Democrats Begin to Build a Progressive Infrastructure

80 wealthy Democratic backers have vowed to contribute $200,000 a year for the next five years to the Democracy Alliance, which will attempt to build a progressive infrastructure for developing new Democratic initiatives comparable to the conservative infrastructure that supports such think tanks as the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Rosenberg said liberals and Democrats now face a conservative "information-age Tammany Hall, a 21st century political machine, that is simply better than what we have on our side.

"The infrastructure we have was built for a different time and mission. It was built around the congressional majority we had for 60 years in the 20th century, the labor movement and the urban-ethnic city machines," he added.

As alliance officials see it, many liberal groups are designed to protect an agenda that was enacted by past Democratic majorities -- as opposed to generating new ideas and communication strategies to win support from voters who do not belong to labor or other traditionally Democratic constituencies.

This is an important step in building a progressive majority, Simon Rosenberg knows what he's doing, his New Democrat Network I suspect will soon be the major organization representing the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, and they will be a much more effective group than the DLC has ever been. Rosenberg takes on important new initiatives to get Democrats back on track, the DLC just uses the same failed strategies over and over again wondering why they can't find their mythical "political center." The DLC acts like Don Ponce De Leon searching endlessly for something that doesn't exist.