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This article talks about the Shadow Party that operates within the Democratic Party that was started by George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold Ickes. This article is from 2004, but has information that most Americans do not know.
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The Shadow Party: Part II
By David Horowitz and Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, October 07, 2004
Launched September 22, 1998
2. Center for American Progress (CAP)
Launched July 7, 2003
Launched July 15, 2003
4. America Coming Together (ACT)
Launched July 17, 2003
Launched November 5, 2003
6. Joint Victory Campaign 2004
Launched November 5, 2003
Launched early 2004
With the exception of MoveOn.org – based in Berkeley, California – all Seven Sisters maintain headquarters in Washington DC. Testifying to the close links between these groups are their interlocking finances, Boards of Directors and corporate officers. In some cases, they even share office space.
For example, two of the Seven Sisters – The Media Fund and Joint Victory Campaign 2004 – share an office in Suite #1100 at 1120 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Three other groups – America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes and The Thunder Road Group – lease offices in the Motion Picture Association Building at 888 16th Street, NW.
It is tempting to consider that the clustering of these three groups in a building owned by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) may not be coincidental. The MPAA has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Democratic Party; many high-ranking Democrats have slipped comfortably from government jobs into glamorous posts in the MPAA’s upper management.
In March 2004, for instance, Dan Glickman succeeded Jack Valenti as MPAA president. Valenti was a Democrat lobbyist and former aide to President Lyndon Johnson. Glickman was formerly a Democratic Congressman from Kansas, who later served as Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton White House. Now, as MPAA president, Glickman holds what is arguably the most powerful position in Hollywood.
The Shadow Party draws much of its funding from the entertainment world. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Jane Fonda is the fourth largest donor to Democrat 527 groups and Hollywood producer Stephen L. Bing takes third place. The top four Shadow Party donors are as follows:
Contributions to Democrat 527s
Top Four Shadow PartyContributors (August 2000 – August 2004)
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George and Susan W. Soros $24,170,000.00
Peter B. Lewis (Progressive [“Flo] Ins) $23,147,220.00
Stephen L. Bing $15,382,555.00
Courtesy The Center for Public Integrity
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The last “Sister” to join the group is the Thunder Group LLC:
Thunder Road Group
From SourceWatch
The Thunder Road Group is a consulting firm that serves several of the pro-Democrat 527 committees engaged in supporting a Democratic candidate in U.S. presidential election, 2004. The Group “will concentrate on research and rapid response.” [1]
“Democratic groups have created an operation that combines close coordination with a division of labor designed to avoid duplication of effort and maximize resources.” The other four allied groups are Media Fund, “the principal vehicle for pro-Democratic television commercials by the coalition”; America Coming Together, “which is responsible for get-out-the-vote efforts”; America Votes, “the umbrella organization that will stitch together the activities of various progressive organizations”; and Joint Victory Campaign 2004, “a combined fundraising committee.” [2]
“Jim Jordan, formerly John Forbes Kerry‘s campaign manager, … heads the Thunder Road Group.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Thunder_Road_Group
The Thunder Road Group
Launched early 2004
Launched in early 2004, The Thunder Road Group was the last of the Seven Sisters to appear, but arguably the most vital of the lot. The Boston Globe called Thunder Road the “nerve center” of the Shadow Party – its unofficial headquarters. “[The Thunder Road Group] is an operation unlike any other in politics, devising strategy, message, and public relations services for the 527s,” writes Brian C. Mooney of The Globe.[11]
A soup-to-nuts political consultancy, Thunder Road combines the roles of strategic planning, polling, opposition research (dirt-digging), covert operations (dirty tricks) and public relations. It coordinates strategy for The Media Fund, America Coming Together and America Votes. Its founder Jim Jordan is frequently quoted in the press as a spokesman for other Seven Sister groups.
