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Troops Rally For Regime Change Battle
By Don Hazen and Tai Moses, AlterNet
March 5, 2004
Super Tuesday was John Kerry's Rubicon. The furious, but not so fast general 
presidential contest began, in all its excessive glory and gore. While George 
W. Bush made his disingenuous congratulatory phone call to Kerry on Tuesday, 
the president's campaign was working to churn out the beginning of millions of 
dollars of television and radio ads that will try to negatively define John 
Kerry for swing voters in a number of key states. Kerry, for his part, didn't 
hesitate to set the tenor of his campaign – his victory speech ripped Bush on 
health care, jobs and national security, and charged the administration with 
having "the most inept, reckless, and ideological foreign policy in modern 
history." 
Meanwhile, the online advocacy group MoveOn.org, intent on covering Kerry's 
back, shifted its three-tier operation into high gear. It urged its members to 
open their wallets and contribute to the Kerry campaign, and MoveOn PAC asked 
members to become campaign activists and pledge a certain number of hours per 
week reaching out to potential voters on the web, telephone, and in 
face-to-face conversations. (On March 5, that number had reached 6,677,580 hours.) And 
the MoveOn.org Voter Fund (the organization's 527 arm) launched the first shot 
in a new volley of television ads critical of Bush's policies slated to air 
throughout the 17 battleground states (those decided by fewer than 6 percentage 
points in 2000). 
MoveOn is now over two million people strong in the United States. This 
number is unprecedented in the history of hands-on activist organizations with the 
freedom to operate in political campaigns. As MoveOn itself points out: "We're 
bigger than the Christian Coalition at its peak. To put it another way, one 
in every 146 Americans is now a MoveOn member. And we're still growing fast." 
MoveOn is joined in its work by a range of others, including America Coming 
Together (ACT) and the Media Fund, which are both supported by labor union 
SEIU, Sierra Club, Emily's List, and high-powered donors. Other groups are doing 
non-partisan voter registration and education work, including the progressive 
coalition America Votes, Women Vote! Project, Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit 
Action Network, League Of Young Voters, National Voice and hundreds of other 
voter registration and grassroots and advocacy groups. Collectively they all 
make up the diverse army that can be defined as the "regime change movement." 
Partisan groups like MoveOn and ACT did not endorse a candidate in the 
primary. In the spirit of Anybody But Bush Again, they waited for a potential 
nominee to emerge, and now that he has, they are firmly behind him and digging in 
for the big fight. 
As journalist Christopher Hayes wrote in January, "Issue advocacy and voter 
contact in an election year is nothing new, but never before have progressive 
groups come together to coordinate their efforts, pool their resources and 
collectively execute the program." 
Power Of The 527s 
Because of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation, and the 
progressive movement coming alive in recent years – much as the Christian 
Coalition did in the '80s and '90s – this election has a new dynamic. 
McCain-Feingold indirectly empowered the Democrats' progressive base, since 
it moved much of the soft money (unregulated money, in contrast to the $2,000 
personal limit for each candidate) out of the Democratic and Republican 
parties. Into the breach stepped the 527s, which operate independently of parties and 
candidates, but are powerful anti-Bush forces and have been well-funded by 
progressive philanthropists such as George Soros and Peter Lewis, and labor 
unions like AFSCME and SEIU. (There are some Republican 527s, but they are not 
nearly as developed at this stage.) 
These 527s are controversial; in part because Republicans see how 
progressives, with the help of big donors, have created an infrastructure that can do 
battle while Kerry gets his funding legs over the next month. Kerry spent his war 
chest winning the primaries and finished with just $2 million in the bank, 
while the Bush campaign intends to spend at least $100 million before the 
political conventions this summer. Kerry announced his intention to raise $80 
million to compete with Bush. After the conventions each candidate will receive $75 
million in matching federal funds. 
The Federal Election Commission has issued complicated rules for potentially 
restricting the activities of the 527s, but there is a heated debate about 
what McCain-Feingold stipulated and how the rules should be applied. Stay tuned, 
because this topic will be bouncing around for the next month or two. 
Kerry the Contender 
In the meantime, the various factions of the regime change movement are hard 
at work. Besides covering the Kerry campaign with television ad buys and 
registering voters in key states, MoveOn et al. play another important role; they 
can work to create an infrastructure that will hopefully support Kerry after he 
is elected and presumably hold him accountable when the pressures from 
corporate interests mount. 
They can also help to keep the candidate honest. It was on the steam of 
progressive support that the Massachusetts senator, over the last six months, 
morphed from Candidate Kerry into Kerry the Contender. Any guy who blazes through 
the primary season the way John Kerry has is bound to walk with a spring in his 
step. But will Kerry be able to keep his spine straight when the going gets 
tough? 
