David Sirota sure gets some kudos from me for at least attempting to get a bead on Beltway political consultants but I’ve watched him duck pointed questions about Obama strategists Hildebrand Tewes and MoveOn’s non-moves on Iraq a few times now even as he first wrote about that relationship between HT and antiwar groups as “incestuous overlaps“, then “unspoken corruption” and finally calling their strategy to lay off congressional Dems “dishonest“.

A number of pieces have floated the web since early ‘08 about the conflict of interest between consultants (Hildebrand Tewes)and movement activists (MoveOn) but one of the first to note the cynical campaign ploys of Obama advisors was Paul Street at Black Agenda Report:

“Join the movement to end the war’…by caucusing for Barack Obama.”
But for my money the worst example of Team Obama’s taste for truly audacious deception is their effort to appropriate the spirit and support for the antiwar movement.

Listen to these two sentences from the cover of a shiny new mailing that I just got from the Obama campaign in Iowa: “From the very beginning, Barack Obama said No to the War in Iraq. Join the movement to end the war and chance Washington” (Obama for America 2007).

Yes, you read that correctly. “Obama ‘08″ is equating caucusing for the junior senator from Illinois with joining the antiwar movement.

Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes say they’ve taken a leave of absence from HT Consulting while working on the Obama Campaign but they were hired on there so long ago its hard to believe they left the place to the whims of staffers for two years. Their staffers, though, have been integral in putting out calls to (non)action on Iraq on behalf of astroturf campaigns like Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) which HT was hired to run for MoveOn, SEIU (Anna Burger for VP?), Americans United for Change (actually a HT inhouse creation run by Brad Woodhouse), etc.

Smack in the middle of a NYT piece on elected Dems’ supposed handwringing about their lack of action on Iraq is HT staffer Moira Mack, hitting back not at Senate Majority Leader Reid or House Speaker Pelosi, but providing them cover just as Dems say its all the Republicans’ fault:

“Senator Reid was not able to get it done, but ultimately it is the Republicans who are obstructing passage,” said Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

AAEI’s Iraq Summer theme in ‘07 may as well have been called No Escalation Against Democrats. Curiously, it deployed 100 paid students nationwide to take on Republicans in home districts on the Iraq occupation (actually escalation, as was the vernacular of the day) but no Democrats.

100 staff will be working in 15 states (Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia) to target more than 60 members of Congress who are blocking the passage of legislation that will bring a safe end to the war in Iraq.

Political consultants being what they are its improbable to believe that all that organizing and listbuilding done during HT’s Iraq Summer wasn’t put to use, or created, for their candidate, Obama, in the fifteen states needed months later for primary wins. A horrible problem with that is here we are a year after this little organizing campaign and thousands more have died while supposed ‘antiwar’ resources were centralized and put to use for partisan politicking. How many involved in Iraq Summer are still agitating to get out of Iraq and how many are Obama paid staffers or volunteers?

Nevermind, too, that 29 Democrats voted for the Senate resolution Bush wanted ‘authorizing’ force against Iraq including then Senate Majority Leader, now top Obama advisor, Tom Daschle, who has also had a longstanding political and financial relationship with Hildebrand Tewes. As far as I can tell the only Democrat to be exoriated for this vote is Hillary Clinton. Not Obama supporters Kerry, Dodd, Daschle, Reid, Pelosi, etc. So apparently the groups advised by Obama campaign consultants found one Democrat to go after, afterall: Obama’s biggest challenger in the presidential race.

When former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellen’s book came out recently it took just days for a clearly coordinated effort to appear from seemingly different groups calling on him to decline any profits for participating in the Administration’s astroturfing of the Iraq invasion and occupation, demanding he donate them to Afghanistan and Iraq war vets instead. But MoveOn and Americans United for Change aren’t separate nor distinct under the Hildebrand Tewes umbrella. Maybe they should decline their salaries and profits until they stop astroturfing the occupation themselves? Profits for Propaganda, indeed, as one MoveOn email said. But is it any better to keep actual, on the ground energy and resistance to the occupation out of the picture than what McClellen did? Or, as one blog post noted:

While it is certainly laudable that MoveOn has pressured McClellan to donate proceeds of his book to Iraq and Afghan veterans, it would be just as laudable, if not more so, for MoveOn to put pressure on Congress to make sure that Iraqi and Afghani homes have been rebuilt after having been wiped out by American bombs, to compensate those Iraqis and Afghanis whose families have been unjustifiably killed by the American military much more than the paltry amount that they are currently receiving, to make sure that Iraqi and Afghani schools and hospitals and bridges and villages have been rebuilt after having been demolished by American firepower. But since the American media focuses less than 5 percent of their coverage on Iraq and Afghanistan, one wonders if MoveOn will be any different in their treatment and approach to the victims of American militarism.

For the time being the Obama Campaign has tossed Howard Dean a bone for his 50 state strategy though its acknowledged Paul Tewes is pretty much Big Dog now and all that listbuilding done in the states is clanking around in the computers of HT, waiting for buyers. I can’t see that this bodes well for the Democrat Party or antiwar activists.

Beware Grand Bargains.

And Bake Sales to Take Back the White House.