There is a whole industry that does “fund raising” based on manufactured outrage. We have been very aware of Republicans doing this. But we should ask the question on our side.
For months there has been a group advertising heavily on this site calling themselves “Stop Republicans”. I have never once seen any claim or promise of any particular action. It is simply a case of “Do you hate Republicans? So do we, so send us some money.”
has some summary information about these actors. It is evidently organized as a PAC, which is not a surprise. According to Open Secrets, they have spent about $1.5M in the 2020 cycle, so presumably they raised about that same amount in response to these ads. But what have they done with the money? Judging from the Open Secrets page, at least 80% of that has gone into self-dealing and advertising — the advertising to get you to send them money. The only possible action-oriented expenditures I see from the Open Secrets page are payments to ActBlue and something called the “Progressive Turnout Project”.
One wonders what value they are providing, considering that we could just donate directly to ActBlue, which actually DOES have a track record of real activism.
This makes me suspect this isn’t a legitimate advocacy organization. If anybody can offer a more optimistic assessment of this organization, I’d like to see that.
More importantly, this would be a very good time to identify the organizations that are truly out there making a difference. I’d like to send money to organizations that are actually fighting for the cause and not just enriching themselves. I would appreciate any recommendations of worthy PACs.
And if I have misjudged the good people at Stop Republicans, perhaps they will stop by here and tells us exactly what they are doing to help Amy McGrath, for example.