As John Nichols wrote in the Nation, the DLC will lean on Kerry to soften his 
rhetoric, hoping to make him more palatable to moderates. "With the 
nomination fight winding down, Kerry will be pressured to devolve toward the cautious 
centrism that characterized the early, 'going nowhere fast' stage of his 
campaign." That would be a shame, and poor strategy, too. What the Democratic Party 
needs is a good strong streak of populist outrage, and the regime change 
movement is counting on it. Kerry should heed Nichols' reminder that, "when he 
started evolving into a more aggressive and progressive candidate, he started 
winning." 
Which Side Are You On? 
No one is fooling themselves that the next eight months will be easy. The 
presidential campaign will essentially be a nasty war in which advertisements and 
media coverage are the bombs, while grassroots voter registration are the 
ground troops in communities and states that are truly split. Campaign newbies 
are advised to apply the "tuff skin" and stay focused. As the progressive base 
of the election campaign keeps gaining momentum and visibility, many 
organizations will inevitably become targets for Republican smear attacks. 
This election pits political sides from almost two distinct cultures: on the 
Bush side is the southern and western predominantly fundamentalist Christian, 
white-male dominated, conservative voter, wary of or downright opposed to 
minorities, gays and feminists. On the Democratic side is the more urban, 
suburban, diverse voter in the northeast, Midwest and west coast, who believes that 
resources should be shared and certain rights protected, and who rejects the 
intolerance of Bush's fundamentalist base. On top of it all, the Bush 
administration has opted for a culture war campaign, focusing on religion, gay marriage 
and guns. And the right to choose, environmental sustainability and economic 
justice will all be hanging in the balance on Nov. 2, 2004. 
With positions, messages and values this starkly opposing, there won't be 
many undecided voters in this race. 
The Battle Plan 
America Coming Together is serving as the "footsoldiers" of the movement in 
the battleground states, which will likely be Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, 
Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, 
Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. ACT's 
mission, according to its president, Ellen Malcolm, is to "mobilize millions of 
voters who will say no to the Republican agenda at every level." Using both 
sophisticated technology and plain old shoe leather, ACT workers canvas neighborhoods 
and go door to door, talking to people and registering voters. As ACT 
steadily adds new Democratic-leaning voters to the rolls, MoveOn has already made a 
major mark. 
Last fall, MoveOn.org Voter Fund set a goal of raising $10 million in small 
contributions from members in order to air advertisements in battleground 
states. With 170,000 MoveOn members contributing an average of $60 each, matched by 
some of the top donors, MOVF exceeded its fundraising goal. On March 4, MOVF 
kicked off the last stage of the $10 million campaign, running TV ads in 67 
media markets in 17 states. 
In most states, MOVF ads focus on the "kitchen table economy," highlighting 
issues such as job losses to outsourcing and Bush's plan to eliminate overtime 
pay. In other states, including Florida, Maine, Minnesota and Nevada, MOVF 
will run "Child's Pay" (winner of the Bush In 30 Seconds ad contest), which under
scores the Bush budget deficit. (This issue resurfaced with a vengeance after 
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently suggested cutting vital 
services and Social Security benefits in order to pay off the burgeoning federal 
debt.) 
MoveOn president Wes Boyd announced Friday that the organization would spend 
another $1 million on television ads highlighting the growing economic 
insecurity in the country. "In light of the disappointing jobs numbers today, which 
demonstrate again that the President has no plan for getting many Americans 
back to work, we've decided that it's important for our message to stay on the 
air," Boyd said. 
Real People Matter 
MoveOn has demonstrated forcefully – as did the Dean campaign – that real 
people still matter in American politics. Small donors have the clout to 
undermine the most corrupt elements of American politics, in which political giving 
is almost always a quid pro quo; corporate lobbyists trade money for policy 
favors and the wealthy for access to politicians. 
As MoveOn is the first to point out, this tidal wave of engagement and 
activism isn't exclusive to them. Virtually every progressive group, from Greenpeace 
to the ACLU, has seen an increase in membership and donations. Circulation of 
progressive magazines are way up, while web traffic to independent news sites 
is through the roof. President Bush said he was a uniter, and he was right; 
he is uniting people across America to fight to get their country back. 
The new democratic groundswell draws its strength from the hopes of millions 
of people, standing up and taking action for a better country and a better 
world. They refuse to let lobbyists, attack politics and fear-mongering destroy 
America's democracy. Against the courage and conviction of such people, even 
Karl Rove and Bush's $100 million campaign fund don't look so daunting. 
Don Hazen is executive editor of AlterNet, currently on leave. Tai Moses is 
senior editor of AlterNet. 

Quan