Jordan is an attorney long active in Washington as a Democrat spin doctor. Among other high-profile assignments, Jordan handled press relations for the Senate committee investigating DNC fundraising in 1997 and for the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment. Riding the whirlwind of Clinton-era scandals charged Jordan with a zest for what he calls “intense political, hand-to-hand combat.” [12]
Jordan attained his highest public profile when he served for nearly a year as John Kerry’s campaign manager, from December 2002 to November 2003. But, as Kerry’s poll numbers sank, so did Jordan’s power in the campaign. Kerry fired Jordan suddenly on the night of November 9, accepting resignations the following day from other top staffers loyal to Jordan.
It was a full-fledged purge. As Jordan’s team left, Kennedy loyalists moved in. Mary Beth Cahill, Stephanie Cutter, Bob Shrum and other well-known operatives of Senator Ted Kennedy quickly siezed control of the campaign.
New York Times pundit William Safire credits Jeanne Shaheen, national chairwoman of Kerry’s campaign, with masterminding the putsch.
On November 12, 2003, Safire wrote:
“The Kennedyization of the Kerry campaign was carried out by Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor. She prevailed on the candidate to fire his longtime manager, Jim Jordan, and replace him with Mary Beth Cahill, Ted Kennedy’s chief of staff. Cahill has impeccable far-left credentials, from Emily’s List fund-raising to Representative Barney Frank’s staff. She is an ideological soulmate of the superb writer and Kennedy Boston braintruster Robert Shrum…”[13]
Jordan did not remain long out of work. Less than a month passed before Harold Ickes and Ellen R. Malcolm recruited Jordan to handle publicity and strategy for the Shadow Party – in particular, for The Media Fund, ACT and America Votes. In order to handle the growing volume of work pouring in from his newfound friends, Jordan launched his own company in early 2004. He named it Thunder Road after a Bruce Springsteen song whose lyrics declare, “It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win.”
A July 27, 2004 article in The Hill reports that Jordan had collected about $1.7 million in consulting fees and was drawing an $85,000 salary at that time. But what exactly was Jordan doing for that money? He is no mere press secretary.
Jordan freely acknowledges that his group engages in “opposition research” – the favored euphemism for dirt-digging among political strategists. Some reports indicate that Jordan’s covert operations go beyond the garden variety of Washington smear-mongering.
For instance, the American Spectator reported on April 9, 2004 that Jordan may have helped stage-manage the media circus that disrupted the work of the 9-11 Commission, nearly bringing the investigation to a standstill.[15]
Even before Condoleeza Rice made her opening statement to the Commission, Thunder Road operatives began bombarding reporters with e-mails attempting to discredit her.
The e-mails continued for three hours straight, while Rice testified.
More seriously, the American Spectator reports that a staffer for America Coming Together said, “We’d heard that [former National Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard] Clarke had some help with writing his testimony and in prepping for the questioning. … The rumor is that he ended up getting some help from Kerry’s people, but indirectly through Thunder Road.”
Richard Clarke’s testimony to the Commission later turned out to be rife with contradictions and misinformation, as the Commission’s final report makes clear.
If indeed the Thunder Road Group helped prepare that testimony, then it helped obstruct an investigation of grave importance to America’s national security.
Since Jordan’s firing, a new shake-up at Kerry headquarters appears to have put Clinton operatives back in the driver’s seat.
Mike McCurry, Joe Lockhart, James Carville, Paul Begala, and other Clinton loyalists now seem to be calling the shots at Team Kerry. What this portends for the Shadow Party is hard to discern. Some commentators have questioned whether Kerry’s new handlers necessarily have the Massachusetts senator’s best interests at heart.
