Matt Stoller's tease last night, "Anti-Clinton Opportunity," certainly piqued everyone's curiosity. Today's Politico.com piece covers what Stoller teased, though without mentioning Matt.
"We'll definitely have sufficient resources to make a significant media buy," he said, adding that their campaign against Clinton would be "edgy" enough to get attention. "We don't need to raise an immense amount of money to make a big difference." ... ..
... .. "I'm definitely not a Hillary hater -- I think there are other candidates who are better for the progressive movement," Hurowitz said. "Most of the people involved in our PAC will be happy to support her if she does become the nominee."
The above quote is from Glenn Hurowtiz, the president of "Democratic Courage," a new PAC put together to push back on Hillary Clinton. I had a brief conversation with Glenn today. He confirmed that Stoller's post last night was indeed about his PAC. Hurowitz went on to say that the goal of Democratic Courage is to rebut the growing perception that the primary season is over and Hillary Clinton has the nomination won. As Glenn sees it, Clinton is "vulnerable," but between Republicans talking about her all the time and the media doing the same, according to Hurowitz, she's being assumed the winner far too early. The other issue for him is that Clinton is being portrayed as a progressive when he feels there are several candidates that fit the description much better than she does. Hurowitz's group is about to do a media advertising buy that will take Clinton on.
Hurowitz has written pro Edwards posts, and he freely admits he personally supports John Edwards, as well as having given money to Edwards. An earlier post of Hurowitz's covered "The Clinton-Obama energy plan." However, Democratic Courage is not a pro Edwards PAC. According to Hurowitz, others involved in the PAC support other candidates and they have no intention of endorsing anyone. He was quick to add that if he and the others joining him believed that Clinton was truly inevitable they wouldn't have formed Democratic Courage. He's more than willing to support Clinton if she wins, as the quote above illustrates, but he thinks the primary is far from over and his group is going to do all they can to make sure they get their message out.
Fewer than twenty people are involved in Democratic Courage right now. But when I asked Hurowitz what big name blogs were involved he wouldn't give the names. He also said his PAC had several "maxed out donors," who have already given $5,000. PACs can't raise more than that amount from any one individual, and the main advantage of a PAC is that there are far fewer limits on directly supporting candidates than 527s, which rely on unlimited windfall contributions from big money donors, but also come with tight strings attached on how you can use the money.
Hurowitz made a point of mentioning that tomorrow is the 5-year anniversary of Paul Wellstone's death, and Hurowitz will have a post up on Politico.com talking about it, something he also covered in his book. Looking at the homepage, you'll see a picture of Wellstone right alongside of John Edwards.
Looking at the Democratic Courage site, I found the blogroll interesting. John Edwards is the only candidate listed, so I asked Hurowitz why Obama wasn't included as well if the PAC isn't John Edwards centric. He laughed and said that the site was his personal blog until very recently when he made it the home of the PAC, and he's not gotten around to doing anything with it.
I've emailed the Clinton camp, but haven't heard back from them.
The primary temperature is about to heat up.