Once the scourge of Democrats, Media Matters for America founder plays tough for Hillary Clinton

[Denzil_DC]

5. Neat unattributed non-quotes in that there concern-trolling (and near plagiarized) article:

"While there is residual unease among some liberal operatives that Brock’s conversion story fits into a pattern of opportunism ..."

Brock abandoned and was writing very critically about the Republicans by 1996/97. It's now 2014. As opportunism goes, that's a pretty slow burn.

Media Matters needs to be treasured and emulated, and Brock's other initiatives are just about the only effective beatback against the US right wing at the moment. Clinton's far from the only Democrat it defends against the constant propaganda onslaught, as Edward Helmore must be aware.

But then he seems to have lazily cribbed his lede (and practically the headline) from Michelle Goldberg's the Nation article that he refers to at one point (which is by far the more interesting read in terms of his early history and current initiatives, contradicts some of Helmore's vague assertions, fleshes out the backstory, and gives a warts-and-all picture of Brock as an effective activist):

How David Brock Built an Empire to Put Hillary in the White House.

For instance, Helmore claims:

Brock acknowledges only that his mission is to counter rightwing attacks, though the focus of those attacks – and thus the rapid-response resources of American Bridge – are clearly centred on preventing opponents from defining Clinton during her candidacy-in-waiting. The left-leaning publication the Nation recently described Brock’s political apparatus as designed “to put Hillary in the White House”.

That unnerves some party advisers who fear this kind of surveillance can only harm the political process. Candidates will be forced to the centre of political discourse. Surrendering principles for electoral success could turn out to be a hollow victory – or no victory at all, says a former Kennedy adviser, Andrew Karsch. “Democrats need a statesman who can articulate the issues, not someone who holds their finger to the wind on every issue. Instead of arguing something, you just mud-wrestle? That’s not an answer. It’s a complete capitulation.”

Mudwrestling? Is this, from Goldberg's article, evidence of mudwrestling? Because Helmore doesn't explain that accusation:

He has, however, gone after left-wing critics of the Clintons. When Harper’s published the October cover story “Stop Hillary!” by Doug Henwood, a Nation contributing editor, Correct the Record [another Brock initiative] responded with a point-by-point rebuttal of over 9,000 words. Some of it was convincing, some of it—particularly an earnest defense of Clinton’s record on welfare reform—less so. Whatever you make of it, though, it demonstrated that Brock is willing to fight challenges to the Democratic establishment that come from progressives as well as conservatives.

Shocker--a 9,000-word point-by-point rebuttal--TL;DR maybe, perhaps even including the dreaded blue linkies, but "mudwrestling"?

Goldberg cites quite a few sources, and has even interviewed some of them, which is more than Helmore seems to have bothered to do:

When I met with Brock, he suggested that I talk with Howard Dean about the work he’s been doing. Shortly thereafter, Dean e-mailed me to set up the interview. Dean had become chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2005, a year after Brock launched Media Matters, and says he quickly realized that Brock had “the best communications shop on the left. He had an ability to crystallize issues, mobilize people and call out the Republicans—and the Democrats to this day are still floundering over that.”

“It never occurred to me that David Brock needed to be redeemed,” Dean adds. “He redeemed himself.”

...

American Bridge was the natural next step. By means of this group, Brock took the Media Matters method—which involves monitoring virtually every word uttered by the right-wing media—and transferred it to the realm of Republican politicians. “There’s no organization that does the level of tracking and research that we do,” says American Bridge president Brad Woodhouse, who previously served as communications director for the DNC. “The parties don’t do it; the campaigns don’t invest in it. There’s no one that has the ability to pull this type of stuff—video, news archives, our own video archives—as quickly and as cleanly to use in a rapid-response fashion as we do.”

...

Begala, like Dean, is an unabashed Brock fan. He’s quick to emphasize that American Bridge’s value isn’t limited to capturing gotcha moments. As an adviser to Priorities USA Action, a major Democratic Super PAC, Begala says of American Bridge: “They produced for us a 950-page book of every business deal of Mitt Romney’s career. We spent something like $65 million [in the 2012 election], and I believe every single ad was in some ways informed by Brock’s research.”

... Begala says he’s never received a single morsel of personal dirt from American Bridge. The ugliness of Brock’s early career, Begala adds, left him with a “marrow-deep aversion to the politics of personal destruction. It’s definitional with David. I’ve been around him a fair amount ever since then, and I’ve never heard him say, ‘Let’s go after John Doe—he beats his dog!’ Nothing like that.”