Liberal/Progressive Groups Poised To Spend $350 Million On Election..

[Virginia Dare]

Sounds like a lot, I hope it's enough. :shrug:

A broad range of interest groups today announced plans for a costly independent drive to mobilize progressive voters for the 2008 election, much of it targeting younger and minority voters.

Leaders from the loose coalition of groups predicted a combined spending effort that will total more than $350 million.

During a press conference describing the endeavor, leaders from several of the groups made clear the effort is aimed at taking on presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain. McCain is already the target of an independent ad paid for by the Fund for America, a group financed by wealthy financier George Soros, and by the Service Employees International Union.

Heather Smith, the executive director of Rock the Vote, said youth turnout in the primaries has already proven that "the conventional wisdom" about youth apathy is false. "In every early primary contest so far, turnout has either doubled, tripled or quadrupled," she said. Young people are "paying attention to politics at rates we've never seen."

MoveOn.org also plans to engage in the effort "to get the progressive issues front and center in the debate," said Ilyse Hogue, the group's communication director. She predicted the group would spend $30 million "at the intersection of technology and democracy." That will include identifying newly registered young voters, and tracking them through their e-mail, cellphone and online networking presence

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/18/progressive_groups_plan_robust.html

[annabanana]

1. I don't even think THAT scratches the surface...

I think there are a bunch of people who have given a bit here and a bit there who haven't committed nearly what they're planning to between now & November.

[TooBigaTent]

2. I can see them spending that money to attack McCain, but what liberal are they

going to support with those dollars? I don't see any remaining on the Democratic side, unless they are going to support down-ticket Dems.

[Virginia Dare]

3. This is an anti-McCain effort..

the way I'm reading it. They're figuring whomever the Dem nominee is will be infinitely better than McCain by any stretch of the imagination, and after his "little" gaffe yesterday, I have to agree.

It'll be much like Soros pouring his money into an anti-Bush effort in 2004.