David Brock’s Tough-Talking Third-Party Group Fizzles
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A few weeks ago, Media Matters’ David Brock announced to great fanfare that he was taking over Progressive Media USA, a third-party group that would, he vowed, raise $40 million for ads to soften up John McCain in advance of the general election.
Now the group is quietly shuttering those efforts with barely a whimper.
Barack Obama’s fundraising team has been quietly putting out word to major donors that they didn’t want any money to go to such third-party groups. Instead, they wanted the cash to go to the Obama campaign, so Obama advisers could be in sole control of the campaign’s message.
It worked. Brock has quietly leaked a statement to The Washington Post saying that his group is, for all practical purposes, defunct.
The message is clear: we don’t want your kind of “help.”
A new kind of politics? It’s a good sign.