Astroturf Warning: TPP Critics Call Out Fake 'Progressive' Group Pushing Corporate Trade Agenda

[Segami]

2. Meet '270 Solutions'...

It’s become routine to expose some of the supposedly organic proposals that come out of the Tea Party as actually sponsored by the Koch Brothers and other big corporate interests. We didn’t want to leave Democrats out in the cold in the astroturfing game. Gaius Publius discusses one ecosystem: a consulting firm, “270 Strategies” and one of its phony creations, the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.

By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, Americablog, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook.A version of this piece first appeared at digby’s Hullabaloo. GP article archive here.

I recently did a piece looking at the Democratic consulting shop “270 Strategies” — a group that’s been characterized as involved in “astroturfing” by the Daily Kos diarist Liberty Equality Fraternity and Trees. Her (or his) headline was:

Obama Campaign Alumni Form New Astroturf Group to Promote TPP

That’s accurate, but a little confusing. There are actually two groups involved. Obama campaign alumnae (or alumni) — Lynda Tran, Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird — are founding partners of the PR and digital consulting shop “270 Strategies.” And the “astroturf” group is their client (or brainchild), the “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.”

Let’s continue our look at 270 Strategies, since their efforts on behalf of TPP have already borne fruit. From a news piece around the time 270 Strategies was created:

[Lynda Tran, the] communications director at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is leaving to join a new political firm founded by Obama campaign officials.

In an email to NHTSA staff on Friday, Administrator David Strickland announced spokeswoman Lynda Tran’s departure.

“For the past couple of years, I have had the pleasure and honor to have been befriended by, advised by and protected by one of the best professionals in government service,” Strickland said.

Tran said in a separate email to NHTSA staff that she will be a partner at 270 Strategies in Washington – a grassroots campaign firm named after the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

The new firm is led by two former Obama for America officials, Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird, and describes itself as “helping clients build people-centered, data-driven and digitally sophisticated grassroots campaigns that achieve their strategic goals and change the world.”

Their press release for this event and that news article are from January 2013, so Tran, Stewart and Bird et al have been at this a while. 270 Strategies is a digital campaign shop (as in, they do political campaigns) and media placement outfit (as in, they place stories in the media to drive a client’s narrative). For a successful example of the latter, read on.

270 Strategies Says It’s “Progressive” To Be Pro-TPP; Politico Agrees

We got onto this story originally because 270 Strategies is part of a new campaign to get TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership, the next NAFTA-style trade agreement) passed. Obama wants it (badly), Pelosi is iffy at best about it, and all of the corporate-bought (through campaign “contributions”) members of Congress are ready to vote for it.

But there’s opposition as well. Against TPP are real progressives, most or all labor unions, most citizens who know anything about it or about NAFTA (a surprisingly large group), and many Republicans who don’t want to cede more power to the “Kenyan” in the White House. (Why’s that an issue? Because to pass TPP, Congress first has to pass “Fast Track” legislation, which neuters Congress’s role in the process. That mean the “Kenyan” wins in the minds of Tea Party legislators.)

So it’s going to be a struggle, either to pass or defeat TPP. Which is where 270 Strategies comes in. These ex-Obama campaign staffers have been hired to paint the TPP deal as “progressive” as a way to divide the left-leaning opposition. As we wrote earlier (emphasis mine):

The TPP wars are heating up, and the lobbyist money is flowing. The latest effort attempts to brand TPP as “progressive” instead of “neoliberal” — “neoliberal” being an obvious-by-now offshoot of the kind of pre-FDR “liberalism” that meant “privatized and controlled by the owners of wealth.”

Most people get that NAFTA was, to put it bluntly, a screw job for workers, that all the promises of new American jobs were lies, or at best, tales told by willing and well-rewarded dupes. That jury came in years ago. (If you don’t believe me, test it. Ask anyone you know, of any flavor of left or right, what they think of NAFTA.) It’s proponents needed a new angle, a new way to increase support and divide opposition. This, apparently, is that angle — “TPP, progressives support it too.”

TPP, 270 Strategies & Politico

Selling TPP as “progressive” is a stretch, but it’s an interesting move. It creates and leverages confusion on the left, and by dividing the left, attempts to finesse support for Fast Track, to sneak it past the finish line. Say “job killer” and the left is united against. Say “progressive” and “groundbreaking” and some on the left may be intrigued, may even be interested, may even be flattered enough to be tempted to agree.

This strategy may not work, but regardless, that’s the plan. 270 Strategies was hired to execute it — to put the confusion-sowing message bolded above, that TPP is a progressive treaty, into the mainstream press, to get that message mainsteam-blessed and make it part of “what everyone already knows.” As I said, a stretch, but that’s the job.

And just like magic, we suddenly see this in Politico (again, my emphasis):

RIFT AMONG PROGRESSIVES EMERGES ON TPP — Mitch Stewart, the battleground states director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and Lydia [actually Lynda] Tran, the former national press secretary for Organizing for America, launched a campaign to encourage giving the president fast-track authority over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Daily Kos reports. In a press release announcing the launch of the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs, Stewart said the campaign, which will start in Oregon and Washington state, was “about ensuring America is competitive in the global economy, about expanding the market for ‘Made in America’ goods, [and] about leveling the playing field to protect American workers and jobs.”

Politico goes on to say that the AFL doesn’t agree, but note their headline at the top of the larger article:

“Progressives Split on TPP”

Nice — and excellent message placement by the newly formed “Coalition” and their helpmates, 270 Strategies. Was this Politico paragraph the result of a nice “catch” by Politico, whose writers naturally read the same Daily Kos non-front-page diaries we do? Or did someone at the media-connected “270 Strategies” whisper into Politico’s ear on behalf of the “Coalition” and get them to put their — as I said, confusion-sowing — frame and message in the headline and then to bury the criticism (“astroturf” operation) behind a link that few will click? If I had to put money on it, I’d say the latter.

Notice that the “Coalition”-friendly framing is threaded throughout the paragraph. And notice that the only goal of this piece — of this whole operation, in fact — is to brand TPP as “progressive” and the disagreement as a disagreement “among progressives.” They don’t care, at this point, if the disagreement is covered, so long as it’s framed as a left-on-left discussion.

Mission accomplished. If 270 Strategies tried to be successful, they succeeded. If they didn’t try to succeed, they got very very lucky. Your call on which way this went down.



cont

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/03/gaius-publius-astroturf-progressive-support-tpp-meet-270-solutions.html