WashPost Reveals Wealthy Dem Donors’ New Plan; Buries Donors’ Hypocrisy

May 5th, 2014 3:46 PM

Considering how much time they spend talking about Republican Party strategy, it’s refreshing to see the mainstream media pull back the curtain on the Left every once in a while. That’s what The Washington Post did, if just a tiny bit, in a Monday, May 5 front-pager entitled “Liberal Donors Eye New Strategy.”

Reporter Matea Gold revealed that the Democracy Alliance, a group of wealthy liberal donors, is working on a new strategy that will focus more on helping state-level Democratic candidates and increasing voter turnout among party loyalists. The idea is to give Democrats more power over the process of gerrymandering state legislature and U.S. House districts by winning back state legislatures.


It’s good to see a major newspaper let us know what rich, powerful liberals are up to. Gold even mentioned the names of several left-wing groups that the Democracy Alliance funds, including America Votes, Catalist, and the Center for American Progress.

On the other hand, Gold waited until the fourth-to-last paragraph to address the elephant in the room – the fact that these wealthy liberals donate to a party that regularly demonizes the rich. Gold wrote this about the Democracy Alliance’s annual spring conference, held last week in Chicago:
 

The Chicago conclave – which featured a wine party in the Ritz-Carlton’s sky-view presidential suite and a private tour of the Art Institute of Chicago – drew accusations of hypocrisy from Republican Party officials, who noted that the wealthy donors met privately even as Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) was railing about the behind-the-scenes influence of the conservative patrons Charles and David Koch.
 

Gold didn’t quote any such Republican critics, but she quickly provided a rebuttal, complete with a quote from DA president Gara LaMarche:
 

Democracy Alliance leaders rejected that, saying its members are seeking to reduce the influence of money on politics.

"There is a degree of irony in using the current system to change the system,"  LaMarche said. "But the alternative is a kind of unilateral disarmament.
 

Gold’s generally soft treatment of the Democracy Alliance stood in contrast to Politico’s Ken Vogel, who last week based an entire article on the inherent hypocrisy of these wealthy liberal donors. Vogel repeatedly tried to question DA conference participants about their moral predicament, but he was dodged, stonewalled, and even physically blocked at one point.

Gold's story today also differed markedly from how the paper has previously treated the Koch brothers, wealthy donors on the other side of the aisle. In fact, it was Gold herself who wrote an article in January slamming the Kochs for building a secretive network of advocacy groups and failing to disclose the donors. That article relied on information supplied by the Center for Responsive Politics, a liberal group funded by George Soros, who exerts influence through a similar network of organizations and media outlets.