest hopes, the Obama administration has taken only a few months to illustrate that it is continuing most of Bush’s policies .. in fact, in areas of civil rights, monetary policy and the potential introduction of catastrophically destructive hyperinflation in around 12-24 months, strengthening the class of the very rich while simultaneously laying waste to the middle class, haebeus corpus, pervasive electronic surveillance of all, including anyone in particular, for any reason or no reason, the foolhardy / criminal implementation of a reckless monetary policy which will lead to and create uncontrolled corruption at every level of society, shredding of the constitution, etc etc, it may well prove, given its decisions and direction to date, to be far worse

And i might add that all of these policies are now fundamental pillars of the Democratic party .. which has morphed, by intent and design, from what it used to represent, into an oppressive, corrupt institution (and lets not forget about the current incarnation of the Republican party, which would feel completely at home and most comfortable in the Germany of the mid-to-late 1930’s .. say 1938)

Regrets and angst voiced above with respect to non-funding of progressives by the Democratic party are unfortunately based on a false hypothesis .. that the major financial backers of the party are simply not ’stepping up’. Objective observation of democratic party actions over the last 16+ years indicates that they have no intention of ever doing so .. they have become every much as hard-boiled in their fascism as their opponents, though not as extreme in their language.

The only ’solution’, if there is one, is a third party .. the Libertarian Party coming to mind as one possibility, perhaps .. anyway, the storm clouds have gathered, and its starting to pour, not water, but acid.

The funding for right-wing think tanks, astroturfers, paid operatives like Morano, etc. all comes from the heavy investment in things like oil, defense, agribusiness, etc. As I said elsewhere, these industries have a vested interest in dominating the intellectual debate and making sure their side gets heard.

Look at Koch Industries–a company that is so vast as to beggar belief, yet almost no one has heard of it. They pour tons of money into corporatist/libertarian operations like Cato, Reason Magazine, etc. Or look at National Review–that magazine bleeds red ink, but the people behind it have an ideology at stake, and won’t take “No” for an answer.

Progressives can build their own infrastructure by finding counterparts to the Koch family, Scaife and his empire, etc., and getting them on board to fund a long-term shift in the debate. CAP and the like simply can’t match Heritage, AEI, CEI, Cato, etc. dollar-for-dollar.

And as I keep saying, a lot of these groups are seeing hard times because of the economy as well. Shelly Adelson is bankrupt. Heritage is cutting back on its efforts because its donors are broke. There will never be a better time than now to step up and take over the debate arena, while the beast is wounded and bleeding.

There are certainly advantages to having a massively decentralized and diverse group of volunteers. Convince those masses of volunteers that they’re going to change the world and it’ll change almost overnight. The problem is that it takes people who know what they’re doing and can do it full time to effectively mobilize the masses. That’s what the progressive side is lacking – and that the conservatives (real or otherwise) have in spades.

At this point throwing money at progressive blogs is secondary to Obama potentially — or already — losing progressive support with his only-incrementally-left-of-Bush policies on Iraq and Afghanistan, and, even worse, his massive mishandling of the banks.

Funding for Democratic congressional races, never mind bloggers, will become that much harder when our Democratic president is leading the country down the tubes.

To give you some idea of the scope of the problem, the NYTimes today has a piece on former Inhofe aide and climate disruption denier extraordinaire Marc Morano. In it Morano reveals that he was paid a salary of $134,000 working for Inhofe, and that his new job at the conservative foundation CFACT was paying more than that.

How is that progressives are expected to produce serious and effective messaging campaigns against professional PR flaks like Morano with part timers like most progressive bloggers? And how is that progressives are expected to fund those campaigns with with mere advertising? I see to main options to pull this off – either the conservative funds are shut down somehow (raising estate taxes a lot would help, for one) or progressives need to build their own infrastructure up to match the conservative infrastructure. And progressives have got to pay their people well enough to make a decent living.

If I could make a significant percentage of my current pay and benefits as an electrical engineer as a journalist or someone who works on educating people on climate, I’d probably do it in an instant. Ask me how likely I think that is, though….

Progressives can do a lot with legions of unpaid or poorly paid volunteers, but progressives will hit (if they haven’t already) a point of diminishing returns. When that happens, the next step is adding to that legion a smaller but still large number of moderately or well paid researchers, sympathetic journalists, and other misc. professionals. And so far as I can tell, progressives don’t have anywhere near the number of professionals that conservatives do.

And it doesn’t help that there are progressives who think that the legions are all we need or that “organized” smacks too much of authoritarianism to be a foundation for future change.

That’s simply got to change.

But then stop for a moment and think. Who is lurking in the background laughing at our naivete’? Yes, that’s right the lobbyists who will support want they want to have happen.

I think a more useful approach would be to change the election law to limit, yes limit the expenditures a candidate can use to ONLY publicly donated funds. Just think, no more million dollar campaigns won by the richest or most lobbied. As a matter of fact, how about changing the law to state the candidates can only appear of C-span of NPR? Just think, no more interruptions of your favorite tv shows.