Quietly, Obama Campaign Calls In The Cavalry:

There’s been a spurt of 527 activity on behalf of Sen. John McCain, but Barack Obama campaign has suddenly gone silent on the subject.

That’s because, after of year of telling donors not to contribute to 527 groups, of encouraging strategists not to form them and of suggesting that outside messaging efforts would not be welcome in Obama’s Democratic Party, Obama’s strategists have changed their approach.

An Obama adviser privy to the campaign’s internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies — what another campaign aide termed “the cavalry” — with come to Obama’s aid.
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The upshot: Obama’s campaign will no longer object to independent efforts that hammer John McCain, just as, in their mind, the McCain campaign has not objected to those efforts targeted at Obama. “I assume with their 527s stirring, some [Democratic] ones will as well,” another senior campaign official said.

The money is there. The top two 527s — the Service Employees International Union and America Votes — are liberal in orientation. The SEIU fund has contributed to other 527 efforts, and America Votes has earmarked most of its money for what it calls the “largest grassroots  voter mobilization” in history.  The third largest 527 — American Solutions Winning the Future — belongs to Newt Gingrich, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  The AFL-CIO has budgeted more than $53 million for messaging and turnout efforts and has run a limited flight of ads featuring veterans criticizing McCain. But they’ve shied away from larger-scale campaigns in part because they believe — or believed — that the Obama campaign did not want them mounted.

In April, after Progressive Media USA, a group formed by Republican-turned-Democratic media critic [David] Brock and the Center for American Progress, announced plans for a $40 million ad campaign against McCain, the Obama campaign send word through associates that donors would be discouraged from raising money for it. After the primaries ended, Brock turned the group into a much-less expensive opposition research concern. Brock and Podesta, both allies of the Clinton faction of the party, bowed to the reality that the Obama campaign wanted to centralize everything — message, advertising and field operations — in Chicago.

Aside from, you know, not running as an actual Democrat, pressuring the left-leaning 527s to disband was the stupidest thing the Obama campaign has done. A hearty “Welcome aboard, Chief” to Team Obama. As I have argued many times, unilateral disarmament is absurd. You don’t score points for bullying out of existence friendly groups of which 90% of voters will never hear. And the idea that this was going to be an all positive campaign was criminally naïve. If Obama personally prizes the mythic high road so dearly, it was still a step too far to banish the 527s. In case this post is not fleshed out enough for new readers intent on nitpicking, please read my post from May when this all went down in the first place.

Now, less than two months before the election, Obama is going to wave his scepter and call in “the cavalry.” I’ll bet the McCain campaign will have a lot of fun with this one.

I wonder if Brock and Podesta have enough time/desire to scramble back into the fray. I imagine the urge to tell Obama to twist would be difficult to quell.