The Phoenix Group

George "Moneybags" Soros is scheming again.

In typical liberal fashion, he and 70 other millionaires and billionaires think the way to the prevent the Democrat Party from slipping into complete oblivion is by throwing money at the problem.

Soros says be patient

The Scottsdale, Ariz., meeting, called to start the process of building an ideas production line for liberal politicians, began what organizers hope will be a long dialogue with the "partners," many from the high-tech industry. Participants have begun to refer to themselves as the Phoenix Group.

Rob Stein, a veteran of President Bill Clinton’s Commerce Department and of New York investment banking, convened the meeting of venture capitalists, left-leaning moneymen and a select few D.C. strategists on how to seed pro-Democratic think tanks, media outlets and leadership schools to compete with such entrenched conservative institutions as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Leadership Institute.

Senior Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials were quietly briefed about the meeting in recent weeks. DNC Chairman Howard Dean was aware of it, in part though his friendship with Stein, but one senior DNC source said the organizers "kept that list [of attendees] kind of tight."

Sarah Ingersoll, de facto spokeswoman for Stein’s Democracy Alliance, said it was "a very preliminary meeting of committed donors interested in building a community to support progressive infrastructure."

...The money details are several weeks away. "There aren’t dollar figures at this point," Ingersoll said. Soros, a Hungarian-born financier who donated more than $23 million to pro-Democratic 527 groups last cycle, gave the main presentation, said Ingersoll, who declined to name the other presenters.

"Primarily, we’re looking at making recommendations and thinking through with these donors on how they can form an alliance," she added. "This is about creating a network of individuals to share information to be effective in whatever they do going forward."

...Ingersoll denied that progressives are merely trying to replicate Heritage and Fox News.

Another source at the meeting said that it was important for existing progressive groups to coordinate their activities and to avoid the turf wars that have riven progressive causes in the past.

One source at the DNC with direct knowledge of the agenda said that the Phoenix Group had three specific goals at the outset. It wants to create liberal think tanks, training camps for young progressives and media centers.

Despite the general recognition that progressives are several years behind conservatives, liberal activists are confident that technology will help them close the gap. "Technology may allow us to do in a few years what it took the other side 40 years," the DNC source said.
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First, they aren't "progressives." They're liberals.

Second, Soros and the others believe it's possible to replicate what the right has done by coordinating their funds.

They don't get it. They REALLY don't.

It's not a matter of technological issues and the avoidance of turf wars.

All the money in the world can't buy the support they're trying to gather because they are offering no message, no substance, nothing that the majority of Americans believe in.

The liberals have no solutions. They just stomp their feet and throw fits like unruly pre-schoolers, as they attack their opposition.

I know they try to buy power; but their efforts are in vain.

Soros gave $23 million to pro-Democratic 527 groups during the last election cycle and didn't get the job done.

They needed to pay people to register voters. Of course, many of these efforts were rife with fraud. For example, Project Vote paid workers $7 an hour and $1.50 per application after they reached a quota. Is it a surprise that such a system would invite abuse?

Racine, WI, provides an example:

Project Vote filed 1,389 voter registration applications in Racine prior to the Sept. 14 primary. More than 20% had problems, according to the city clerk's office:

Six were for residents who told the city clerk's office they had not signed the forms or authorized them to be filed.

230 applications contained addresses that don't exist or are outside of Racine.

96 could not be processed because they were missing information.

Signatures on applications purporting to be for Danielle Pflugrad, Paul Pflieger and Henry Pflieger were "suspiciously similar." All three were already registered to vote.

About 150 of the applications rejected by the clerk's office were reviewed by the Journal Sentinel:

Eighty had addresses that don't exist or are outside of Racine.

One application attempted to register Tasha Jackson, but the signature on the form was Jackson Tasha.

Signatures appeared similar on three forms purporting to apply for Albert Wells of Austin St. One Project Vote employee dated one application Aug. 4; the other two applications, filed by two other Project Vote employees, were dated Aug. 6.

Project Vote filed 483 more applications in Racine last week that have not yet been reviewed by the clerk's office.

The American people have rejected the Democrat message, which is usually no message at all. The issues they have clear positions end up turning more voters away than winning them over.

Soros and the other billionaires and millionaires think their Phoenix Group can raise the Democrats out of the ashes of their irrelevance.

I doubt that will happen.