Ben Smith on how Team Obama engaged in 'unilateral disarmament' on campaign spending

There's been an enormous amount of coverage about the spending by outside groups allied with the Republicans. Not so much spending by the Democratic allied groups. There's a reason. Today, Ben Smith takes a look at the edict from the Obama operation that rich donors should not contribute to progressive organizations. Mike Lux wrote about this a couple weeks ago.

As, you hear more stories about how Democrats are being outspent, keep this in mind:

Democrats enter the home stretch of the 2010 elections complaining vocally about the flood of Republican money, much of it anonymous, pounding their candidates.

But as the White House points the finger at outside Republican groups, many Democrats point the finger back at the White House, which dismantled the Democratic Party's own outside infrastructure in 2008 and never tried to rebuild it.

Never tried to rebuild it. Ben calls it "unilateral disarmament":

But it's also easy to underestimate the president's ability to increase the flow of cash to Democrat-friendly groups, had he chosen to do so. Instead, Obama's choice has been unilateral disarmament.

To the White House, that posture is a mark of the purity of the presidential brand, and of Obama's consistency. "Throughout his 2008 campaign, the President vowed to change business as usual in Washington and take on some of the tough challenges that politicians in Washington had put off for too long," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "We're pleased to have made so much progress on these priorities — from Wall Street reform to health care reform - while staying true to the values and vision that earned the enthusiastic support of so many Democrats and Republicans during the campaign."

True to the values and vision? I guess that's true on this particular issue of discouraging any outside spending on progressive groups. And, good to know Team Obama is so "pleased," despite the havoc that is being wreaked upon the Democrats. (Outside of DC media types, does anyone actually use the word "pleased"?)

Now, as you can imagine, not everyone thinks "unilateral disarmament" is a great idea:

But to some of its more practical-minded allies, the White House is protecting the brand at a very real cost to the party.

"The leadership of the Obama campaign warned their donors against giving to outside groups - including many of the key issue groups that motivate progressives. The leadership in the White House has done the same thing," said Erica Payne, one of the founders of the Democracy Alliance, a group of the largest liberal donors, who now heads the Agenda Project. "As a result, the administration often looks like Will Ferrell in the movie 'Old School' - running through the street naked, shouting, 'Come on everybody's streaking' when in reality they are all by themselves."

According to one fundraiser, some donors aren't giving so they'll get invited back to the White House:

Jennifer Swanson, a fundraising consultant briefly connected with one of the independent 2008 efforts, cited both the bad economy and low Democratic expectations as factors cooling independent donors.

But she said a persistent sense of presidential disapproval is also a major factor.

"Donors don't want to do something that is going to make them unwelcome at the White House," she said.

That is just absurd. That's like knowing advocacy groups won't push the White House because they want to get invited to the White House.

The point of what we're doing isn't to get invited to the White House. It's supposed to be about enacting a progressive agenda.

So, the donors and the advocates have rigged things so that they can continuing having fun at their White House parties. Meanwhile, action on the progressive agenda is slipping away -- and will go nowhere after the November elections.