The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“We have to fight back.” —Al Franken
The Left is angry—angry at President George W. Bush, the war in Iraq, the “right-wing media,” and more. And as National Review investigative writer Byron York reveals in this stunning, meticulously reported book, liberal activists have harnessed that anger to build the biggest, richest, and best organized political movement in American history.
Indeed, the Left’s failure to oust President Bush in 2004 has obscured the fact that this new movement has transformed American politics. York documents the staggering scope of liberals’ efforts—the record sums of money spent, the “shell game” financial maneuvers, the close coordination between “nonpartisan” groups and the Democratic Party, the revolutionary approaches to fund-raising and reaching out to voters, the pioneering use of movies and websites as campaign tools, and more.
The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy provides a startling behind-the-scenes look at this powerful liberal movement. York brings the reader into secret powwows at Soros’s Hamptons estate, into the Chinese restaurant where MoveOn is born, to a gala event where Al Franken rants about the evils of the right wing, to fund-raisers where liberals openly mock the election laws they’re ignoring, to the movie premiere where Michael Moore is feted by top-ranking Democrats, into the Washington restaurant where Democratic operatives hatch their plan, and to many other spots along the way.
One thing above all becomes clear: Despite their failure to win in 2004, liberals will only keep improving the well-oiled political machine they built.
A Main Selection of the Conservative Book Club
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Democrats raised an unprecedented level of funds in their attempt to elect John Kerry to the White House, and not just through contributing to directly to Kerry's campaign. Led by George Soros and his multimillion-dollar donations, money flowed to liberal groups like MoveOn that tried to push hard on President Bush's record. They failed, York argues, because rather than bringing new voters into the party, the activists perpetuated "closed loops" that preached solely to the choir. When such emotionally zealous activists made their way into Democratic inner circles, their scorn for anyone who held opposing points of view, York contends, may well have hurt efforts to reach out to swing voters. A detailed financial breakdown takes aim at the hype surrounding Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, demonstrating its failure to reach significant audiences outside the bluest parts of the blue states. York, the White House correspondent for the National Review, hits the Democrats particularly hard on allegations that they tried to skirt campaign finance laws by blurring-perhaps even crossing-the lines between the presidential campaign and issue advocacy groups prohibited from endorsing candidates. He largely refrains from taunting the liberals for their electoral failures, making his analysis of the flaws in the left-wing's self-insulated power structure valuable to readers on either side of the political fence.