The American Rising PAC says it has a “sole purpose”:
To hold Democrats accountable and expose any hidden hypocrisy. We use video tracking, research, and communication strategies to ensure they must account for every word and action.
And that is what it is apparently doing, according to Politico, which reported that ARP has begun its 2020 effort.
ARP began five years ago as an independent effort “focused exclusively on researching, tracking and deploying rapid-response against Hillary Clinton.”
But the effort to derail the Democrats seeking to oust President Trump is underway.
Warner: Cut Open Republicans
Already the organization has zeroed in on Senators Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), touted as two possible contenders for the presidency.
ARP found a video gem on Warren, “spotting and blasting out a video of Warren telling an audience she wants to ‘cut open’ the bodies of Republicans to see if they have hearts, generating a spate of 2017 stories.”
The group caught Harris saying she might accept corporate PAC money, a position she had to reverse, while it found another video in which socialist Bernie Sanders tells a “Washington Post reporter that it was ‘absolutely’ a mistake for Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez to endorse Cuomo, who is facing a primary challenge from actress Cynthia Nixon, stoking an intraparty rift with ripples far beyond the 2018 New York governor’s race.”
One of ARP’s goal is to push the Democrats to the left, forcing one candidate to adopt a more extreme “progressive” position than the next, thus alienating whatever is left of its base of everyday Americans. In this it is joined by Trump’s America First PAC:
The spoiler effort … is geared toward more than muddying-up prospective Trump opponents. The groups are also pursuing a strategy intended to pit Democrats against each other in a battle of progressive bona fides that the PAC is gleefully branding as the “#RaceToTheLeft.”
The idea is to identify and create fissures among Democratic candidates, fueling a race to embrace liberal litmus tests like single-payer health care, and stoke emerging flashpoints such as rejecting corporate PAC contributions, legalizing marijuana and abolishing the federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“They can’t really coalesce around any message or leader without alienating a significant element of their base or their donors,” America Rising Executive Director Alex Smith, who is leading the 2020 initiative, told POLITICO.
ARP’s Web Pages
A survey of ARP’s website shows just how active the group has been. It has created a page for each of the myriad Democratic candidates for president. The page for Warren contains 26 posts, while that of aging socialist Sanders has too many to count.
Its Twitter feed is putting out the latest material the Democrats provide, such as the tape of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) adopting the radical left’s position on Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Abolish it.
“Well, there you have it,” ARP’s Matt Gorman wrote. “Sen. Gillibrand: If Dems Gain Control, ‘The First Thing We Should Do Is…Get Rid Of ICE.”’
On June 29, ARP noted Gillibrand’s evolution from a relatively serious opponent of illegal immigration into an anti-ICE radical.
Last night, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand became the first sitting Democratic senator to support abolishing ICE in a CNN interview, yet another example of her shifting positions on immigration policy since she was a member of the House representing upstate New York.This liberal rallying cry signals a new, though not unexpected, shift for Gillibrand as she attempts to distinguish herself in a crowded 2020 Democratic hopeful field.
Yet, while Gillibrand was a member of the House, ARP noted, her opposition to illegal immigration, and the privileges and benefits of citizenship for illegal aliens, was such that a Spanish-language newspaper called her “anti-immigrante.”
How Much Farther Left Can the Party Go?
One wonders, however, how much further left the party can go.
In Sanders, It entertained a committed socialist and communist sympathizer as a serious candidate for president, and in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the party will send to Congress an inexperienced woman who bills herself as a democratic socialist, and who wants to “occupy airports” to shut down the enforcement of U.S. immigration law.
In California, the party endorsed a candidate for U.S. Senate who wants to shut down ICE and authored a law stopping state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Photo: Kameleon007/iStock/Getty Images Plus