Given the Shadow Party’s evident commitment to running Hillary for president – quite possibly in 2008 – a Kerry administration would only get in the way. Certainly, the Shadow Party has a wide range of options at its disposal for subtly undermining Kerry, even while pretending to help him. Only time will tell whether it chooses to exercise those options.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=A0A6C803-D423-4CDB-A93F-95B495B370F2
Now add this:
New Democrat Network
From SourceWatch
The New Democrat Network or NDN is led by founder and President Simon Rosenberg, “with advice from NDN’s Advisory Board, a group of leading New Democratic thinkers and strategists.” [1][2]
- “NDN also works through two affiliates, the NDN Political Fund, a non-federal political organization, and NDN PAC, a federal political action committee.” [5][6]
- NDN funds the think tank the New Politics Institute. [7]
- http://www.newdem.org/
- “This website contains the archive of the material of the New Democrat Network, a political action committee from 1996 – 2002 and a non federal political committee from 2003 – 2006. It also contains information from NDN PAC, which was a federal political action committee from 2003 – 2006. You can visit the New Democrat Network’s successor organization, NDN at http://www.ndn.org, NDN’s think tank for politics, New Politics Institute at http://www.newpolitics.net and NDN’s Blog at http://www.ndnblog.org.” [8]
From New Democratic Network to NDN
The New Democratic Network officially became NDN in 2005. In August 2005, a study of the current NDN website, ndn.org, to which ndndem.org now redirects, did not reveal the words behind the acronym. A search of the website for “Democrat” yielded only:
- many members of the Advisory Board are long-time Democratic Party political operatives [9]. Whether this operation serves as a front or other affiliate of the Democratic Party coopting independents and “the progressive community”, or demonstrates a non-partisan independence from the existing bi-partisan duopoly, remains to be demonstrated. The whois database record names “New Directions for News“ as the registrant. See this topic’s Talk section.
Mission in 2008
A visit to the NDN website in February, 2008 finds this mission: “NDN is a progressive think tank and advocacy organization.
NDN’s work is organized around a powerful idea – that for progressives to succeed in the 21st century as they did in the 20th, they will have to do three things: offer a new governing agenda that speaks to the challenges of our day; master the new media and technology tools that are changing the way we all communicate and advocate; and understand and speak to the radically new demographic make-up of today’s America.
NDN’s staff, Fellows and collaborators offer fresh and original thinking in these three main areas of focus: new governing agenda, new media and technology and new demography. … You may also want to learn more about our affiliate the New Politics Institute, our think tank for politics, and review our recent article, “The 50 Year Strategy”, that lays out a big vision for progressive success in the years ahead.” [10]
NDN Founders Senior Staff
- Andy and Deborah Rappaport, Founders
- Simon Rosenberg, President and Founder
- Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Chair of Globalization Initiative
- Peter Leyden, Director of New Politics Institute
- Andres Ramirez, Vice President for Hispanic Programs
Advisory Board
- Joseph J. Andrew, former Democratic National Committee Chairman
- Sergio Bendixen, pollster and Latino expert
- Vic Fazio, former U.S. Representative, who was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
- Ron Kirk, former Dallas Mayor and 2002 Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee
- Dave McCurdy, former Democratic Leadership Council Chairman
- Mike McCurry, former White House Press Secretary
- Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff
- Morris Reid, Founding Partner and Managing Director of the Westin Rinehart Group
- Jonah Seiger, Internet pioneer and strategist
- Robert Shapiro, economist and former Under Secretary of Commerce
- Rob Stein, former Commerce Department Chief of Staff and private equity investor
- Christine A. Varney, former Federal Trade Commissioner
- Source: NDN.org accessed May 18, 2005.
The Coalition
The NDN, “a coalition member, plans a separate $5 million television campaign aimed at Latino voters in four states.” [11]
The “coalition” is comprised of five allied Democrat groups: Media Fund, “the principal vehicle for pro-Democratic television commercials by the coalition”; America Coming Together, “which is responsible for get-out-the-vote efforts”; America Votes, “the umbrella organization that will stitch together the activities of various progressive organizations”; Joint Victory Campaign 2004, “a combined fundraising committee”; and the Thunder Road Group.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_Democrat_Network#Advisory_Board
George Soros and the NDN: An interactive map of connections to George Soros
VERY INFORMATIVE!
http://www.muckety.com/Query?SearchResult=4166&SearchResult=5041144&graph=MucketyMap?_r=2D
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