Reply #1: About Democracy Corps and GCS....advised Democrats on IWR

[madfloridian]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2563/

The B team
On the other side of the aisle are the shining lights of the Democratic Party, James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Bob Shrum (the consultant who ran Kerry’s campaign and shied away from confronting the Swift Boat Veterans). These three men founded the Democracy Corps, a nonprofit “dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people.” Recall that on Oct. 3, 2002, prior to the Iraq war resolution votes, Democracy Corps advised Capitol Hill Democrats: “This decision will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent).” In other words, Carville and friends advised Democrats to cater to public opinion and let Bush have his war.

That same year, Carville and his associates at GCS (Greenberg Carville Shrum) were working in Bolivia, as the hired guns for presidential candidate Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Their involvement in the 2002 Bolivian election is the subject of a new documentary, Our Brand is Crisis, directed by Rachel Boynton. In the film, Jeremy Rosner, the campaign’s pollster and chief strategist, explains their mission: “We are in this because we not only believe in democracy, but in a particular brand of democracy, which is progressive, social democratic, market-based and modern.” And Tad Devine, who is in charge of advertising, tells Sanchez de Lozada, “We must own crisis and we must brand crisis.” In other words, GCS was planning to use Bolivia’s economic crisis to the campaign’s advantage."

I think I have been terribly naive for way too long about my party and my country.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/658

"“It was a great win for what I call the new Democratic Party,” Dean said. “This is the new Democratic Party. The old Democratic Party is back there in Washington, sometimes they still complain a little bit.”
Howard Dean Wyoming..November 17 2006

Good luck on that new party thing, Governor Dean.