Mainstream liberal political pundits have started pointing the finger at “The Groups”. This shorthand covers the progressive nonprofit ecosystem that moved the Democratic Party so far to the left that it fell completely out of power.
Remember when the climate groups wanted to defund the police, and the abortion rights groups un-endorsed a Senator because of a voting rights bill? That’s the type of “intersectional” “solidarity” that they’re talking about.
A Saturday New York Times op-ed titled “When will Democrats learn to say no?” amplified Ezra Klein piece days earlier that proclaimed The End of the Obama Coalition. Ezra bemoaned “a culture in which nobody is saying no to the groups at any level of American Democratic politics.”
Democrats are just starting to reckon with what the progressive nonprofit complex has wrought. Which means The Groups and their allies (like AOC) are pushing back with an old standby: “Well, what about AIPAC!?”
AIPAC wins. And I don’t mean that snidely. AIPAC is not a partisan group, it is a special interest group that wants its issue to win more than any particular candidate or party. They want influence.
“Special Interest Group” is an actual definition, as opposed to a “General Interest Group” within the partisan Democratic ecosystem like Planned Parenthood, the Sunrise Movement, and the ACLU who actually care which candidate wins.
Here is a definition from a fantastic political science paper that can help gain a more nuanced understanding on the role of money in politics:
We consider two types of interest groups: special interest groups and general interest groups. Special interest groups care only about a particular policy, and do not care inherently about which candidate wins the election as long as their special interest policy is supported by the winner. As in Baron (1994), campaign contributions can "buy" some of the impressionable component of the vote, but catering to special interests will cost the candidates votes amongst the informed component of the vote. General interest groups, on the other hand, care about a policy dimension over which voters are divided and over which politicians are precommitted, so they do care about which candidate gets elected. They contribute mainly in close elections in order to increase the odds that a candidate they prefer gets elected.
Climate, abortion rights, and other major issues are areas where voters and politicians are “precommitted”.
That’s why there is so much outcry about The Groups: they lost it all.
That’s why we need to Listen To The Winners.
Can you provide a link to the paper you reference?