Progressive Infrastructure

I’ve often talked about how the Left is building infrastructure that moves messaging, money and mobilization outside of the traditional Democratic establishment. Here’s another perfect example. With Swing Semester (501c4) and Swing Semester Civics (501c3), the Progressives are redeploying the Clinton and Obama campaign’s tremendously successful youth organizing efforts from Party campaigns to ideologically progressive organizations...

Swing Semester 2008 is the nation’s first political immersion program. We provide a bridge from interest to action for college students, recent graduates, and other young people who care deeply about their country and want to be a part of American history even as they study it. This September, over 250 passionate young people will venture out to eight cities in “swing” states for 10 weeks of intensive electoral work. They will live with host families, work in field campaigns, and engage in critical thinking to better understand their country and themselves.

Swing Semester 2008 is an investment in the most important asset of the progressive movement – its people. In the short run, our participants will knock on almost 2 million doors in the nation’s most critical swing states. Our greatest impact, however, will come from guiding hundreds of young citizens and committed families through an experience that will challenge, deepen, and energize us all for a lifetime of civic engagement.

Building that kind of infrastructure allows them to create an alternate power structure and whip mechanisms that influence the direction of the Progressive Movement and the Democratic Party.

What’s more, that are taking many elements that traditionally belong to Party-focused entities (e.g., campaigns and Campaign Committees) and creating independent, ideologically-based versions of them, moving power from the Democratic Party bureaucracy (which exists to elect Democrats, not to be “progressive”) over to the Progressive movement.  This movement of messaging, money and mobilization outside the traditional Party establishment changes the incentives of politicians from “obey the Democrat’s rules” to “obey the Progressives rules”.

The result – both risky and potentially rewarding – will be a Democratic Party much more responsive and submissive to the Democratic base and the far Left.

Note: 501(c)4 groups are allowed to “engage in political campaign activity”, but that cannot be “the organization’s primary activity.”   However, the Swing Semester program ”runs from September 2nd through November 7th, just after election day” and only in potential swing states.  It’s difficult to see how political campaign activity is anything but their organization’s primary activity.